Government Relations

How Dare You Refuse That Money?

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Really interesting story out of Australia via Non Profit Quarterly. The Arts Minister has asked the Australia Council to develop a policy penalizing arts organizations who refuse private funding based on idealistic or political motivations.

Refusing funding from tobacco companies is mentioned in a couple instances, but this was brought on by artists in the Sydney Biennale objecting to its association with a company involved in a controversial detention center used to house asylum seekers.

Senator Brandis responded to that by saying, “What I have in fact asked the Australia Council to do is to develop a policy so that it would be a condition of the receipt of Australia Council funding that the arts organisation concerned not unreasonably refuse or unreasonably terminate private sponsorship.” When pressed on who would be responsible for deciding what is to be considered “unreasonable,” Brandis replied, “I don’t frankly have a fixed or dogmatic view about whether it should be the Australia Council or whether it should be the Minister or whether it should be some third party arbiter.”

We can only hope that the option adopted is not the current Minister. Brandis has since said that while it was reasonable for arts companies or festivals to reject corporate funding if they had concerns about a sponsor’s financial credentials, it was unreasonable for them to refuse sponsorship on political grounds.

While the funding model in the United States is different than that of Australia and the amount of support U.S. arts orgs receive from government sources is comparatively small compared to private and corporate support, I can easily see a similar rhetoric being used politically in the U.S.

“X Theater has been on the public dole (equal to 2% of its budget) for years and they are perennially saying they are in financial straits. But just last year they refused a donation from Y Company (seeking to charity wash its reputation after that last scandal), even after they offered to double their usual donation. Where do they get the nerve to ask the people of this great state for more of their hard earned money after refusing Y Company’s generosity?”

To a certain extent, refusing money from tobacco companies might be easy because there has been a decades long nation wide campaign about the problems brought on by smoking. With other companies, issues like environmental damage and sweatshop like conditions with low pay may be mitigated by widespread employment and improvement in the general standard of living, causing more ambiguous views about refusing support on ethical grounds.

I think it would be difficult to pass a law or rule to this effect in the U.S. because it is easy to see how that there will be no end of trouble. (How can such a poor school afford to refuse Playstation’s sponsorship in return for painting their gym and cafeteria with the logo?!)

Just merely employing the rhetoric to equate arts organizations refusing private funding with the unemployed refusing a crappy job can be damaging enough.

Artists Need Not Apply?

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I hadn’t really intended for this to be a “Government and the Arts” themed week on my blog when I wrote about the search for a director of the NEA yesterday, but it seems to be shaping up that way.

Today the Ohio Arts Council posted a tweet saying they were looking for a new deputy director. Curious, I followed the link and was surprised by the minimum qualifications outlined in the job description.

– Completion of undergraduate core program in social or behavioral science or pre-medicine; 30 months experience in delivery of human services or medical assistance in governmental, community or private human support services agency or medical provider; 12 months experience in management; 18 months experience in supervisory principles/techniques.

– Or completion of graduate core program in social or behavioral science or medicine-related field; 24 months experience in delivery of human services or medical assistance in governmental, community or private human support services agency or medical provider; 12 months experience in management; 18 months experience in supervisory principles/techniques.

Wait, what?

I will concede that you don’t necessarily have to be an arts person to do an effective job in an arts related field. I have seen some people argue that a person with general experience in a role can be better than someone with a strict arts background (e.g. call center supervisor as a box office manager). I could see requiring a public policy degree instead of an arts degree, but this medical/social services orientation seems a little bit of a stretch.

Going by the position description, you don’t even need a passing familiarity with the arts to qualify.

Knowledge of social or behavioral science or pre-medicine; program planning for human service organizations; social program & policy analysis; personnel management and policies; agency & governmental laws, rules, regulations & procedures applicable to particular social program; supervisory principles/techniques; management; accounting, finance or budgeting*. Ability to deal with many variables & determine specific action; prepare & deliver speeches before specialized audiences establish professional atmosphere as administrator; handle sensitive inquiries from & contacts with officials & general public.

* May be acquired after employment

Now, let me just say all my interactions with the Ohio Arts Council have been top notch. They have been far more enthusiastic and responsive than we deserve after all the questions and problems that we posed regarding our final grant report as I transitioned into my job last summer.

Not only that, they have been proactive about addressing potential problems, giving me a call when they noticed me doing something online in a new grant application that might cause difficulties down the road.

If this is a result of hiring people using this apparently mismatched job description, I fully endorse it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

If the price of getting this sort of service from a government agency is to advocate for public health degrees over arts degrees, I will be the first to say we all should have entered the healthcare field, instead.

The truth is, there are plenty of people working for the Ohio Arts Council who have arts backgrounds, like the new executive director. The public information director has a background in arts journalism. The current deputy director had a visual arts background before she joined the arts council and later transitioned into the deputy position.

I am sure I would find similar stories for many of the arts council staff.

