Last Friday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker vetoed a 20 percent funding increase that the state Legislature had approved for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, basically calling for the state arts agency to be level funded at $11.79 million for the current fiscal year, which began July 1.<\/p>\n
The Mass. Cultural Council announced Monday<\/a> that it is working \u201cwith MassCreative, Mass Humanities, the Mass Artists Leaders Coalition, and allies statewide to encourage members of the House and Senate to override the veto when they consider veto overrides next week.\u201d<\/p>\n The arts agency\u2019s budget\u2014which supports grants for individual artists, organizations, and school programs across the state\u2014would have grown by some $2.3 million under the plan approved by the Legislature on July 8. (The arts agency had been approved for a $12 million budget at the start of the last fiscal year, but its budget was cut by some $200,000 in the middle of the year because of state budget deficits.) Baker\u2019s veto is not a veto of the whole state budget, but calls for less spending in specific budget areas.<\/p>\n In particular, the arts groups\u2019 challenge to Baker\u2019s veto feels like a test for MassCreative, the arts advocacy nonprofit, which was founded primarily by the Mass. Cultural Council and Boston Foundation in 2012. (The Barr Foundation has since become a third major player behind the nonprofit.) MassCreative was prominent in the last Boston mayor\u2019s race and governor\u2019s race, most visibly by organizing candidate forums. But its main focus seems to be increasing state funding for the arts.<\/p>\n \u201cI will work with the Massachusetts Cultural Council to ensure that it is receiving adequate funding to accomplish its mission,\u201d Baker said in a MassCreative questionnaire from last October, one of the few public statements he made about the arts<\/a> during last year\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n