from The Los Angeles Times:
While many Americans on Saturday were enjoying the start of the Memorial Day weekend, Kansans were gaining the dubious distinction of becoming the nation’s only citizens to live in a state without an arts agency.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback took the major step of privatizing the arts in Kansas, turning back the clock to a pre-1960s era. The governor erased state funding for arts programs, leaving the Kansas Arts Commission with no budget, no staff and no offices.
The commission was founded in 1966, a year after Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts.
Federal and state arts funding has been a prime Republican target since the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration began to advocate for privatizing public services. In addition to state arts agencies, those services include the NEA, Social Security, Medicare, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Environmental Protection Agency. Brownback used his power to veto just a handful of individual budget items in the $13.8-billion spending bill, according to the Associated Press.
Continue reading at The Los Angeles Times.