State budget cuts approved last week are expected to impact local arts and health department programming in Worcester County.
Pieces that were part of the “Seasons” exhibit at the Worcester County Arts Council’s gallery in Berlin are pictured.
File photo courtesy Worcester County Arts Council
By Bethany Hooper, Associate Editor
State budget cuts approved last week are expected to impact local arts programming in Worcester County, officials say.
On July 17, the Maryland Board of Public Works, a three-member board consisting of the governor, comptroller and treasurer, voted to approve $148.3 million in budget reductions for fiscal year 2025. The cuts, officials report, are largely driven by an increase in healthcare and childcare spending, top priorities for the administration.
“Revenues are relatively stagnant – and they have been for quite some time – but needs are growing,” Comptroller Brooke Lierman said.
One of the departments to be cut is the Maryland State Arts Council, which awards grants to artists and nonprofit arts organizations throughout the state. While the $437,000 cut represents a roughly 1% reduction, a concerted effort has been made at the local level to oppose the change.
“The problem is small organizations like ours depend on that funding through the arts council …,” Rina Thaler, executive director of the Art League of Ocean City and board member of Maryland Citizens for the Arts, the state’s art advocacy group, said this week. “This will affect the funding we receive for this year.”
Thaler said the reduction could have budgetary impacts for the Art League of Ocean City, which recently submitted its yearly grant application to the Maryland State Arts Council. She noted that the nonprofit receives no direct funding from the Town of Ocean City or Worcester County.
“People don’t start out at Juilliard or MoMA, they start at community organizations like ours …,” she said. “We’re so underserved as it is on the Eastern Shore that I feel that this cut affects us more than in Baltimore County or Baltimore City, which has such a rich arts offering.”
To that end, Thaler said she is using her connection with Maryland Citizens for the Arts, to advocate for local arts funding. She argued that the Eastern Shore is often overlooked when it comes to supporting the arts.
“This makes it even worse,” she said of the budget reduction. “There’s a smaller pool to fund from.”
The Worcester County Arts Council has also joined the campaign to preserve arts funding ahead of this week’s state board meeting. Executive Director Anna Mullis noted that thousands of letters had been sent to the governor to oppose the reduction to the Maryland State Arts Council budget.
“The Worcester County Arts Council is funded by an annual grant from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC). MSAC is a vital agency to our sector and the state, helping to contribute over $1.1 billion annually to Maryland’s economy via its investment in the arts,” she said. “This funding is a major form of support that Worcester County Arts Council depends on which allows our organization to provide much-needed community programs and services.”
Mullis said the reduction impacts an already struggling arts sector, which she said is still grappling through the effects of the COVID pandemic and inflation. She said cuts could have “devastating consequences” for her nonprofit.
“Cuts to the Maryland State Arts Council’s budget will consequently reduce the funding to the Worcester County Arts Council,” she explained. “Reducing these funds will diminish our abilities to provide grants to schools and local civic organizations, arts scholarships, and cultural community programming.”
The Maryland State Arts Council is just one of several line items to be cut within the current fiscal budget, with some of the largest reductions aimed at the University System of Maryland ($19 million) and local health departments ($12 million). The Worcester County Health Department did not return requests for comment this week.
Maryland Secretary of Budget and Management Helene Grady told the board Wednesday the proposed reductions were the first step in an ongoing process to balance the budget, which she said focused on supporting economic growth, rebuilding the core of state government and redeploying underutilized funds.
Treasurer Dereck Davis said cutting the budget was no easy feat, adding that agencies and organizations were pitting against each other to preserve their budgets.
“Too often when we hear about deficits and budgets and so forth, people will willy nilly say ‘cut the budget …’” he said. “While it may not be important to me or you, every single dollar this state spends affects somebody.”
Representatives from state agencies set to receive budget cuts – including the Office of the Public Defender and the Rural Maryland Council – came before the board this week seeking reconsideration. Rural Maryland Council Executive Director Charlotte Davis, joined by representatives of the Regional Council and Tri-County Council, asked officials not to cut her agency’s budget by the proposed $2.25 million, or 25%.
“We have 25% of the state’s population and represent 1.7 million Marylanders, and we felt like we have been doing a great job with our programs,” she said. “We do the most with the least amount.”