In Kansas, Federal Arts Funding At Risk Again
Submitted by Steve on November 17, 2015
From Rhonda Holman, writing for The Wichita Eagle:
The lesser effort that replaced the abolished Kansas Arts Commission has put the state at risk of losing federal funding again. It’s disappointing to see the arts still under siege in the state – and now the threat is as much fiscal as ideological.
The 2015 Legislature and governor had signed off on $190,000 for the Kansas Department of Commerce’s Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission for fiscal 2016, with perhaps $58,000 more to come from an income-tax checkoff and special arts license plates.
But the National Endowment for the Arts notified the KCAIC in September that Kansas was nearly $225,000 short of the state match needed to qualify for federal dollars and must close the gap by Jan. 15. A Commerce Department spokesman told Associated Press that the state was trying to identify ways to satisfy the matching requirement, perhaps by counting other state agencies’ projects or employee staff time.