1992 Budget Hikes Arts Funds 7.2% : Culture: The President requests $1.077 billion for seven agencies but proposes nothing extra for the National Endowment for the Arts.

President Bush has proposed an unexpectedly generous $1.077 billion in spending by the federal government’s seven cultural agencies--but the plan gives the cold shoulder to the National Endowment for the Arts--amid reports of strained relations between the White House and top NEA officials.

Overall, Bush’s fiscal 1992 arts budget seeks a 7.2% increase in cultural agency appropriations--up from last year’s $1.004 billion. That is small potatoes in the context of the $1.45-trillion total of the President’s overall spending plan, but arts community leaders quickly emphasized the symbolic importance of what would otherwise be nearly inconsequential sums.

And just as quickly, NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer dismissed reports of tension between him and top Bush Administration officials.

The biggest budget winners appeared to be the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art. The Smithsonian got a 14.8% increase to $357.1 million for fiscal 1992--retaining its position as the largest single arts and culture outlay.

The National Gallery, following a 15% hike in spending last year, is ticketed for still another $15.5% increase--to $57.5 million. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s spending rises 2.8% under the Bush plan--which must be approved by Congress--to $260 million. The Kennedy Center, struggling with a series of building maintenance problems, is to get a 14.4% hike to $22.94 million next year.

But while arts leaders welcomed the overall figures, the attention of most observers appeared to have been attracted to three agencies that share the same enabling legislation and are seen as barometers of political turmoil for the arts over the last two years.

The trio includes the NEA, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum Services. The tiny IMS, which supports a variety of generally low-profile museum programs across the country, would get a 4% hike under the Bush plan to $26.9 million, and the NEH would increase 5% to $178.2 million.

But the Bush plan leaves the arts endowment--alone among the seven agencies--at nearly precisely the same dollar figure it received for 1991: $174.1 million. Arts community leaders and political observers in Washington and across the country said the NEA’s omission from any money gain appeared to signal ongoing--perhaps renewed--tension between the White House and Frohnmayer.

At the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Steve Hart said that the culture agency budget request does not slight the arts endowment. “We’re in a period of budgetary constraint right now,” Hart said. “Choices had to be made about what to do with what little is available. We trust and believe that Mr. Frohnmayer and the NEA will be able to keep doing the great job they are doing.”

Late Tuesday morning, Frohnmayer characterized as “not true” any report of tension between himself and senior White House aides. He declined to speculate on reasons behind the failure of the NEA to win any increase in its White House budget proposal for next year. “I don’t put together the budget,” he said. “You ought to call the OMB”--the White House Office of Management and Budget, which develops the annual spending plan.

“There is a clear message that the Administration is not going to give any additional support to the (arts endowment) because they feel there has been public criticism of the program,” charged James Fitzpatrick, a Washington arts law expert. “A string was put around the arts endowment by the senior policy people at the White House.”

Milton Rhodes, director of the New York-based American Council on the Arts, contended that the flat budget--a development, he said, that most arts leaders interpret as a knowing political and fiscal slap at the NEA--was made possible by a failure by Frohnmayer and arts leaders to identify and successfully pursue new initiatives in the arts. “We (in the arts) continue to shoot ourselves in the foot,” Rhodes contended.

Arts community observers said the budget situation was especially troubling because Congress last year increased, to 35% from 20%, the proportion of the NEA budget allocated to state arts agencies. The action has already forced the NEA to cut many of its grant-making programs this year. State governments have simultaneously lopped $30 million off total 1990 state government support for the arts.

Anne Murphy, executive director of the Washington-based American Arts Alliance, tried for the high road--insisting that the political demands of the moment require overlooking, for now, any difference in fiscal approach to the NEA and the six other cultural agencies. “Comparisons are odious and best not made,” Murphy said. “I think we should talk about the role of the arts and humanities in the budget at large. That has been sadly neglected.”

Frohnmayer and White House officials, including Chief of Staff John Sununu, clashed last year over Frohnmayer’s inability to gain the upper hand in a political crisis with Congress that began in early 1989, months before Frohnmayer was even named to his post.

Some of the difficulty also seems related to the fact that the chairman of the humanities endowment, Lynne V. Cheney, is married to Defense Secretary and former congressman Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney, with his top role in prosecuting the Persian Gulf War, has enhanced his stature with Bush since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last August. The recently departed director of the IMS, Daphne Wood Murray, was a longtime close friend of the President and First Lady Barbara Bush.

By contrast, Frohnmayer--a Washington outsider and former Portland, Ore., trial lawyer--has no inside track to Bush. The turmoil was punctuated both by congressmen assailing the content of grants the NEA actually did make and artists and arts groups attacking Frohnmayer for a series of grant rejections. In other cases, the NEA has lost lawsuits brought by arts groups over Frohnmayer’s insistence that grantees sign a written pledge not to produce obscene work.

The Bush budget plan emerges, according to knowledgeable NEA and other sources, days after a meeting at the White House to which Frohnmayer was reportedly summoned by Chase Untermeyer, the White House personnel director. The two discussed White House and NEA plans for filling three top posts at the arts agency.

The trio reportedly includes Anne Radice, currently chief of the creative arts division of the U.S. Information Agency and a prominent presidential appointee with ties to Bush. Also included in the discussions was Margaret Wyszomirski, former staff director of a special commission that studied the NEA last year. The third prospective appointee--reportedly a well connected Bush fund-raiser--could not be identified.

Two months ago, Frohnmayer reportedly offered a position as his senior deputy chairman to Robert Lynch, director of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, but was unable to obtain White House approval to hire Lynch, who is a registered Democrat. Frohnmayer’s contact with Lynch was confirmed by Lynch on Tuesday.

Frohnmayer confirmed that he attended the meeting with Untermeyer but said its purpose had simply been “to get some personnel things taken care of.” He completely dismissed the report of White House rejection of Lynch and said he had been responsible for selecting Radice and Wyszomirski. “We have worked out something which, hopefully, we’ll be able to announce in the not too distant future,” Frohnmayer said.

Hart disavowed any White House intention to interfere in NEA personnel actions. “I’m not aware of any kind of pressure that’s been put on people from here,” he said. “We have discussions that are a routine matter of business with heads of agencies concerning respective candidates. That’s a normal, routine, unremarkable relationship.”

“I think it is atrocious for a chairman (of the NEA) to have to live without the benefit of choosing his own staff,” said the American Council on the Arts’ Rhodes. He accused Bush aides of requiring greater adherence at the NEA to White House requirements for employment of people with Bush ties than other cultural agencies. “Under this chairman, the patronage system has gone down further and further into the endowment than has ever happened before.”

ARTS AGENCIES’ PROPOSED BUDGETS Comparing 1991 Budgets to the Proposed 1992 Budgets

AGENCY 1991 1992 % INCREASE 1. Smithsonian Institution $311.2 $357.1 14.7% 2. Corp. for Public Broadcasting* $253.3 $260.0 2.6% 3. National Endowment for the Arts $174.1 $174.1 0 4. National Endowment for the Humanities $170.0 $178.2 4.8% 5. Institute of Museum Services $25.9 $26.9 3.9% 6. Kennedy Center $20.0 $22.9 14.5% 7. National Gallery of Art $49.8 $57.5 15.5% TOTAL $1.004 $1.077 7.3% billion billion

Note: Budget figures in millions, fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

* The figures for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting refer to ’92 and ’93. The ’92 appropriation also included a separate sum of $65.3 million to complete a three-year program of communications satellite replacement. The CPB figures in the chart represent the comparable operating budgets for the two years, with last year’s satellite funds removed.

SOURCE: White House 1992 Budget Proposal