One hundred million dollars.
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That's how much money the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture hopes to generate from a new tax hike proposal quietly being prepared for voters.
One hundred million freakin' dollars, each year.
Are these people insane?
This state is in near-meltdown. Foreclosures are up. Employment is way, way down. We lost 10 percent of our population base — and the attendant sales tax revenue — seemingly overnight.
So Arizona's decision makers are closing state parks. They're contemplating shutting down the state's entire juvenile detention system. They're slashing funds for education, for the investigation of child abuse and neglect, for healthcare. They sold the State Capitol building. I repeat: They sold the State Capitol building.
And now some group of clueless corporate types wants to raise taxes to pay for more arts and culture?
These guys are so tone deaf, they're practically Marie Antoinette.
The people have no bread? Ha!
Let them subsidize the ballet.
When I first heard about the proposal that the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture, or MPAC, is preparing for the fall ballot, I thought it was a joke. You don't have to cover government for a living to be keenly aware of just how bad the state of this state is.
Bizarrely, though, this plan is for real.
Two years ago, when MPAC wanted to push for a tax increase to fund the arts, then-Governor Janet Napolitano told the group to wait. Now, even though the economy has grown worse than Napolitano ever imagined, MPAC's intent on going for it.
According to the group's own Web site, it's preparing an initiative for the statewide ballot in November. The group will be asking for a sales tax increase of one-tenth of a percent: one penny for every $10 spent.
That would generate $100 million a year — or, at least, it would have generated that much in 2007, the last year of data available when MPAC put together its pitch. (Frankly, with the way everyone is hoarding their pennies these days, I think they'd be lucky to get $80 million. But I'll defer to them on the numbers, if nothing else.)
Have no doubt about it: These guys are serious. MPAC's political arm hired the consulting firm FirstStrategic to pitch the initiative to voters. FirstStrategic is fronted by Wes Gullett, a political heavyweight who served as chief of staff for former Arizona Governor Fife Symington and deputy campaign manager for John McCain's truly maverick presidential run in 2000.
In August, FirstStrategic quietly picked up the domain for www.creativeeconomyaz.com. That Web site doesn't explicitly explain the details of the tax hike proposal — but it definitely lays the groundwork.
"Arts and culture in Arizona is at risk," a badly written section of the site explains. "The economic downturn and a lack of investment over the years threatens [sic] to severely reduce the capability of arts and culture organizations to provide the quality and quantity of programming currently available in our respective communities.
"Studies [sic] after study indicate that this lack of serious investment and a perceived lack of vibrancy in Arizona's creative cluster have obstructed our ability to attract and retain workers in the fields of medicine, technology, design and bioscience, among other high wage sectors."
And that excerpt, while tedious, is the key to understanding one big problem with MPAC's plan.
Yes, Arizona needs to take care of the fundamentals — education, the poor, the mentally ill — before it should even contemplate this kind of initiative. And, yes, pushing this onto the November ballot could well derail Governor Jan Brewer's long-thwarted plan for a tax increase that, unlike this one, would help to do just that.
But MPAC isn't just clueless economically. It's also clueless artistically.
That statement from the campaign's Web site says it all, really.
As MPAC freely admits, this plan is not being pushed by people who care about art for its own sake: the gallery owners who made First Fridays cool before anyone even thought to give Roosevelt Row a name, the artists who labor in studios on Grand Avenue or do experimental theater in Tempe.
This is being pushed by the sort of tools who think the arts are important because they serve as a catalyst for corporate recruitment.
These are the people who drank Richard Florida's Kool-Aid — the nonsense that says cities can become economic superstars if they emulate Portland, Oregon, and attract young hipsters. (Never mind Portland's record-high unemployment rate.)
Indeed, when I talked to Gullett about the MPAC plan on Monday, he didn't shrink from the practical aspects. He talked less about the importance of art to the community — and more about the importance of art-related jobs. "We're more dependent on construction than Michigan is dependent on cars," he tells me. "Every economic development person wants to diversify the economy. At some point, we need to bite the bullet and make a commitment to the new economy." In this economy, he says, the hot jobs aren't in real estate or development, but rather "innovation and creativity."
But is MPAC really the right group to make that happen?
