“Your priorities are important to me…
One of my goals at the beginning of the pandemic…was making sure we could use one-time money from the federal government when entire sectors were closing down overnight. Like the work people do in this coalition.
I wanted to make sure that when we got back to some normalcy, these institutions were still here. And so we did everything we could to make sure we didn’t lose artists and folks who were invested in Oregon. And I’m proud of the work we did.”
-Tina Kotek
Congratulations to our governor-elect, Tina Kotek. We enjoyed our session with her in October. You can watch the recording here.
We are excited about the coming months and our opportunity to reposition the cultural sector as a priority of our governor-elect and new legislators.
Here is our CACO 2023 policy agenda:
- $50 million in additional recovery funding for arts, culture, heritage, and humanities, distributed similarly to the CARES allocation of last cycle. We had advocated for this in 2022 and were not successful, largely because previous ARPA funds had not yet been distributed to the field.Some of our major venues are seeing ticket sales at 18% of what they were before the pandemic. The need is great. Oregon has more in its general fund than it has in awhile, so we will push this as our top priority.
- $11.9 million in Cultural Resource Economic Funds for 16 projects across the state, ranging from $150,000 to $3 million. Large and small, urban and rural, for a variety of art forms, these funds will complete capital projects preserving cultural offerings across Oregon.
- $200 million to the Oregon Cultural Trust, spinning off $10-20 million a year for operations grants to the 1,400 Oregon nonprofits eligible for funding from the trust. We are asking lawmakers to make good on the original $200 million commitment they made to fund the Oregon Cultural Trust by asking for revenue from lottery bonds.We will work with county and tribal coalitions to distribute these funds, which will go into an account separate from current grant programs. This is our long-term vision for supporting the sector and it will move Oregon into the top rankings for state funding.
- $10 million increase to grow grant funding at the Oregon Arts Commission.
- Replacing Oregon Cultural Trust administrative cap with percentage of earnings.
Through our advocacy, we have helped direct over $100 million in federal recovery funding to our sector by the state legislature.
We have funded capital projects, increased dollars generated from the arts and culture license plate, renewed the Oregon Cultural Trust Tax Credit, and helped build our sector in every community.
Congratulations to our newly elected leaders. We look forward to working with them on these important priorities!
The Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon board