Residents living in the last state in the union to approve a comprehensive budget must be scratching their heads on the final pact agreed on by the state House, state Senate and Gov. Edward Rendell.

Now, the agreement is only a framework for the 2009-2010 state budget. Our elected leaders are still working to draft a line-item budget and a number of bills that must be passed before the budget can be enacted. Pennsylvania Senate President Joe Scarnati said he does not expect legislative action to be completed this week.

The long budget struggle between state Democrats and Republicans focused on holding the line versus raising taxes. So they comprised.

Here comes the head-scratching part.

The folks in Harrisburg decided to maintain a long-standing tax exemption on the sale of cigars and smokeless tobacco. The group that raised taxes on cigarettes 25 cents a pack and imposed a sales tax on “little cigars” at the same rate as cigarettes because of the strain on health care costs due to smoking have apparently decided cigar smokers and tobacco chewers don’t have a cancer risk. Maybe they should report their findings to the AMA.

But, the people Pennsylvanians pay to make decisions found other things to tax. Harrisburg wants to tax the arts. The new budget plans to extend Pennsylvania’s sales tax to the performing arts, museums, historical sites, zoos and parks.

Of course, they did not extend the new tax to sporting events. Taxpayers have already subsidized rich sports owners and their rich players by paying a share of the costs for their showcase stadiums. Now Harrisburg doesn’t want those to encumber that group by adding the same tax to their tickets that the Media Theatre must pay.

An added slap to cultural institutions in the state is that only a portion of the revenue collected from the new tax would be funneled into a special fund reserved for supporting the arts and cultural institutions. The rest would help pay for other items in the nearly $28 billion state budget deal struck by the governor and leaders of three of the four legislative caucuses. The percentage that would be earmarked for the special fund was still being firmed up — like many details of the budget deal.

The tax-deciding Legislature and governor found another way to save cigar smokers, tobacco chewers and sports franchise owners — a 20 percent tax on any club licensed by the state’s Liquor Control Board on its earnings from games of chance, such as punch boards, pull-tabs, raffles (including lotteries), daily drawings and weekly drawings.

Just whom does this tax hurt? While a few metropolitan fire departments receive some state funding, most of the departments that serve the residents of Delaware County rely on the above-named revenue sources to raise operating funds. Volunteer fireman and emergency service organizations trying to keep their financial heads above water are saddled with a 20 percent loss — money now earmarked for state tax coffers.

Residents of Pennsylvania are still waiting for a budget. If anyone had any doubts about who influences the elected men and women in Harrisburg, the decision on whom to levy taxes should provide an answer.

Waving signs saying “Save our Arts” and “Don’t Tax Behind Our Backs,” nearly 150 people massed at the Bellevue in Center City to protest a proposal to tax tickets for museums and performing-arts venues to balance Pennsylvania’s state budget.

State Sen. Larry Farnese, one of three state senators to join in the noontime protest, said he “will join my colleagues in the Phildelphia Senate Delegation, and we will fight to oppose this tax.”

State Sen. Daylin Leach denounced the proposed tax as a “backroom deal” and said he would oppose the tax, but not necessarily the state budget.

Leach encouraged the crowd to spread word that the tax should not go through.

The tax will add 8 percent to the cost of an arts ticket in the city and 6 percent elsewhere.

Organizer Thom Weaver, a theater lighting designer, said he sent out an e-mail about the protest on Tuesday that went “viral,” resulting in a larger than expected turnout.

The protesters, mostly college students and members of the theatrical union Actors Equity, marched down the Avenue of the Arts following the protest, chanting “Save our arts!”

The march ended at City Hall at about 1 p.m. with a crowd of nearly 30 University of Arts students singing and shouting.

On Monday, hundreds of determined arts leaders attending the annual meeting of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts vowed to fight the tax, saying it would hurt museums and performance arts groups.

In Harrisburg and across Pennsylvania, we are fortunate to have excellent nonprofit performing arts organizations. These groups are already struggling with the challenges of the continuing economic recession, and now the governor and some members of the Legislature want to force these community-based, nonprofit organizations to shoulder the burden of the failures of the state budget through a nonprofit tax.

It is both sad and astonishing to me that our state leaders would choose nonprofits to realize funds to solve the state’s budget problems. The proposal to tax nonprofits by charging sales tax on subscriptions, ticket sales, art exhibitions and museum admissions will only further damage the health of our state and its communities. The amount of revenue this plan would generate for the state is trivial, but the consequences for the nonprofit arts community would be severe.

