Historic Arts Funding in State Budget
On Wednesday, September 20th, the NC General Assembly released the state budget agreed upon by both House and Senate leaders, which includes $2.5 million more for NC Arts Council Grassroots Arts Program grants to recur every year. Additionally, A+ Schools of North Carolina would receive a non-recurring allocation of $1.5 million over the next two years ($750,000 in both FY24 and FY25), which meets the criteria of a private foundation to match the state funds, as well as up to $500,000 in other private donations. The new investment in A+ Schools of NC could total $4.5 million in public and private funds over the next several years. These investments represent the largest new state funding allocation ever in a North Carolina biennium budget and Arts North Carolina is grateful to the NC General Assembly for their recognition of the value of the arts across our state.
Regrettably, legislative budget writers included a provision stating that the additional recurring funding for Grassroots Arts Program grants can only be awarded to Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties, and Tier 3 counties with populations less than 250,000 which would mean Buncombe, Durham, Mecklenburg, Union, and Wake counties would not receive an increase in funding this fiscal year based on the population numbers from the State Data Center that NC Arts Council must use. Arts North Carolina is disappointed by the inequitable exclusion of these five counties and will continue to explore options to include all 100 NC counties in the additional arts funding.
In addition to the sizable new funding allocation for arts in the budget, an Arts Proficiency High School Diploma Endorsement was created for graduates that complete four arts credits with an unweighted GPA of 3.0 or higher and 40 hours of extra-curricular arts activities. This is the same endorsement created by H136, which Arts NC advocated for in addition to further investments in arts and arts education.
The budget bill will now be voted on by the NC House of Representatives and the NC Senate before being sent to Governor Roy Cooper for his signature or veto. NC General Assembly Republicans have enough Members in each chamber to override a veto from the Governor, so this budget will likely become law very soon. Arts NC will continue to work to ensure that all 100 counties can benefit from these investments in the years to come.
As agencies within the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the NC Symphony and NC Museum of Art receive direct state funding alongside the NC Arts Council each year. Arts NC is also grateful when nonprofit arts organizations receive direct allocations in the budget for one-time capital projects, as there is no NC Arts Council program for these expenses. However, legislators sometimes allocate operating funding directly to a handful of arts nonprofits, which is often unsolicited by those entities. Arts NC discourages arts organizations from requesting this type of allocation because the NC Arts Council awards state government funds for operations and programming equitably across all 100 counties, with appropriate oversight and measured accountability.