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With less than a week until the scheduled end of the legislative session, the only arts caucus bill that could directly fund Eugene-area arts organizations is likely to die.
The Oregon Legislature’s Arts Caucus debuted a suite of bills to address an uneasy moment for cash-strapped arts organizations in January.
Two months later, the only bill that could directly fund Eugene-Springfield area arts organizations sat in limbo.
That’s where it remains, as the legislative session ticks toward its June 29 scheduled ending.
Of the five bills pushed by the arts caucus this session, one passed outright. Another was adapted into a “Christmas tree” omnibus bill, dispersing funding across agencies as the session’s ending approaches. Another, targeting ticket scalpers, is awaiting signature from Gov. Tina Kotek.
But the other two, including one that would have appropriated millions of funds to support arts throughout Oregon, have been sitting in committees for months with no movement. While other funding for Portland-area arts organizations made the cut, HB 3189 was Eugene-Springfield’s only chance to receive funding from the caucus bills.
That legislative stalling, an unfortunately expected part of statehouse sessions, comes at a time when arts organizations across the state and county face a new era of austerity amid federal funding cuts.
The dire mood is reflected in HB3189, which would have formally declared an emergency for arts funding in Oregon. As the Legislature looks to push through high-priority bills, the ongoing emergency — felt deeply by the arts organizations who rely in part on state funding for operating costs — will go undeclared.
“It’s a struggle, because there’s just a lot of need in this state,” said Rep. Rob Nosse, the head of the arts caucus and the chief sponsor of its suite of bills. “We have housing challenges and addiction challenges and school challenges, and our state burns down.”
What would the bills have done?
The bills tackled a range of arts issues, from funding to ticket scalpers.
| Bills | What would the bill have done? | Fate |
| HB 3048 | Abolish the Oregon Arts Commission and the Trust for Cultural Development Board in 2027, part of a larger reorganization in state arts funding. | Sitting in Ways and Means Committee since March. |
| HB 3167 | Prohibit selling/using software to circumvent measures on ticket sales that benefit “scalpers,” who buy tickets en masse to resell at higher prices. | Amended from a more robust version of the bill. Awaiting signature from the governor. |
| HB 3189 | Declare an emergency in arts funding. Raise the Oregon Arts Commission’s annual funding from $4 million to $10 million to disperse to arts organizations throughout the state. Carve out an additional $5.5 million for grants to specific arts organizations: the Portland-based Oregon Ballet Theatre, Oregon Symphony, Portland Art Museum, Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera and Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival. | Sitting in Ways and Means Committee since March. Parts of the carveouts were included in an omnibus bill. |
| HB 3190 | Limit the property tax special assessment program for historic property to commercial property. | Signed into law. |
| HB 3191 | Appropriate $8.875 million in funds to support capital construction projects for arts organizations throughout Oregon, including for Astoria’s Columbia River Maritime Museum, Salem’s Elsinore Theatre and Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Create a competitive $50,000 grant for an arts nonprofit working throughout Oregon. | A stripped-down version passed in an omnibus bill, appropriating $8.3 million. |
Parts of HB 3191 and HB 3189 made it through in HB 5006, an omnibus “Christmas Tree” bill cramming bits of different legislation into one end-of-session package.
The majority of HB 3191’s capital construction funding passed. The planned $50,000 grant, however, did not survive.
HB 3189’s $2.5 million for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was included, as was funding for Portland Center Stage, in the omnibus bill. Center Stage’s planned appropriations tripled, from less than half a million dollars to $1.5 million.
But the bulk of HB 3189 — both the single largest line item in the arts caucus’ bills and the only one that could have directly supported arts organizations in Lane County — almost certainly won’t survive the legislative session.
What happened to HB 3189?
In addition to declaring the emergency for arts funding, HB 3189 would have increased the Oregon Arts Commission’s budget from $4 million to $10 million and given the agency more money to disperse throughout the state, while also giving out $5.5 million to what Nosse called the state’s “anchor arts organizations.”
Instead, HB 3189 has sat in the legislature’s Ways and Means Committee since March 12. HB 3189 is not formally dead, but its final hours in this legislative session are approaching. (Nosse said he and the caucus are committed to bringing the bills back in a future session.)
He attributed the change in winds to larger national uncertainty on tariffs and the economy, and said that estimates about the amount of money the caucus thought would be available for arts funding in February had dropped by March.
At that point, emergency management became more like triage, picking pieces of the bills to push through in the omnibus bill.
Nosse, a Democrat who represents parts of Portland, said that the appropriations for the Shakespeare Festival and Center Stage survived because the two organizations had the most dire need.
They are also one-time grants, not a standing change to an annual budget like the arts commission funding would be.
The commission is funded by contributions from the state, the Oregon Cultural Trust and, according to the commission chair in a report from The Oregonian/OregonLive, around $1 million annually from the National Endowment for the Arts. It will continue to award grants to individual artists and organizations on an application basis.
But uncertainty around NEA contributions, as well as the number of organizations receiving operating support from the commission growing by 200 over the past 10 years, according to the arts lobbyist Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon, means the increased state funding would have been a vital boon.
“In a tough economy with a flat, recessionary budget, it just didn’t make it,” Nosse said.
Eugene-area arts advocates push for commission funding
But it’s standing changes that the local arts advocates who testified in support of HB 3189 see as necessary, holding out hope for some Oregon Arts Commission funding.
Kelly Johnson, the executive director for the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene, pointed to the commission as “the most equitable and efficient way to invest in arts and culture across every corner” of the state.
“Oregon has an opportunity right now to step up for the arts in a meaningful way,” Kelly Johnson, the executive director for the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene, wrote in an email. “A $10 million increase to the Oregon Arts Commission would not only correct nearly two decades of stagnant investment, it would affirm that we see the arts as essential to who we are.”
Stacey Ray, the executive director of the Lane Arts Council, said Oregon — which hovers around 40th in the country for public arts funding — is long overdue for increased public arts investment.
“If you think about it over time, Oregon’s state arts funding has stayed flat at $4 million per biennium for the past 17 years, meaning that with inflation, the state has actually decreased its investment in the arts,” Ray wrote in an email.
Miranda Atkinson, who leads #instaballet, said that the next fiscal year is going to be an uncertain one for the organization, which has received funding from the Oregon Arts Commission for the last three years.
She said that not having clarity around key sources of revenue, like the state arts funding, can make it hard to calculate how much #instaballet can count on when it comes to operational funding and how much fundraising it needs to plan for.
“Because there’s so much arts activity in Portland, it can feel like we don’t always see funding in the same proportion in somewhere like Eugene,” Atkinson said. “But that Oregon Arts Commission funding is really, really helpful and essential.”
