About 600 Maryland cultural advocates are expected to descend Thursday on Annapolis to lobby legislators to reject a plan by Gov. Wes Moore that they fear could wreak havoc on the state’s fragile arts ecosystem.

At issue is a densely worded passage in the governor’s proposed $67.3 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 that seeks to revoke a law that requires legislators to set aside at least as much money for the arts as they did the year before.

Moore’s request that this mandate be rescinded is among dozens of proposed cuts to other state agencies aimed at reducing the state’s looming $3 billion deficit.

“This is a nuclear strike against our arts sector,” Nicholas Cohen, executive director of the advocacy group Maryland Citizens for the Arts, said of the proposal to repeal the 1994 Arts Stabilization Act. “Previous governors have cut the budget for the arts. But they didn’t attempt to eliminate the mandate.”

According to the budget language, next year’s appropriation for the arts is contingent upon “the enactment of legislation that eliminates the Maryland State Arts Council’s General Fund mandate,” meaning the 31-year-old Arts Stabilization Act.

It provides that the Arts Council’s funding will increase each year by the same percentage as Maryland’s General Fund, or the pool of state revenues not legally required to be spent on specific purposes.

For instance, if the General Fund grows by 5% in a particular year, the Arts Council grant will receive a 5% boost. If the General Fund’s growth is flat or decreases, the Arts Council’s budget will remain unchanged.

The measure is expected to come up for debate during budget hearings in the House of Delegates on Feb. 25 and the Maryland Senate on Feb. 26.

The advocates will be in Annapolis to participate in the 2025 Maryland Arts Day, an annual event that connects artists, educators and trustees with state legislators.

“We’ll make door-to-door visits to every single delegate and senator in Maryland,” Cohen said. “It’s going to be all hands on deck.”

The National Endowment for the Arts issued a report last year that found that Maryland culture groups contributed $12.9 billion to the state, or 2.7% of the Maryland’s annual economy. The arts provided more than 80,000 jobs and generated $7.3 billion in wages, the report concluded.

The bad news for the Maryland State Arts Council is hidden beneath what amounts to a $29 million carrot for cultural connoisseurs.

The governor’s budget proposes retaining the council’s existing appropriation for the 2025-26 fiscal year — a significant concession at a time when other institutions statewide from public colleges to the agency supporting people with developmental disabilities are being threatened with painful cuts.

Last year, the council passed along 61% of its of $29.1 million state grant (or $18 million) to local museums, film festivals, theater troupes and string quartets.

“The money coming from the Arts Council is unrestricted, general operating funds,” said Jeannie Howe, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, which represents about 30 cultural groups and 100 artists in the greater Baltimore area. “It’s the kind of money that helps people keep the lights on and meet payroll. And that is not easy money to raise.”

Moore’s office said the governor has generously supported the arts during the first two years of his term, setting aside $63 million for local groups.

Spokesman Carter Elliott noted that arts funding in Maryland historically has received strong bipartisan support from Republican governors Robert Ehrlich and Larry Hogan as well as Democrats Parris Glendening and Martin O’Malley.

Elliott said in an emailed statement that Moore’s proposed budget cuts will allow “for more flexibility in the budgeting process across state government.”

Culture boosters say that while they appreciate Moore’s willingness to fund the Arts Council for at least one more year, it doesn’t make up for what they stand to lose.

“In a year like this when so many difficult financial decisions are being made, level funding for the Arts Council is terrific news,” Howe said. “We’re super grateful that Governor Moore has been such a strong supporter of the arts.

“But this change means that in future years, the Arts Council’s budget would start at zero. Governor Moore is eventually going to leave office, and we can’t count on what the next administration might do.”

Cohen said that Maryland consistently ranks in the top three states nationwide behind Minnesota and Hawaii in per capita spending on the arts — an accomplishment he credits to the 30-year-old Stabilization Act.

He noted that the funding mandate doesn’t prevent Maryland governors from trimming spending for dance troupes and children’s theater when times are tough.

“Maryland governors have every right to cut the arts budget when needed,” he said, adding that in the 31 years since the Act was passed, the Arts Council received level or reduced funding about a third of the time.

For instance, former Gov. Larry Hogan initially proposed an 8.9% cut for the Arts Council in the 2021-22 fiscal year, as Maryland was emerging from the coronavirus pandemic; the state legislature, however, eventually restored nearly all of the endangered funds.

“Eliminating the mandate would affect every arts group in Maryland,” Howe said. “Everybody is in a very fragile state. I’m not certain that even the large organizations could weather it.”

Baltimore Public Media, which operates radio stations WYPR and WTMD receives approximately $300,000 from the Council each year, according to events director Sam Sessa. That money helps pay for such popular programs as the radio stations’ free Live Lunch concerts and the New/Next Film Festival, which returns Oct. 2 to 5 for its third year.

“There are already calls from from Washington to defund public media on the federal level,” Sessa wrote in an email. “That, along with repealing the Arts Stabilization Act, could be a one-two punch for nonprofit community arts organizations like WTMD and WYPR.”

Cohen said that it would be short-sighted to expect all future Maryland administrations to continue to support for the arts without the mandate.

For example, the state of Florida previously enjoyed robust state funding for local arts groups. But last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis removed all $32 million in arts funding from his budget, according to the Art Newspaper, with the result that organizations from a children’s orchestra to a Black history museum receivedno state support.

John Schratwieser, director of the Kent Cultural Alliance, wrote in a letter posted on the website for the Evening Enterprise that the Arts Council’s $29 million budget amounts to an annual contribution of $5.30 from each Maryland resident or “the cost of a Big Mac.”

If the Stabilization Act is repealed, future governors could “zero out the arts budget on a whim,” Schratwieser wrote, then added: “Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face has never worked, and it won’t now.”

Revoking the Act would be one more financial hurdle to overcome for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which was already anticipating that its state revenues would drop for other reasons.

A change in the formula the Arts Council uses to distribute funds to arts groups means that by July 1, 2027, the BSO’s annual grant from the state will be capped at $1 million — or half the total it received 10 years earlier.

In addition, this summer, the symphony will receive an additional $700,000 allocation from the state, the final installment in five years of bridge funding authorized by the General Assembly in 2021. The $5.5 million emergency funding package was aimed at putting the BSO on solid financial footing following a funding crisis that nearly capsized the 109-year-old orchestra.

BSO president and CEO Mark C. Hanson said he opposes any proposal that would further erode state support for Maryland’s largest arts group.

“The Arts Stabilization Act was implemented in 1994 and has served arts and culture in the state through thick and thin,” Hanson told The Sun. “It has proven itself to be a really good model that accommodates fluctuations in the state economy without decimating future funding for the arts.

“We hope to appeal strongly, strongly to the legislature to resist the temptation to repeal a funding formula that has worked so well for 30 years while helping to drive the state economy.”

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