Background: The SC House adopted their budget in March and included the following increases for the arts:
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+ $2 million (recurring) for grants
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$3 million (one-time) for grants
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$500,000 (one-time) for rural pilot programs.
What’s New: Last week, the Senate Finance Committee adopted their version of the budget that does include increases in statewide arts funding, but not at the level the House recommended. In the Senate Finance version:
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+ $1 million (recurring) for grants
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$500k (one-time) for rural pilots
Go deeper: The primary reason for this is the fact the State House will approve an income tax deduction this year. That will eat up a fair amount of the recurring revenue that’s out there. The Senate version of this tax cut is larger than the House version, so the Senate had a smaller pot to work with.
By the numbers: This is not to knock the increase from the Senate.
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An increase of $1 million in recurring funds is still one of the largest single-year increases we’ve seen over the years.
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It raises per capita grant funding for the arts in SC from $0.97 to somewhere near the $1.20 mark.
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But: The House version would have raised that to almost $1.50.
What’s Next:
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The full SC Senate should debate the budget the last week of April.
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If the Senate Finance version stays in place in the Senate floor debate (likely), then the budget heads over to the House one more time where they will have one more chance to tweak their budget in response to the Senate – dubbed “H2”.
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If H2 keeps the House version of arts funding, then we will have two versions of arts funding – House (+$3.5m total) and Senate (+$1.5m total).
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Budget then heads to a Conference Committee (3 House, 3 Senators) to work out differences. They will have the option to choose between either arts funding scenario, or sometimes split down the middle.
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Conference Committee Report is then adopted by both House and Senate, then sent to the Governor.
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Governor issues vetoes, and then the House and Senate have to vote on those vetoes.
