Temp: 31 °F
Sunday, April 8, 2001
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By ROBERT BAXTER
and ALAN GUENTHER
Courier-Post Staff
As the house lights dim at the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, Scott Alan Reynolds is living his dream.
In the audience sits Reynolds' mother and his high school English teacher, waiting for him to bound on stage to perform the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Reynolds waits for his first entrance "very scared and excited" - Joseph is his first stage show in five years. A deep breath and he's singing "Any Dream Will Do."
The Ritz Theatre is a house of dreams - for actors like Reynolds, for thousands of South Jersey theater fans, and for Producing Artistic Director Bruce Curless.
But last July, Curless watched his dream turn into a financial nightmare after the New Jersey State Council on the Arts refused to fund the Ritz. The taxpayer-funded council poured millions of dollars into North Jersey arts groups this year, while the Ritz and 10 other South Jersey cultural organizations received nothing, the Courier-Post found during a two-month investigation of funding inequities.
Although by law South Jersey must receive 25 percent of the arts council's funding, the region received only 21.1 percent this year, or $3.97 million. Over the past four years, $2.1 million in council funding has been diverted to North Jersey groups and statewide projects, the newspaper found.
"Everybody knows we are shortchanged. Everybody knows it," says Sandra Haughton, artistic director of the South Jersey Performing Arts Center, one of the groups denied funding. " There is a perception South Jersey is a vast wasteland where they grow cranberries."
Council officials and some South Jersey arts leaders deny there is a problem and say the council has provided adequate funding for arts groups in the eight counties of southern New Jersey.
"I can't say enough good things about the arts council and the way they have helped arts groups in the region," says Mark Packer, executive director of Appel Farm Arts and Music Center in Elmer, Salem County.
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The arts council also wins high marks from the National Endowment for the Arts. In a recent review, the arts council ranked "among the very highest in the country," says Ed Dickey, director of the endowment's state programs.
But the council's own records show that many South Jersey arts groups, especially those in Camden County, have been ignored or underfunded for decades. Three South Jersey lawmakers are vowing to take up the issue before the state budget is approved in June. The funding imbalance was supposed to have been fixed by legislation in 1998, but inequities remain between North and South Jersey. Among them:
•The arts council is spending $5.52 for every person in Mercer, Middlesex and Essex counties this year. It is spending only $1.07 per person in Camden, Burlington and Gloucester counties. Statewide, the arts council spends an average of $2.24 per person.
•For the past two years, the council has chipped away at South Jersey's money by giving $496,824 to North Jersey groups to perform in this region. Money has been taken from South Jersey to help pay salaries, health benefits and and transportation costs for the northern groups who perform here. When South Jersey groups perform in the north, they receive no compensation.
•In 1998 the council discontinued a special project that had provided millions to boost fledgling South Jersey arts groups.
•This year, the council cut funding to Camden County by $116,000, a 16.2 percent drop.
•Adding to the problem, corporations and foundations shun South Jersey's arts groups, giving more than 90 percent of their grants to groups in the north.
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•While lavishing millions on the world-class New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, the arts council terminated funding for the next three years to the South Jersey Performing Arts Center on Camden's Waterfront.
Funding for the arts community is critical to South Jersey' s growth because the arts enhance the region's quality of life and are a tool for leaders trying to recruit companies to relocate here.
As Camden, Burlington and Gloucester counties have grown into a metropolitan region of more than 1 million people, arts groups - presenting theater, dance, music and fine art - are struggling to grow and become more professional.
Some South Jersey leaders say the arts council hasn't been supportive enough to the area's fledgling groups. Of the more than 300 arts groups in the eight southern counties, only 38 received grants directly from the arts council this year.
After starring in Joseph, Reynolds says he can't believe the arts council refuses to fund the Ritz Theatre, which gives him and hundreds of other South Jersey performers the chance to display their talent.
"The Ritz does such terrific work; it deserves help," says the 31-year-old teacher at Berlin Township's Eisenhower Middle School. Reynolds performs because he loves theater, he says. For the 20-performance run of Joseph, he earned $ 225.
The Ritz has 4,500 season subscribers and put on 226 performances last year, attracting 73,000 people, the largest audience in South Jersey.
Curless, the Ritz director, who had hoped to get $60,000 from the council, calls the rejection "devastating." Groups that can't win even a small part of the arts council's $20 million budget aren't taken seriously by corporations and foundations that support the arts, he says.
"Since the cutoff in funding, we are no longer a part of the arts community in New Jersey. We aren't a funded organization," Curless says.
The arts council also dashed the dreams of other Camden County arts leaders.
Courier-Post file photo
Monsignor Carl Marucci, who leads the Jubilate Deo Chorale & Orchestra with his brother Louis, conducts a rehearsal at Our Lady of Grace in Somerdale. The group was funded by the arts council in 2000 but lost support for 2001.
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Monsignor Louis Marucci of Jubilate Deo Chorale & Orchestra in Camden was funded in fiscal 2000. So were Edward Fiscella Jr. of the Mainstage Center for the Arts in Gloucester Township and Barbara Fenhagen of the South Jersey Performing Arts Center in Camden. All lost their council support for 2001.
Once turned down by the 16-member arts council, a group is disqualified from applying for general operating support for three years. But help may be on the way from South Jersey legislative leaders.
"If we are being shortchanged by manipulation of monies by the arts council, that is totally unacceptable, and in my view a violation of the law," says Assembly Speaker Jack Collins, R-Salem. "I will make every effort to cut the arts council budget and then directly dedicate money to South Jersey arts organizations."
Barbara Russo, the arts council's executive director, denies there is a problem. She says the council aims to support all qualified South Jersey arts groups. Russo calls South Jersey "vital to the character of the arts in New Jersey."
