all, senator standridge (405-521-5535) from norman has indicated he is unsure if he should vote against SB1859 today, but he is very open to discussion. we need as many norman people as possible to call or email him this morning/afternoon asking him to vote NO on SB1859. if we stop SB1859 we can bring the Oklahoma Art in Public Places Program back online. this program has been under moratorium for several years and is scheduled to come back online this year. SB1859 takes its funding source and makes it optional instead of permanent. the moratorium AND SB1859 are being done in the name of saving our state money in light of the general revenue shortfall. to that i have three things to add to the discussion... 1) the ok art in public place program has zero impact on general revenue and will not save any money there. 2) currently it IS optional in that you can opt out of placing public art and giving the funds for the project to the state public art program. so the decision to have public art in a specific spot is already there while maintaining a funding source that has zero impact on general fund. 3) if program is not given a guaranteed funding source there is ZERO security for any of the staff on this program that theyre position has any certainty at all and it makes it very difficult to budget for projects with so much uncertainty they are comparing this change to how texas operates. texas has optional funding in their public art program, but texas funds the arts at lower levels in general than oklahoma and is not a bar that i think we want to set for our state (they work on a total budget of under 4mil and public art funding is optional). please contact senator standridge and ask him to stand with norman arts and cultural orgs. thanks! oksenate.gov/Senators/biographies/standridge_bio.aspx
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 14:31:43 +0000
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