The budgetary smoke has cleared at last from the just-concluded legislative session, and while the results are in some cases mixed for the larger cultural/tourism community, heritage folks have an enormous amount to cheer about.

1) Humanities and Heritage:

The Connecticut Humanities Council's appropriation increased by $1.15 million to $2.15 million, thus realizing a 30 year goal of ours to achieve rough parity with state allocations to the arts. The Historic Preservation and Museums Division of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism,for its part, received a $1.75 million bond allocation to continue its multi-year effort to renovate and restore the four historic properties under its jurisdiction and another $450,000 to support building programs at the Prudence Crandall Museum.

2) Arts:

Appropriations to the Arts Division of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism increased by $150,000 to $2,4 million with an additional $500,000 added to the Arts Endowment, but CCT's overall administrative budget was pruned by $241,000.

3) Tourism:

In a major reversal for the cultural community, the Tourism Division's statewide marketing budget was cut by $400,000 and the five tourism districts lost a total of $306,000. This affects us all and badly. We hope to join the tourism advocates in the next session to move these numbers upward.

4) Appropriations to specific cultural organizations:

Funding for the fifteen "legislatively directed" appropriations in the CCT budget for specific cultural organizations were reduced by a total of $300,000, painful cuts for many of them, but a far cry from the $1.7 million in reductions originally proposed by the Governor. A look at both the "grants in aid" portion of the budget and the bond package indicates numerous other cultural and especially heritage organizations funded there as well. Links to those documents are below:

Budget implementer

Bond package

Cliff notes to bond package

5) Historic Preservation:

$300,000 of the Humanities Council's appropriation is to be allocated to the CHC's current collaborative granting and programming relationship with the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation (a $200,000 increase over current levels) in order to expand the Trust's granting and technical assistance programs. In a step backward for preservationists,however, legislation extending tax credits to provide incentives for investment in certified historic buildings was not passed.

One hugely important piece of legislation for the historic preservation community finally was signed by the Governor in mid July. SB 410, a landmark $24 million bill to support open space, anti sprawl measures and affordable housing also has a $6 million component for historic preservation, $200,000 of which is directed to the Connecticut Trust and the remainder to the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. SB 410 passed both the House and the Senate by considerable margins, but concerns recently raised by House Republicans that the measure skirts the state's budget cap called into question for some weeks whether Governor Rell will sign it into law. The Trust spearheaded a vigorous, and ultimately successful advocacy campaign to secure enactment. Approval of this legislation was the capstone to what has already been an extraordinarily successful session for the Heritage Coalition and the heritage community.

Much of this is rooted in the continuing advocacy efforts of the Coalition and, especially, by you folks at the grassroots level, but what is clearly evident here is a far greater appreciation of the importance of heritage and heritage organizations in the state's cultural life on the part of the new leadership in both houses of the legislature. Notes of appreciation to those folks would be both good manners and good politics. Names, addresses and an automatic e-mail addressing process are found on the Coalition's advocacy website - www.ctculture.org/chdf Thanks, too, should go out to Governor Rell, who agreed in the end to a cultural funding budget some $4 million over her original recommendations. As they say in politics, next year's reelection campaign starts the day after the votes are counted. Now that we have these increases, the task ahead is to hold onto them. No reason not to start now.

Bruce Fraser
Executive Director
Connecticut Humanities Council
955 South Main Street
Middletown, CT 06457
Phone: (860) 685-3422
Fax: (860) 704-0429
www.CtCulture.org, www.CtHeritage.org