I reached out to one of my contacts at the arts council about the job description, her response (which came quickly, of course), was as I expected.

That job description is pretty standard for a broad class of deputy director positions across the entire state government system. It was the same way when I was working for the state of Hawaii, except we could insert the appropriate field of study.

The question is, does this really get government and the citizens the most effective employees? Speaking from experience, these descriptions get applied strictly during the initial screening of resumes so chances are an arts person is only going to get an interview if they just happened to get one of these degrees. It isn’t outside of the realm of possibility that a few good people have the qualifications and interest in the arts, but it isn’t an ideal situation.

But even if these criteria weren’t applied strictly, would someone with an arts background or interest in the arts even apply for this job in the first place after reading it? It sounds as if the applicant would be dealing with public health concerns rather than public art.

If someone with the exact public health qualifications applies and gets the job, would they be happy in a role when they expected to be involved with hospitals and health clinics rather than dance performances and art installations?

We Expect Great Things! (just not too great, please)

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Near the end of 2013 I started seeing quite a few blog posts and tweets criticizing the Obama administration for not appointing someone to replace Rocco Landesman as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The administration may have been slow to act, but I wonder how much of the delay was due the difficulty of finding someone the administration felt they could live with and whom felt they could live with the administration.

In an opinion column in the Washington Post, a social science professor writes about her experiences as an appointee to the National Council on the Humanities.

She said there were two reasons she was rejected,

“First, taxes. In 2009 and 2010, the years of my divorce, I filed my taxes late — four weeks and 10 days, respectively. Second, I was not willing to commit to never criticizing the administration, nor to restricting my publishing agenda to topics that were unlikely to be controversial. There is just no point trying to be a public intellectual if you can’t speak your mind. This requirement was conveyed and discussed through phone calls; I have no written record to prove it. But that was how it went.”

Every government entity is risk averse to any flaw in an appointee at any level these days. This American Life recently ran a story about a student whose appointment as the student representative on the Wisconsin Board of Regents was publicly announced and then rescinded. The student absolutely impressed everyone. It was only after his appointment that it was discovered he signed a recall petition in solidarity with his mother who was a teacher.

People will say they value creativity, but they are actually uncomfortable with the fact that creative people don’t conform and will figuratively color outside the lines.

So the Obama administration may have been having a hard time finding someone who would agree not to rock the boat while they held the position. Rocco did raise some controversy with this comments about some arts organizations needing to close, but most of the yelling was within the artistic community. Given the political environment in Washington those sentiments probably comforted a good many members of Congress.

The administration may have gotten what they wanted in the nomination of Jane Chu. Many articles I have written about her imply she won’t cause trouble. The LA Times used the phrase “low profile” to describe her in an number of articles, including one that used “low profile” in the headline.

The Kansas City Star described their city’s resident as “Quietly efficient, guardedly passionate.”

This isn’t to say Chu won’t rock the boat and bring about sweeping change. There have been a number of popes, the current one included, that were assumed to be “safe” choices but proved otherwise.

But right now, Chu is being painted as a rather inoffensive choice for the position which is exactly what you want in an appointee.

Some type of statement will be made about expecting great things of her, but there will be an unspoken subtext that they hope it will not be too great.

Politicans, Can’t Live With ‘Em…

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So I have gotten some nice responses to the question I posed about the Minnesota Legacy Tax at the end of yesterday’s post.

Paul from Minneapolis praises the Legacy tax, saying that everywhere he goes he hears that the event has been supported by the Legacy Tax.

Another commenter who wished to remain anonymous was a little annoyed because everywhere she goes, she hears about all the events in Minneapolis being supported by the Legacy Tax.

She becomes exasperated when she hears the tax is supporting the Guthrie Theatre’s babysitting program while places like Bemidji get very little support (The commenter was not from Bemidji, its just one of my favorite Minnesota place names.)

If you follow the link to the Legacy Tax project tracking website the commenter from Minneapolis provides, you will see that the frequency and amounts of the grants made in southeast Minnesota tend to be higher than the rest of the state. (Though selecting arts only spreads the frequency out across the state, most of the money is still around Minneapolis.)

This brings up the counter-truth of yesterday’s post. Yeah, politicians will give the arts short shrift, but you need them to get anything at all.

When I was growing up in New York, the perception was that only NYC, Albany and Buffalo existed in the eyes of the legislature.

I think I mentioned before on this blog that when I was working in NJ there was a rule that a certain percentage of the arts funding had to be given to the southern counties. The intent was warped a little bit so that providing more money to northern arts organization was rationalized as benefiting the southern half because they traveled south to perform.

It wasn’t until a legislator from the rural south of NJ became speaker of the assembly that this changed.

Heck, the performing arts center I am director of is named for the speaker whose influence aided in its construction. (And actually, I just noticed today is his birthday.)

We all hate thinking about the process of currying favor and politicking, but there are plenty of examples to provide a lesson as to why it works.