Subscription renewals and ticket sales are already down for these nonprofits, while the costs of operating are up, largely due to the current economic situation. Financial support from local funding sources has also been greatly reduced.

Nonprofit performing arts organizations strive to make their presentations available for the communities they serve by pricing tickets to be affordable to all. If the Legislature and the governor approve this tax on nonprofits, the cost of tickets will be increased. A consequence will be reduced attendance at these community cultural events. Lower attendance will hurt many nonprofit organizations.

Some community-based groups will likely not survive under this burdensome tax. The cost of collecting sales tax and complying with bookkeeping and auditing requirements would add to the already increased administrative and operation costs that nonprofits are struggling to bear.

Furthermore, state leaders are considering slashing or eliminating the funding to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Created by Gov. Scranton in 1966, the council has been a powerful advocate in Pennsylvania for fostering and supporting cultural projects and organizations that benefit our local communities and our state.

If the Council on the Arts were to be shuttered due to poor budgetary planning by our state leaders, our communities will suffer to an incalculable extent. Pennsylvania has already experienced a “brain drain” as our young adults move to other states that offer more opportunities. Imagine if the shortlist of creative outlets currently available in Pennsylvania for our young adults is further reduced.

Our leaders in Harrisburg may see the nonprofit tax as a quick fix, but the tax will be profoundly destructive to the cultural community. Ultimately, this long-term damage will further diminish Pennsylvania’s potential for growth and prosperity.

Instead of burdening these organizations with a nonprofit tax, they should be supported and nourished by our state leaders. It is unthinkable to further starve and threaten nonprofits for the sake of increasing tax revenues to fill funding gaps in the budget.

I challenge our state’s leaders to reduce costs in a responsible way while finding innovative ways to balance the budget without harming community arts organizations.

This proposal to tax nonprofits for ticket sales to cultural and education events is a self-defeating plan. Inevitably, the meager revenue generated by these new sales taxes will wither as nonprofits fade out of existence due to poor tax policy decisions.

The capital region’s nonprofit arts organizations are good community partners and a cultural resource for Pennsylvania residents young and old, from every walk of life. We can’t allow state leaders to take that away.

Dr. William M. Murray is chairman of the board of the Harrisburg Symphony Association.

By Elliot Eisner

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

From The Morning Call.

By Kathy Lauer-Williams

The Allentown Art Museum hung an empty frame in its lobby on Wednesday and will leave it there to draw attention to what the museum would look like if drastic cuts are made to the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts $14 million grant budget. Under Gov. Rendell’s proposed 2009-10 budget, more than $1 million would be cut from arts funding.

The museum has gone ”artless” as part of the statewide ”Artless Wednesdays” campaign spearheaded by Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania, a grass-roots coalition committed to advancing the arts through advocacy, programs and services.

Other arts organizations participating include The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, along with most of the Philadelphia area arts organizations, that either hung black drapes or closed; three theaters in Bradford County, that draped black cloth over the marquee, and the Southern Allegheny Museum of Art’s four museums, which either draped black cloth or turned off the lights Wednesday. Other organizations put a graphic of a black drape on their Web site.

Musikfest made a similar statement in August in conjunction with Citizens for the Arts, when it stopped the music at all venues for one minute while festival workers talked about the threat of state budget cuts.

”The livelihood of arts organizations, as well as their staffs and artists, are threatened with these proposed cuts — and the potential fallout could be catastrophic,” said Robert Metzger, interim executive director of the Allentown Art Museum.

The frame, an ornate gilt frame similar to those used in the museum’s Kress collection, is accompanied by a panel that explains the state budget impasse and the threat of funding cuts to the arts.

Metzger called going ”artless” a ”unique way for the museum to get involved and advocate — not just for our own organization — but for the entire arts community.”

The museum plans to keep the empty frame up until a budget is passed.

The Citizen for the Arts in Pennsylvania Web site at http://www.savetheartsinpa.com/artless states that ”each Wednesday until a budget is passed, we are asking for arts organizations to make a symbolic gesture to draw attention to what our communities might be like if there is no state support of nonprofit arts groups.”

”This was just the launch,” said group spokeswoman Jenny Hershour. ”We are hoping as we go longer in the budget impasse, more organizations will sign on. We are trying to get the message out.”

