By Howard Pousner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A bill to let counties use sales tax money to help struggling arts groups has had trouble getting traction in the legislature, despite broad support. The measure failed to make last week’s Crossover Day deadline, meaning it could die if not attached to another bill already approved by the House.

That would be only the latest blow to the arts in metro Atlanta and Georgia, which are feeling the pain of a weak economy in many ways.

Public arts funding is being slashed. Corporate and foundation giving is down as businesses salve their own red-ink wounds or refocus giving on social causes. Attendance is off for many arts groups. Layoffs are up. A few organizations, such as the Atlanta Opera, are presenting less of their art to avoid production costs they can’t afford.

“It’s the hardest of times I’ve seen for the arts across the board,” said Camille Love, director of the city of Atlanta’s office of Cultural Affairs.

That’s why, even at the 11th hour, supporters hold onto hope for House Bill 1049, which would not assure any relief but would let any county hold a referendum on dedicating up to 1 cent of sales tax for arts and cultural groups and other economic development projects.

A model for the bill was Denver’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which, through a sales and use tax of one-tenth of 1 percent, distributes roughly $43 million annually to more than 300 cultural organizations in the Colorado capital.

“We cannot afford to experience the devastating effect of a state without a well-supported creative economy,” said Flora Maria Garcia, CEO of the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition, an advocacy group for the city’s arts and cultural community. She said job losses will grow and some groups will shut down without new funding.

Georgia in 2008 had 88,078 people in arts, according to the coalition. A year later the state had lost 5,756 jobs — and cuts continue.

“The economic case has to be made that the arts matter,” said Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-DeKalb), a bill co-sponsor, after the measure stalled. “To move the bill out of the House will require deeper education of legislators and their constituents.”

Advocates tried. The Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition commissioned an analysis showing that support for the arts constitutes good economic development, not charity.

Intangibles important

The arts account for about $722 million in annual spending in Georgia, with an added impact of $386 million, according to the study, which used a model devised by economist Bruce Seaman of Georgia State University.

In the state’s roughly $400 billion-a-year economy, that isn’t much. But arts spending is concentrated in and around Atlanta, so the effect is amplified in the metro area. And there are suburban pockets where arts take on a special importance — such as the Marietta square, where the recently reopened Earl Smith Strand Theatre and longtime fixture Theatre in the Square feed customers to restaurants such as Shillings on the Square.

Arts also can make areas attractive to people and companies, Seaman said. “There are intangible things that are very important.”

Given the dim funding picture, some institutions are innovating. The High Museum of Art, for instance, is courting a new audience with its current “The Allure of the Automobile” exhibit. Theatrical Outfit cut its staff and reorganized to put more muscle into online donations and single ticket sales. Others have simply hunkered down with a goal of survival.

Small groups have been especially hard hit.

ART Station, a 24-year-old community arts center in Stone Mountain, nearly closed its doors before supporters responded to an e-mailed plea for $150,000. With contributions and ticket sales dropping, Synchronicity Performance Group in Little Five Points canceled two shows and laid off its managing director, a marketing assistant and the development director.

“I am a poster child for the current economic condition,” said the former managing director, Amy Wratchford, who has moved to Richmond where her husband has a job.

More cuts likely

The slump appears likely to worsen. The Georgia Council for the Arts, which awards highly competitive programming grants, is slated for a 79 percent funding cut in Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposed budget. It recommends $890,735 for the state arts agency, down from $2.32 million this year and $4.18 million as recently as fiscal 2008. Even before the latest cut, Georgia ranked 44th among states in per capita arts appropriations in fiscal 2009, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

The Georgia Humanities Council, a nonprofit that got a $139,000 state appropriation this year and stretched it with National Endowment for the Humanities and private support, faces complete funding elimination in Perdue’s 2011 budget.

In an e-mail to legislators lobbying for continued humanities backing, Atlantan Martin Leh-feldt, former president of the Southeastern Council of Foundations, made a direct appeal: “Culture is as essential to Georgians as corn bread and collards,” he wrote.

The blunt response from Sen. John Douglas (R-Social Circle), a Senate appropriations committee member: “I have gotten many, many e-mails on this subject. But all the e-mails in the world are not going to give us a single dollar more to spend.”

