In a Letter to the Editor published Monday (5/30) on the Topeka Capital-Journal online, Vermont Arts Council Executive Director Alexander L. Aldrich writes, “I have been following with great interest Gov. Sam Brownback’s efforts to remove government support from the Kansas Arts Commission and to re-establish it as an independent, non-profit agency, with the expectation that doing so will relieve the administration of the responsibility of allocating taxpayer funds to match federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. … Since our small agency has been frequently singled out by Brownback’s administration as an example of a nonprofit state arts agency that is thriving without, as the media has reported it, the benefit of state investment I am compelled to weigh in and set the record straight on just three points. First, in Vermont our nonprofit state arts agency is effective only because there is significant state investment in our work.” The agency receives a state appropriation of just over $500,000. “Second,” Aldrich continues, “without state support we would be forced to raise more than $500,000 from the private sector to match our federal grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—an activity that would put us in direct competition with the very cultural institutions that our mission requires us to support. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, every stateshould invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense.”
Posted June 2, 2011
