jonetta rose barras: Arts hierarchy in DC
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t let anyone tell you it’s not an earmark for some politically well-positioned individuals or organizations. Earlier this year, the DC Council conducted such a game of deceit.
Legislators voted to increase the city’s sales tax to provide additional funding for the arts through the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH). The agency’s budget is expected to increase to $30 million in fiscal year 2019, which starts Oct. 1.
Most people, myself included, didn’t realize that nearly $10 million of those funds were set aside for specific organizations. Many of them are groups with the kind of prestige and clout that should give them an easy path to raising funds.
Interestingly, the council member did not call out their friends by name. Lawmakers’ deceptive ways were on full display in the Sept. 14 DC Register, where a “Notice of Funding Availability” and a “Request for Applications” submitted by the arts commission appeared.
In that announcement the arts commission spelled out funding categories and their criteria. One noted that support is available for “a dance organization that has served the District for more than 70 years through performances, classes, and community engagement programs at THEARC.”
That hyper-specific description could only apply to one organization. Raise your hand if you guessed The Washington Ballet.
In another category, the commission noted that support is available for “an international film festival scheduled to take place in April 2019 at Landmark’s E Street Cinema and AMC Mazza Gallerie movie theaters.”
You’re correct if you guessed Filmfest DC. That group is headed by the arts commission’s former director, Tony Gittens. While he did an excellent job running the agency, the earmarking for his organization and all the others included in the council’s 2019 Budget Support Act stinks to high heaven.
It’s not too late for the council to rescind that portion of the support act.
Jeffrey Scott, a spokesperson for the arts commission, pined responsibility on the council but seemed to defend the earmarking. “These particular grant categories were determined by the [council] during the legislative process,” he said. “CAH will administer these grants on a competitive basis, utilizing a panel review process as with other agency grant programs.”
Don’t you just hate it when officials underestimate your intelligence?
It is nearly impossible for any organizations other than The Washington Ballet and Filmfest DC to meet the criteria as written for what are being called “enhancement grants.”
“We’ve done this every year since I have been on the council,” Ward 2’s Jack Evans told me during a telephone interview. He chairs the Committee on Finance and Revenue, which has oversight of the arts commission among other agencies. It appears that several of the 14 organizations expected to benefit from the earmarking are located in his ward, even if some of their programs are offered elsewhere.
Back in 2010, when Vincent C. Gray was chairman, the council put a lid on earmarks. Several council members had become entangled in controversies surrounding them. Ward 8 representative Marion Barry was even censured. At the council’s request, Robert Bennett, a famed attorney in the area, conducted an examination of the legislature’s use of earmarks. He found that spending on them had gone from $1.25 million in 2005 to $47.9 million in 2009. He recommended they be discontinued.
For a couple of years that seems to have happened. Then, council members began directing money to the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. That system was sorely abused, as was made clear by the subsequent prosecution of then-Ward 5 Council member Harry Thomas Jr.; he pleaded guilty to a felony and spent time in federal prison.
Now, under a new disguise, the council has come back to pass out money to big organizations, without regard for the discriminatory nature of such a practice. There are small and mid-sized arts groups that really are competing for funds.
When I raised that last issue with Evans, he chuckled. “The bigwigs can’t get any money.”
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he was “not happy with how the arts commission’s budget got ‘near marked.’ I think there needs to be a better process that allows large organizations to get the capital they need to fix their facilities and small organizations to get what they need to grow and thrive.
“I don’t feel like there is a coherent process to make that happen,” Mendelson continued.
Is he talking out of both sides of his mouth?
On the one hand, he thinks it’s unsavory to have the earmarks. On the other hand, he oversees the council’s budget process and voted to approve the Budget Support Act that contained the language providing preferential treatment to a few large groups. “The council has been able to show remarkable unanimity in getting the budget approved,” Mendelson added.
That’s all good; but shouldn’t what’s in the budget and the legislature’s standard of ethics it represents also matter?
“I’m hopeful we can change it next year,” Mendelson added.
Don’t count on it, my friends. The only thing likely to change in the 2020 budget process is which big organizations are personally escorted by the council to the government trough, and which small arts groups are left scavenging for crumbs.
jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
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