In an interview, Douglas said he’s not anti-arts, explaining, “But when we are laying people off and slashing very important programs, arts are not the highest priority for me.”

Robert Barnett, who led the Atlanta Ballet for 32 years, is dubious about the prospects of greater support during hard times.

The 84-year-old Barnett, who still teaches occasionally at the ballet’s Centre for Dance Education, calls Atlanta “a college town, a good ol’ boy town. It’s University of Georgia football, Georgia Tech football, shooting clays. And their idea of the arts is a little girl in a tutu.”

Even the Woodruff Arts Center, whose divisions (High Museum, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Young Audiences) dominate the Atlanta arts and funding landscape, is feeling the pinch. The Woodruff’s 2008-09 annual campaign failed to meet its $9 million goal, perhaps the first time that’s happened in the center’s 40-year history. The 2009-10 goal is $8.6 million, last year’s total. It’s the first time the Woodruff set a smaller goal than the year before.

“We are seeing some decreases or unrenewed donations,” Woodruff vice president Virginia Vann said, although she added, “At the same time we are seeing new firms, and new firms to Atlanta, donate.” Ten new donors have pledged at the $15,000 level.

Inequitable donations

Twenty eight entities give at the Woodruff’s Chairman’s Council level (gifts of more than $100,000), and 77 at the $15,000 level.

Penny McPhee, president of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, said there’s a negative trickle-down effect when major companies give at the Woodruff’s lowest level. “Donors are going to make their largest gifts to the WAC, and progressively smaller gifts to other arts groups. If certain major corporations are making surprisingly low contributions to the WAC, it lowers the bar for the entire arts community,” she said.

Kenny Leon, who ran the Alliance Theatre for 11 years before launching his True Colors Theatre Company in 2003, believes the bad economy has widened the divide between haves and have-nots.

“You’ve got the Woodruff and then you’ve got everybody else with these pennies,” the noted director said. “And the culture of the city thinks like that: I gave to the Woodruff, so I gave to the arts.”

Without wounding Woodruff, he said, “maybe there’s a better way to do it ... Maybe [companies] can say, ‘We’re going to give to the Woodruff,’ but 10 percent of that goes to smaller theaters. We have to find a way.”

Some locally based companies, while not bailing on the arts as they endure their own hard times, have adjusted their philanthropic focus. For instance, UPS and its UPS Foundation last year announced a two-year, $9 million commitment to global disaster relief, part of the growing international company’s expanding charitable contributions outside the United States.

Still, spokesman Norman Black said UPS contributed $5 million to the city’s arts and culture in 2009, down about $900,000 from 2008.

Money goes elsewhere

UPS, which in the past soaked up national ink for shipping animals and museum pieces, is being more cautious with in-kind services. It watched archrival FedEx pick up Zoo Atlanta panda Mei Lan for her February flight to China. Future requests will be “examined on a case-by-case basis,” Black said.

Even the Blank Family Foundation, which made the lead pledge of $35 million to the now-mothballed drive to build a new symphony hall, has shifted gears. “Given the state of the economy, we decided to focus our giving in 2009 on critical needs such as housing, food access and homelessness instead,” CEO McPhee said.

Tighter personal finances also come into play.

Suzanne and Jack Ricketson of Lilburn gave up attending the High Museum and area arts festivals when both got laid off. “It’s just a cost luxury we felt we had to eliminate from our present budget,” Suzanne Ricketson said.

Susie McManus of Woodstock, a digital media editor for a trade show company, said she’s had to cut back on arts events while saving for her impending nuptials. “I do feel bad that I’m not able to do as much as I was before,” she said, “because I think supporting the arts is very important.”

Faced with such realities, the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund launched the Atlanta Arts Recovery initiative last year, following up its yearly grants awarded to mid-size and smaller arts groups in June with a second round, also of $500,000, in October. Money came from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, the Zeist Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, Bank of America and the fund’s advisory board. Recovery initiative grants also will be offered this fall and possibly in 2011.

“Cultural institutions are going to have to be energetic to thrive and have comfort with experimentation and informed risk,” arts fund director Lisa Cremin said. “And garnering new audiences is going to have to be done in ways nobody has tried before.”

Staff writer Michael E. Kanell contributed to this article.