One of the best (and most challenging) jobs I ever had was at a local community arts center (The Abington Art Center, to be exact). I was hired as a marketing person to try to help them overcome some visibility issues they had (including being behind a huge stone wall) and raise their profile in the community. It was hard work, but so incredibly rewarding. I believed whole-heartedly in the mission of this art center, and some of the programs they created were just amazing. They make a real difference, every day, in the lives of their local children and adults.

One of my jobs there was the help coordinate a summer concert series. The Abington Art Center has an amazing back “lawn” (and sculpture park) that made the concerts perfect. I was in charge of these concerts for three years, and by my last summer at the organization over 1,500 people attended. You cannot imagine the deep and intense joy I felt each year as the lawn filled with people, and the children danced and danced. It made every minute of hard work (and the low pay that often comes with working in non-profits) worthwhile and a joy.

Arts organizations throughout the Philadelphia area have been a casualty in this economic climate. Individual funding is down as families tighten their belts, and both government funding and other grant giving organizations have been forced to decrease the amount of funding they can provide. I know every single arts organization has been affected, but I worry about the Arlington Art Center and wonder how they are holding up during this crisis because of my connection to them.

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, along with most of the arts organizations in the Philly area have decided to call attention to the financial plight of the arts by participating in Artless Pennsylvania today, 9-9-09. This means that all of the art galleries, art museums, and local arts organizations today will remain dark. Actors are not acting, dancers are not dancing, musicians are not playing. Some galleries will cover the works with black cloth, others will simply be closed.

Imagine no Philadelphia Art Museum. No Rodin Museum. No Fleischer Art Memorial. No First Friday in Old City, no art galleries. No Academy of Music. No Kimmel Center. No Arts Bank.

Doesn’t sound like much of a city, does it?

If you believe that Philadelphia is a city that needs art, remind your state congressperson of the following quote from the GPCA: “We need to remind them today that the arts and culture are more than just a luxury – but they’re an economic engine, an educational outlet for our region’s children, and a means for understanding our world.” Call you state senator too. Tell them you believe in the arts in Pennsylvania, and to bear that in mind as they continue to hash out the 2010 budget.

We need the arts. It makes our world a better place.

BY ARLENE JOHNS
The Tribune-Democrat

Area museums will “go dark” today as part of a statewide initiative to draw attention to the importance of the arts and state funding – in jeopardy because of the budget impasse.

Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania has asked museums, theaters and arts organizations to participate in “artless Wednesdays” each week until a state budget is passed.

The organization hopes the symbolic gesture will demonstrate the impact of the absence of state support.

Southern Alleghenies Museum of the Arts’ four museums will participatet.

Although museums will remain open, black cloths will cover the artwork at the Johnstown location while in Altoona black sheets will cover display windows. Lights will be out at the facilities in Ligonier Valley and Loretto.

“Our museums will be in mourning … to make citizens aware of how their lives will be altered in a world without art,” said Barbara Hollander, SAMA-

-Altoona coordinator.

Gary Moyer, executive director, said that between 17 and 20 percent of SAMA’s $1 million annual budget comes from state funding.

Each year, SAMA, in partnership with Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, provides art education programs to more than 25,000 students at nearly 100 schools in 31 school districts throughout Cambria, Somerset, Bedford, Blair,  Fayette and Westmoreland counties.

“We are not in the position to sustain the arts education program on our own,” Moyer said.

SAMA already has postponed programs and furloughed an education coordinator as a result of funding delays.

Without passage of a budget that includes money for the arts, Moyer said, “I believe we would be the only state in the union without state funding for the arts.”

Moyer and others want the day of mourning to catch the attention of state lawmakers.

“We still hope that our advocacy has not fallen on deaf ears,” Moyer said.

artless wednesday’s are also mentioned today on the blog ginchy news.

Arts & Citizenship (75″) from Pittsburgh Filmmakers on Vimeo.

All state funding for PA Council on the Arts is in real jeopardy.
Budget negotiations are ongoing now, and your action on this issue is needed!

Let your state senator, state representative, and the governor know how important funding for the arts is to you. Phone calls and hand written personal notes get the most attention.

Governor Edward G. Rendell’s Office, 225 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17120. Or phone: (717) 787-2500. Or fax: (717) 772-8284.

To find the legislators that represent your district, please click here.