www.artsy.net: As a nation-wide debate continues following the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, a separate fight over arts funding played out in the city of Portland, Oregon, this week. The city’s controversial “arts tax” survived a potentially fatal legal challenge—but that is unlikely to quell criticism of the measure, with even proponents advocating that the levy needs to change.
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This article brings up an important conundrum in spending more tax dollars on arts education. To me, arts education, especially in public schools that are already under-funded, is important. Arts help students understand teamwork, confidence, creativity, and an arts education will seep into other parts of the classroom as well. However, when it is costing a city like Portland more to keep up the tax than is actually helping arts programs in schools, and when it is hindering low-income families, which way do we go on this tax versus no tax debate? We must discuss whether the arts or funding for the wider city government is more beneficial for the community. This is a discussion that I am glad is happening locally in some areas, but is also one that I think could benefit our national community as well.
To me, this article is evocative of my brother's raise in tuition a few years ago. He was a student at East Tennessee State University, and in his last year there, his tuition went up by $200 in order to raise money for a new football stadium to be built. This increase affected everyone at the school, those who were paying full tuition and those who were paying none alike. It seemed to be to be an unfair blanket rule to apply to everyone at the school. Sure the new stadium could benefit the university overall, but there was no guarantee that it would benefit every student individually who was being required to pay for it. It was strange that they decided to raise the money necessary by raising tuition in the first place. Shouldn't projects like this be started when there is sufficient funds or when a donor is involved? Bringing it back to Portland, it seems to me to be an unusual way to instate this tax. It would be more understandable if, like most other taxes it was scaled for different incomes and was collected with other taxes. I am all for arts education and firmly believe that we as a nation need to devote more funds towards it, but it needs to be done in the right way. It is a thin line that any government plays when imposing anything on its citizens, and when they take its citizens money with little regard to the citizens' individual circumstances, it is time to reconsider the process being used.
At first glance, I was very confused as to why there was controversy over such a simple task, but it makes sense. I think there is something good to be said about taking a tax that goes towards funding an arts education, as an arts education is statistically proven to be incredibly important to the success of children. I also think there is something to be said about taking potential income from people who might still need it to provide for themselves and their families (even if they are over the $11,880 annual earnings mark) and applying a “one size fits all tax” that raises the cost of living in the Portland area. Personally I am very glad to see that this is happening for the time being, at least to secure the arts education of the children in the Portland area right now.
A lot of the complaints regarding the tax seem reasonable to me. I honestly don’t know enough about how municipal taxes work to have an opinion on the specifics on this tax, though I agree with the goal. It seems like the simplest solution would be to slightly increase the taxes for education as a whole and then allocate the increase to the arts, but my guess is that would be a very fragile change since the budget could be re-done to move the funding away from the arts fairly easily. This tax probably makes it difficult for someone to move that funding away from the arts. However, I do think it probably would be better if the tax scaled with income in addition to the exemption, rather than being a flat tax with an exemption. As for the cost associated with enforcing the tax, I suppose that really comes down to figuring out the diminishing returns on each dollar spent to collect and decide at what point it isn’t worth it.
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