The Florida state capitol building in Tallahassee.
In Wednesday’s (9/4) Washington Post, Sofia Andrade writes, “In June … Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had used his veto to cut a key segment of the state arts budget from $32 million down to $0…. As the school year begins, several of the more than 600 organizations that lost state funding told The Washington Post that their educational programming is the first thing they will have to cut if they cannot make up the money elsewhere. Some organizations lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and smaller groups lost big percentages of their operating budget. Because these losses come just before the new fiscal year for many groups, they are already disrupting hiring and programming. Most policy leaders and voters appreciate the role of state funding for the arts, said Kelly Barsdate, chief program and planning officer at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. This vision of the arts as a ‘consensus point’ worthy of further investment, according to Barsdate, has ‘strong support in states … with every conceivable political configuration.’ In the last 10 years, state legislatures have increased aggregate appropriations to the arts … Florida’s cuts are unusual in scale…. The shortfall is especially acute in rural communities, where there aren’t the same grants and philanthropic opportunities as in cities.”
