Missouri Classical Music News

The Missouri Arts Council has canceled a program worth millions of dollars once promised to local arts groups.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, the Kansas City Symphony, the Kansas City Ballet, the Lyric Opera, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and 21 other arts organizations across Missouri will no longer receive annual payments from the council that would have reached tens of millions of dollars over time.

The arts council gave no notice to any of the affected arts groups in October when it voted to end contracts with organizations participating in the Capital Incentive Program. The program allowed them to collect interest from the council’s endowment.

Now, because of budget cuts and erratic state funding of the arts council, there is too little money to pay them. . . .

In 1996 the state legislature began funding the Missouri Arts Council Trust Fund (also known as the Missouri Cultural Trust) as an endowment for the arts council. The money came from personal income taxes paid by non-resident athletes and entertainers up to $10 million a year. The goal was to raise $100 million in 10 years, which would have made the council self-sustaining. . . .

But the annual state disbursements into the trust never came close to $10 million a year. And the total amount in the trust fund never came close to $100 million. It once totaled as much as $28 million, but during a three year period beginning in 1999 the council transferred $20 million into a longterm investment fund that couldn’t be touched. Now the arts council has spent the remaining principal down to $4.2 million.

Four years ago the legislature, faced with huge deficits, cut its payments to the arts council trust fund and the council’s budget. For three years it paid nothing into the trust and in fiscal 2004 canceled the arts council’s budget entirely.

At the same time, lawmakers gave the council the authority to begin spending the principal of the trust. The council used the money for grants to arts groups around the state and to cover its own operating expenses.