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| Legislative Update-04/03/06 | |||
| This
has been a remarkably smooth legislative session so far for cultural organizations
in general and the Council in particular, a happy result produced in great
measure by the Governor's proposed budget in early February which maintained
2005-06 funding levels across the range of state cultural expenditure and
made cultural funding largely a back-burner issue. In past years, as many
of you will recall, significant cuts for the CHC and other cultural agencies
were the order of the day in that document, and we've all had to spend those
sessions swimming up stream like salmon to recoup our losses. This year,
while both the CHC and the Connecticut Trust have been busy at the Capitol
providing testimony to the Appropriations Committee, meeting with legislative
leadership and keeping members of key committees up to speed on the impact
and importance of our new appropriation, we've not had to call upon you
folks for the sort of concerted grassroots advocacy campaigns that so dominated
(and were so successful) in past sessions. The legislature's proposed budget, passed late last week, is consistent with the Governor's recommendations, maintaining the CHC's appropriation at $2.15 million and thus the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation allocation for statewide preservation projects within it at $300,000. Happily, the legislature recommended a $1.1 million increase in the CCT Division of Tourism's dreadfully inadequate marketing budget, which, if still part of the final budget agreement, should prove helpful to the cultural community in the coming months. Sadly, the budgets of the state's similarly hard-pressed tourism districts were not augmented. With all this said, the Governor and the legislature need to come to an accord on budgets which differ significantly in terms of both overall expenditure and tax policy, and end of session cuts are always a possibility. We're keeping a close eye on all this and will ask for your help if developments require it. Several other issues important to the heritage community are also still in play, most significantly Proposed Bill 282, "An Act Establishing a Business Tax Credit for Rehabilitating Historical Structures." Passage of this legislation is a high priority of the preservation community, and Helen Higgins at the Connecticut Trust and her advocates at the Capitol have been hard at work throughout the session to see it enacted. She'll also keep you posted if any targeted grassroots advocacy efforts are necessary in that campaign. Bruce Fraser Executive Director Connecticut Humanities Council 955 South Main Street, Suite E Middletown, CT 06457 www.ctculture.org |
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