Cultural Reorganization Proposal
"The Connecticut Cultural Affairs Council"
Connecticut Heritage Coalition

Highlights:

1) Coordination: The Heritage Coalition's plan proposes the establishment by statute of a new "Cultural Affair Council" comprised of the agency heads of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Department on Tourism of DECD, the Connecticut Historical Commission and the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. This entity would be charged with overseeing a coordinated, integrated system of cultural resource programs and projects and ensuring public and private sector support for the cultural institutions and activities of the State.
Comment: Modeled on the structure of the Maine State Cultural Affairs Council, this new entity creates a structure and formal process to link the activities of key cultural agencies in Connecticut that have traditionally operated in utter isolation from one another.

2) Accountability: The plan proposes that all agencies comprising the Cultural Affairs Council be funded through the state's General Fund and that a single legislative subcommittee, the Sub-Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education of the Appropriations Committee be the committee of cognizance for all cultural activities.
Comment: Oversight for these agencies is now spread across three separate legislative committees and revenue streams for these agencies now come from three separate sources (the General Fund, the Hotel and Lodging tax and the car rental tax). For several years now, key members of the Appropriations Committee have raised concerns about accountability for funds distributed though revenue intercepts. Moving all these programs into the General Fund and establishing one committee to oversee them resolves this long-standing problem.

3) Programmatic Integrity: The plan recognizes that the state's cultural life has two equal components - the arts and heritage and the humanities - and retains existing organizational structures and granting programs that have effectively supported both cultural communities in the past.

Comment: This philosophical and organizational distinction mirrors longstanding cultural arrangements at the Federal level, where cultural support flows through co-equal agencies - the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities rather than a single "Ministry of Culture."

4) Administrative Efficiency/Fiscal Accountability: The plan proposes an administrative consolidation of all the state's historic properties, now scattered across three separate agencies, under an expanded Connecticut Historical Commission.

Comment: This step will produce greater efficiencies of administration, a more professional management, heightened program effectiveness and impact and a more visible state commitment to the work of its own historic properties.

The plan proposes that the Connecticut State Library serve as the fiscal officer for all cultural agencies with the exception of the Department of Tourism, whose finances are more effectively administered through the existing mechanisms of the Department of Community and Economic Development.

Comment: The plan adds the Connecticut Historical Commission and the Connecticut Trust to a management structure established four years ago by the legislature to support the work of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Connecticut Humanities Council.

5) Private Sector Fundraising: The plan recognizes that generating matching support from the private sector is an essential obligation of all statewide cultural agencies. In creating a new foundation structure for the Commission on the Arts and incorporating the existing, ample fundraising programs of the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, the plan provides a heightened fund-raising capability to augment state allocations to our cultural life.
Comment: The capacity of the granting programs of the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Historical Commission and the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation to lever matching dollars from the private sector is well documented, as is the substantial economic impact of these projects at the community level. The Coalition's plan continues these successful programs and ensures a third component to this mix - a heightened capacity of these agencies to raise private sector money directly.