Florida arts and culture funding slashed from budget

Dozens of Tampa Bay institutions are scrambling for funding after Gov. Ron DeSantis last week vetoed more than $32 million in arts and culture grants from next year’s budget.

“It’s a huge disappointment and a quandary,” said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. The museum expected $570,500 from the state but will receive zero. “We are all unclear as to why this happened.”

DeSantis issued nearly $1 billion in line-item vetoes before signing a $116.5 billion spending plan at a news conference in Tampa. He cut two grant programs, totaling $32 million, that fund arts and culture nonprofits across Florida.

DeSantis didn’t explain why he cut the arts and culture grants but said more broadly that he vetoed some items he didn’t think were “appropriate for state tax dollars” and that he wanted to spend less money than the year before.

The state has long awarded money to cultural organizations through four grant programs. The Legislature in March approved two of those programs for the upcoming budget and earmarked tens of millions of dollars less than in years past. DeSantis vetoed those grants.

Tomor said the Tampa Museum of Art was slated to receive $500,000 in grant money for a building expansion project and around $70,500 for exhibition education programs. The vetoes came as a shock.

“These aren’t huge amounts of money, but they were extremely meaningful towards what we’re trying to accomplish for the community,” he said.

Margaret Murray, CEO of Creative Pinellas, the county’s nonprofit arts agency, said the budget cuts will hit small organizations the hardest. Murray said local music and theater groups, youth programs, art festivals and other nonprofits that rely on state funding may struggle to recover.

“To completely decimate the cultural funding … I’ve never experienced that in my lifetime as an arts professional in Pinellas County, or anywhere,” she said.

When asked why the governor vetoed the arts grants press secretary Jeremy Redfern said that DeSantis “reviews every bill and appropriation that comes across his desk and uses his authority under the Florida Constitution to make veto decisions that are in the best interest of the State of Florida.”

FreeFall Theatre, a nonprofit theater company in St. Petersburg, expected $105,000 from the state, said executive director Craig Badinger. About half of the organization’s $1.5 million yearly budget comes from grants and donations. Badinger said the organization will need to “get creative” to raise the lost state funding.

“It’s not easy, especially when every other arts organization around us is dealing with this, too,” Badinger said.

ZooTampa at Lowry Park planned to use a $500,000 grant to help fund the development of a manatee rescue habitat, which is part of a larger $125 million expansion project. The zoo received $2 million elsewhere in the budget to support the manatee habitat construction, but the vetoes mean the organization will need to fundraise. The Clearwater Marine Aquarium and Friends of Ybor each expected to receive $500,000 in cultural facilities grants.

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Tomor said the vetoes were a “sign of no faith” from the governor in Florida’s arts and culture institutions.

“To have the representative of our state fundamentally say that he does not believe these things are important is a message that’s heard very clearly by constituents,” Tomor said. “I worry it can be a contagious behavior to deny access of taxpayer dollars to things that enrich our lives educationally and spiritually, and in a way that’s very human.”

Leaders from the Florida Cultural Alliance, an arts advocacy organization, condemned the cuts in a statement.

“This is unprecedented in the history of the grants program and is dismaying,” the group said in the statement, which was signed by chairperson Earl Bosworth and president Jennifer Jones.

Some Democrats in the state Legislature spoke against the vetoes, too.

“These funds were set to support well-vetted nonprofit organizations that play a crucial role in enriching our community and preserving our cultural heritage,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani said in a statement. “Cutting this funding undermines the economic vitality of our state and disregards the significant contributions of our cultural institutions.”