Business of the Arts: Arts Funds at Risk

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 aims to cut the state’s funding for the arts almost in half.

His proposal would set Missouri Arts Council funding at $6.4 million, according to the executive budget posted online by the state Office of Administration, Division of Budget and Planning. That’s down from $10.1 million in the current year.

Locally, the impact on the arts community would be a hard blow, according to Springfield Regional Arts Council Inc. Executive Director Leslie Forrester. Forrester said Missouri Arts Council leadership informed her that recipients of MAC grant funds are likely to experience an average cut of 32% in next year’s budget. This is in addition to a 25% cut sustained by grantees in the current fiscal year – together, about a 50% cut to state funding organizations had received in the past, she said.

The value of state funding through the Missouri Arts Council is readily apparent to Forrester, whose organization receives an operating support grant to literally keep its lights on.

“It pays for things that are required to do the programs that the community wants and needs – things like staffing or covering the insurance on our box truck or trash collection at our Creamery Arts Center,” she said. “These things are required to operate a business.”

Funds to cover expenses like trash collection aren’t as attractive to prospective donors as opportunities to cover arts programming, she noted.

“Those are not the things people like to fund,” she said.

A separate MAC grant has funded SRAC’s arts education programs, sending local teaching artists to sites like Boys & Girls Clubs of Springfield, Harmony House and others, Forrester said. Those funds pay artists directly, contributing to the local arts economy, which tallied $89 million in expenditures in 2022, according to a 2023 SRAC economic impact study.

SRAC received three grants from MAC in fiscal 2025, the most recent records available from the MAC, in amounts of $30,000, $33,000 and $35,000.

Cuts to the MAC budget will be felt locally, Forrester said.

“Between the things that aren’t glamorous but are necessary and the fun stuff, it’s going to mean we have to make some hard choices, and the community is going to notice,” she said.

House committee testimony
Michael Donovan, MAC executive director, spoke to members of the Missouri House of Representatives Budget Committee on Jan. 22.

Donovan explained the MAC is in its 61st year, and it has always been funded at a modest level, but this year is the first time it has been able to provide funding to every Missouri House district – no easy task, he said, since some districts lack arts infrastructure.

“We want to make sure that every community benefits from the arts, and every school benefits from arts education,” Donovan said in his testimony. “The purpose of arts education isn’t to create artists; it’s to help create creative, innovative and well-trained individuals. It’s a strong workforce-readiness activity.”

The state has a $1.7 billion impact from the arts, Donovan testified, citing figures from the statewide version of the 2023 economic impact study.

“The arts attract people and tourism.” Donovan said. “People that come to Missouri from the arts spend more as a tourist and stay longer.”

He said there are 13,000 jobs related to the impact.

“This offers a low-risk, high-return investment in the Missouri economy that helps build business talent pipeline and community resilience,” he said.

Budget Committee Chair Rep. Dirk Deaton, R-Noel, asked Donovan what might happen to the Pineville Fall Festival in Deaton’s home district, as one example, if state arts funding were to be cut. Donovan said 90% of the MAC budget goes to grants, like those that help pay for the Pineville event.

“It’s very hard to adjust our budget without affecting the grants,” he said. “I’ll be honest, if we’re cut, we will cut proportionally, because we want to make sure that we are in every district – that’s important; it’s important to the state, it’s important to our values as a state agency to make sure that that what we do benefits every district.”

Missouri Lt. Gov. David Wasinger, whose office oversees the MAC, told the committee he stands by his request for an increase in MAC funding to $12.7 million in 2027 – something Rep. Betsy Fogle, D-Springfield, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, said she appreciates in light of the difference it highlights with the governor’s spending plan.

Dedicated tax
Since 1994, Missouri has had a dedicated mechanism to fund the Missouri Arts Council in the form of a tax on income paid to nonresident athletes and entertainers. By law, presenting organizations, whether for-profit or nonprofit, are required to withhold 2% of the salaries of nonresident entertainers, whether that’s Taylor Swift or a Las Vegas Raider playing at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.

