A natural for artists to swoon over. Canadian-born and Harvard-educated, with roots in Scandinavia, she had to be sympathetic to culture. She had the art vote solidly locked up.
Well, today it seems safe to say that she is no longer the art world‘s favorite governor. Her budget for the coming fiscal year essentially zeroes out arts and cultural grant funding, except for a few outstanding construction projects.
As a result, artists and art associations from Monroe to Menominee are screaming bloody murder. Now, we are only talking a cut of about $5 million dollars here, but the arts community claims this will mean the loss of thousands of jobs.
Ironically, in 2002, the last year Big Bad John Engler was governor, Michigan was eighth in the nation in state arts appropriations. This year we are dead last.
Next year it will be worse. Yet the situation is more complicated than it seems. On one hand, the entire arts budget is relatively small; last year it was just $6.1 million dollars. Wiping out support for the arts doesn’t get you very far when it comes to closing a budget deficit of at least a billion and a half dollars.
But on the other hand - it seems to me that some parts of the arts community really need to get a grip on economic reality.
You can call it what you like, but Michigan is in a depression. Not the Great Depression, perhaps, but a depression.
Even before the stock market crash, there wasn’t enough money to take care of foster kids in this state. I had lunch Sunday with a 75-year-old architect from Clarkston who is losing his house.
The other day, I saw that the director of a gallery in Lapeer thought the governor’s proposed budget cuts were “tragic.” She iis trying to raise money for a new elevator patrons can take to her gallery’s lower level, and this may make that harder.
Well, people losing their houses probably have a different definition of tragedy.
Yes, I know we need bread and roses, but the fact that bread comes first in that couplet isn’t accidental.
What I think everyone’s missing is the political aspect of all this. Governor Granholm is going to spend the next seven months fighting with the Republicans -- and maybe a few Democrats as well -- over how to cut the budget for the year starting October 1st.
She is going to insist on major cuts in the corrections system. They are going to accuse her of being a liberal elitist who wants to protect her favorite pet programs. So she is showing she is tough by gutting state support for the arts.
If you don’t like that, write to your favorite Republican legislator and suggest the funding be restored. If they agree, I’d bet you dollars to Degas that the governor will go along.
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