Sustainable Funding for the Arts: What Can Atlanta Learn from the Detroit Experience?

In 2003 Atlantans began a conversation about sustainable funding for the arts, and whether there should be some kind of earmarked tax revenues for the arts in the Metro area. A Research Atlanta study looked at some of the options, the experience of other US cities, and the tough questions advocates of sustainable funding would need to address to secure broad public support for such a measure.The 2003 study noted that in November 2002, voters in Metropolitan Detroit rejected, in a close vote, a proposed increase in property taxes that would have been directed to the arts and other cultural institutions. In this paper we ask what Atlanta can learn from the Detroit vote. In particular, we will use the precinct-level results of the Detroit referendum, matched with Census Tract data, to get some of idea of which voters supported the arts funding and which did not. To our knowledge this is the first detailed empirical examination of voting for arts funding in the US. We will then consider how Atlanta is like, and unlike, Detroit, and what conclusions we might draw from the Detroit experience

Government Contracting with Faith-Based Providers: An Economic Perspective

This article analyses the policy debate surrounding the possible expansion of government contracting with faith-based providers of social services, from the perspective of recent developments in the economics of contracts. It presents a non-technical introduction to the economic tools used in the study of contracts, in particular the decision faced by governments of whether to provide services in-house or to contract out to a private nonprofit organization. In particular the paper looks at the problems of monitoring the quality of service provision and ensuring fairness in the procurement process. When the analysis is applied to the question of faith-based provision, the conclusion is that monitoring the terms of the contract is less of an issue than the debates that will arise over the distribution of contracts across different faith-based organizations. Working Paper 06-2

Understanding State Government Appropriations For the Arts: 1976-1999

Using panel data analysis, we examine the relative importance of citizen and government characteristics on a highly discretionary and volatile budget item: state appropriations to arts agencies. Despite the unimportance of arts spending to most citizens, changes in arts spending appear to reflect citizen desires. Spending rises with per capita income, state revenues, and citizen political and social liberalism, but characteristics of state legislatures do not significantly affect spending.Department of Economics and W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations Working Paper 07-0

Sustainable Funding for the Arts: Earmarked Taxes and Options for Metropolitan Atlanta

On June 13, 2002 the first meeting was held of the Regional Arts Task Force, assembled by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Meetings of the Task Force through 2002 were open to the public, and a number of special "listening sessions" were held in various locations in the Metro area. The mission of the Task Force is: "To make the Atlanta region a premier center for the arts, and for it to be recognized as such." The Task Force members unanimously selected an Arts and Culture Vision Statement: "Arts and Culture will be recognized as defining elements of the quality of life in the Atlanta region."From its very first meeting the Task Force gave a grade of "C" to Atlanta as an arts center, and claimed that Atlanta is not achieving its full potential. Three "root causes" of the problem were selected as the highest priorities of the Task Force:* A regional vision and strategy for the arts;* A coordinated regional arts leadership; and* A sustained regional funding mechanism.Through the Task Force's deliberations, the questions arose as to whether much could be achieved without stable funding.This Research Atlanta study, sponsored by SunTrust, considers a type of sustained funding mechanism that has been tried in other US cities and metro areas, an earmarked revenue source for the arts. It does not address the questions of a regional vision and strategy, or a coordinated regional arts leadership, although the question of vision, and an articulation of the public interest in the support of the arts, are a critical part of any discussion of funding sources

Social Context and Voting over Taxes: Evidence from a Referendum in Alabama

We investigate the impact of racial diversity and segregation on white voter support for a comprehensive, progressive tax reform. We focus on a 2003 referendum held in Alabama, which if approved would have raised substantial additional revenues for public education and at the same time greatly increased the progressivity of the tax system. We use King's (1997) method of ecological inference to obtain estimates of white and black support for the referendum proposal, and we then attempt to explain the variance across counties in white voter support. We find that the degree of racial segregation, rather than the proportion of blacks in a given county, is most critical in predicting support for the referendum among whites at the county level. Working Paper 06-0