Missouri Revised Statute 143.183 spells out the requirement that 60% of the tax be allocated to the Missouri Arts Council Trust Fund, with the rest split among the Missouri Humanities Council Trust Fund, Missouri State Library Networking Fund, Missouri Public Television Broadcasting Corp. Special Fund and Missouri Historic Preservation Revolving Fund.

The state has never provided the level of funding spelled out in the law, according to Kyna Iman, legislative consultant for arts advocacy agency Missouri Citizens for the Arts.

Iman said the tax fund as a whole had $19 million in it at its half-year point in December and is on a trajectory to generate $40 million – up from $38 million last year.

If the MAC had received 60% of those funds, that would have more than doubled its budget for this year to roughly $22.8 million.

“It’s subject to appropriation, and we’ve never been able to get that full allocation,” Iman said. “Those are dollars that the arts help generate, at least on the entertainment side. We think those dollars should come back to fund the arts so we can do more programming.”

Rep. Stephanie Hein, D-Springfield, also on the House Budget Committee, spoke up during the Jan. 22 hearing to say the arts are underestimated in their importance.

“It’s frustrating to see that we have a piece of legislation that guides us in how we’re supposed to be using something, but yet we have yet to ever follow through on that piece of legislation,” Hein said.

She said the Kansas City Chiefs leaving the state in 2031 will negatively impact that revenue stream.

“We do have to be mindful that with the Chiefs leaving, that’s going to put a hole in that, and that was one of the downsides of losing that team – it’s a pretty significant contribution that they’ve made to our state, so I think we have to plan for that,” Hein said.

Iman noted the World Cup is coming to Kansas City this year and will bring travelers from all over the world to Missouri. That could provide a major boost to nonresident athletes and entertainers tax proceeds, but it also highlights the importance of supporting the arts.

“We want to make sure that we have activities that they can participate in other than soccer games,” Iman said.

Local concern
Joe Dull, executive director of the Moxie Cinema, said his nonprofit organization received around $22,000 this year to fund three programs that provide visual literacy education for children. One, Moxie Kids, works with third- and sixth-grade students to turn them into visual detectives at an age when the younger participants are just beginning to work on Chromebooks and the older ones are starting to get involved in social media.

“It’s to give them skills to understand it a little better and not be consumed or overtaken by it,” he said.

Dull said he would have to seek other sources of funding to keep the programs going in the event of cuts, as funds pay for staff, educators, materials and film licensing. With cuts in other sources, he said, that can be tricky to navigate.

Lisa Bakerink, executive director of the Springfield Sister Cities Association, said the funding her organization receives – $24,000 in the current cycle – helps to bring authentic entertainment to the Japanese Fall Festival every year. A cut would present challenges, she said.

“We’d have to balance it out somehow – we’d either have to invite fewer performers, or we’d have to up the ticket price,” she said. “It’s been a few years since we’ve raised our prices, and we’ll probably need to do that regardless, but we might have to do both to stay within the budget.”

Bakerink said we live in a global society, and the festival nurtures international connection.

She adds that the MAC funding is the main revenue source for the organization’s cultural programming within its $350,000 annual budget. Some 22,000 people attend the Japanese Fall Festival annually, many coming outside of Springfield to spend nights in local hotels.

Rationale for the cut
The governor’s budget recommendation reduces more than $600 million from the general revenue core operating budget, beginning to address a projected future imbalance exceeding $2 billion, according to a statement from his office sent to Springfield Business Journal on Jan. 28.

“These reductions prioritize fiscal discipline while continuing to meet mandatory and high-priority obligations, including Medicaid matching requirements, child care subsidies and disaster relief, without cutting core funding for higher education or the K-12 foundation formula,” the statement said.

It adds that Kehoe supports the state’s arts and humanities programs, but tough decisions need to be made in light of the seriousness of the state’s projected budget imbalance.

“Gov. Kehoe’s administration will continue to work with stakeholders to identify opportunities to support these initiatives when fiscal conditions allow and outside of budgetary line items,” the statement said.