Legislative Updates

Reprinted from:
Montana Arts Council
State of the Arts Newspaper
May/June and July/August 2007 issues
By Arlynn Fishbaugh, Executive Director

The Montana Legislature concluded its work on the arts council's FY 2008-2009 budget by accepting Gov. Schweitzer's recommendations for funding, as well as approving the Cultural Trust grants and their funding as proposed by the governor.

In the last issue of this paper, I reported that Sen. Carol Williams had amended an additional $80,000 per year in arts education funding to the budget. But when the Legislature convened for the special session, they did not use the Senate version of the budget. Instead, they started all over again with the original budget proposed by the governor and worked from there.

The additional moneys amended in by Sen. Williams for arts education did not make it into this final budget. The increase below was included in the governor's budget.
New proposals funded by state general fund:
Arts Education Grants (increase in ongoing funds) – $10,000 (2008), $12,500 (2009)

Cultural Trust
In the last issue of this paper, the Cultural Trust grant bill, HB9, had been increased by $2 million through an amendment made by Rep. John Sesso of Butte. That increase was removed in the Senate. The final bill still contains the additional $1.5 million the governor originally included in one-time-only funding.

That $1.5 million was configured when projecting the interest earnings that will fund the 2008-2009 Cultural Trust grants. The corpus of the Trust is currently $8.5 million, so with the $1.5 million increase, the corpus will increase to $10 million.

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