Arts Trapped in Session Stalemate
May 21, 2001
Today was supposed to be the last day of the legislative session, but tri-partisan government isn’t as easy as it looks. The Governor and House and Senate leaders have not yet come to an agreement about the amount of spending, tax refunds and tax cuts that they will make this year. Without agreement on these larger issues, the committee charged with deciding how much money will go to the arts cannot complete its work.
The State Government Finance Conference Committee, co-chaired by Senator Richard Cohen and Representative Phil Krinkie, has been meeting for the last several days. No spending targets have been set for the committee, but offers have gone back and forth on the bill. The House opened with an offer to settle all of the issues in the bill at once, which included the Senate position on the arts (an increase in funding, plus no $100,000 limit on grants). The Senate responded to that offer with objections to other matters in the bill (unrelated to the arts).
On Saturday, in an angry response to the Senate’s objections, the House members retracted their offer and put us back at square one. The Senate made a variety of new offers today, including putting the arts money back, but the House members refuse to vote for them until they have spending targets. The exception is Rep. Jim Rhodes (R), who has consistently voted to restore arts funding. As of this writing, the House position continues to be a $5 million cut in arts funding and a $100,000 cap on grants, and the Senate position continues to be an increase in arts funding of $1.35 million with no cap. They will have to compromise somewhere.
The conclusion of the conference committee’s work will now have to happen in a special session, because we are assuming they won’t finish their work by midnight tonight, when technically the conference committee goes out of existence. The word today is that they will continue to work until agreement is reached, hopefully in the next couple of days or weeks. But, in any event, they must get some deal done by July 1, when state government will have to shut down if they don’t get their bill passed.
The Governor is saying he won’t call a special session until there’s agreement on all of these bills.
House and Senate leaders will probably keep the heat on the committee members to get them to finish their work this week.
Once the deals are ready, there could even be a special session later this week or next week.
Stay tuned.