What happened at the Appropriations Committee hearing?

We arranged block testimony for seven heritage advocates at Monday night's Appropriations Committee hearing. Arguing against the Governor's consolidation proposal were Helen Higgins from the Trust, Jack Shannahan from the Historical Commission, Anita Meilart from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a junior high school student doing a project on Prudence Crandall (a big hit with the Committee), Katherine Kane from the Stowe Day Center, Chris Cox from Mystic Seaport and Ken Kahn from the Greater Hartford Arts Council and myself. Most of the major players on the Committee (Co-Chairs Bill Dyson and Toni Harp, ranking members Bob Genario and Peter Metz, House Deputy Majority Leader Melodie Currey, etc.) were in attendance and were quite attentive and sympathetic to our arguments that the Governor's proposal to eliminate heritage funding and meld the Historical Commission with the Arts was ill-advised and needed reconsideration and amendment.

The evening's most useful development was Bill Dyson's appointment of Representative Shawn Johnston to meet with the affected parties and work out an alternative approach to cultural funding that might be considered by the committee. Shawn is the co-chair of the Elementary and Secondary Education Sub-committee of Approps through which cultural funding flows, and is very familiar with our issues and was, in fact, a major advocate for our $5 million Heritage Enhancement bill two sessions ago.

This is a VERY positive step, and one won in no small measure because of the many letters, e-mails and calls you folks have made in the last few days to your legislators. There is a definite awareness up there at this point that there is a groundswell of opposition to the Governor's proposal from the heritage community that has to be taken seriously.

While these discussions with Representative Johnston play out, we very much need to keep up the pressure. If you haven't written or, far better, personally contacted your representative to press our case, PLEASE DO SO NOW. If you have, encourage others of your acquaintance concerned with heritage to do so as well, and, especially, to cc their correspondence to
legislative leadership. (Hints on lobbying tactics, legislative contact lists, copies of our hearing testimony, economic impact information and other materials potentially useful in making our case are immediately accessible on this site.)

We'll keep you posted as all this progresses. We're still a long, long way from home on all this, but things are not looking quite as bleak as they were a week ago. As always, if you have any questions give me a buzz.

Bruce Fraser
Executive Director
Connecticut Humanities Council
(860) 685-3422