There has been a political tug of war between north and south since the arts council was formed in 1966 to decide which arts groups in New Jersey deserve funding from the state Legislature. Members are appointed by the governor, and they are asked to serve the entire state.
The Legislature gives the arts council an annual budget of about $20 million and the council allocates the money to groups that apply and meet its standards.
In 1987, responding to complaints then that South Jersey was getting shortchanged, the arts council launched the Southern New Jersey Arts Initiative. That program, funded in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, provided $2.88 million over 10 years. The grants enabled groups like Appel Farm in Elmer, Wheaton Village in Millville, Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown, Stedman Gallery in Camden, and the Haddonfield Symphony to develop programs and hire professional staff.
The program ended in 1998 after the NEA grants ran out and at the same time South Jersey legislators tried to boost the region's share of the arts council's overall budget.
Before 1998, the southern eight counties routinely received only 13 to 16 percent of the council's funds, including the arts initiative money. That changed when the Legislature tied funding to population in 1998. Since South Jersey has 27 percent of the state's people, the new law said "25 percent (of the council's grants) shall be awarded to cultural projects within the eight southernmost counties."
The arts council's contributions to cultural organizations, including those in South Jersey, have nearly doubled since 1997, rising from $9.9 million to $18.3 million in 2000.
Although South Jersey's allocation has risen from $1.6 million to $3.9 million during that period, the region's arts groups have never received their full 25 percent share, the Courier-Post's review found.
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They received 23.8 percent in 1998; 22.3 percent in 1999; 21.2 percent in 2000, and 21.1 percent in 2001. That four- year funding shortfall has cost the region $2.1 million.
Part of that money now goes to services South Jersey had been receiving for free. For example, the south is being charged $154,000 to help support New Jersey Network's State of the Arts television show, but there is little evidence that one-fourth of the programming features South Jersey artists.
Some of the lost money also is being given to groups in North Jersey to perform in the south. Last year, the council awarded $206,824 to groups in North Jersey to present programs here that local artists say they would rather do themselves.
By paying northern groups to hold programs in the south, the council is obeying the 25 percent law, says Russo. The law requires that money be spent on "cultural projects" in the south - it doesn't specify that it be given to southern arts groups.
But Assemblyman Joseph Roberts, D-Camden, who co-wrote the law, says he intended that the money be given to South Jersey groups, and he accuses the council of doing an "end run" around the Legislature.
"The thing that I am deeply troubled by is the notion that we in South Jersey are so uncivilized and so deprived ... we have to be graced by missionaries from North Jersey who come in and provide us with artistic stimulation," says Roberts.
The Legislature provided the council with a $20 million budget for 2001, about the same amount it received in 1989 just before the state's financial crisis forced then-Gov. Jim Florio to cut the council's budget in half. It has taken the council 10 years to recover from Florio's cut. The Legislature also sometimes makes direct appropriations to individual arts groups without the council's approval.
Russo, the arts council's executive director, says her council members try to treat all regions of the state equally.
"There's not any intention to spend less than the 25 percent (for South Jersey)," she says. "The council honors the budget law."
Russo says it doesn't matter whether North Jersey groups are being paid to perform in the south. The key point, she says, is that South Jersey residents are benefiting from the best arts programming the state has to offer.
State Sen. John Matheussen, R-Gloucester, intends to settle the dispute. He plans to summon Russo to explain herself during hearings of the Legislative Oversight Committee, which he chairs. The committee determines whether the law is being followed. He says he fears it is not.
"There is a cultural bias," he says, toward the larger, northern-based groups, "and it is wrong."
Consider the funding gap between Essex and Camden counties, for example. While funding for Essex County-based arts groups rose by more than $620,000 to $6,395,368 this year, support for Camden County organizations dipped from $ 714,883 to $598,770. That loss of grants has devastated some of Camden County's leading arts groups.
Monsignor Marucci, who is confined to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis, has built Jubilate Deo into a successful musical ensemble.
"The New Jersey State Council on the Arts paralyzes me more than this wheelchair does," says Marucci, director of development for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden.
Jubilate Deo's 80 professional instrumentalists come from South Jersey and Philadelphia, and the 70-voice volunteer choir from the Jersey Shore to Burlington County. The musicians repeatedly sell out the 2,400-seat Washington Township Center for the Arts and have performed for sold- out audiences at New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
"The music is so beautiful. The voices are magnificent. The orchestra is very professional. It's just a beautiful performance," says loyal fan Alice Peterson, 78, of Glassboro.
But the audience acclaim has not translated into arts council funding. Marucci requested $110,000 for general operating support and educational programs at 45 South Jersey schools. After receiving $10,000 last year, Jubilate Deo was crossed off the council's grants list for fiscal 2001.
So was Mainstage Center for the Arts. In 2000, Mainstage nabbed a $4,700 special project support grant from the arts council. Mainstage's extensive educational program and musical performances reached 59,616 South Jerseyans in several Camden County venues last year.
In the audience was Tony Simone, the manager of a pest- control company and a Democratic councilman in Magnolia. Simone's three children - daughters Dana, 19, and Jenna, 16, and son, Nicholas, 12 - have appeared in many Mainstage productions.
"The kids work their hearts out at the shows," he says. " To be in the arts, you've got to have discipline."
Simone can't understand why the council refuses to fund Mainstage.
"Tell the council to open their eyes. They need to go. If they think it's because there's no talent or no good shows, then either they're just arts dumb or they're looking for a poor excuse not to put the money there."
Mainstage audiences have seen former Miss America Kate Shindle hone her skills in productions. Christian rocker Christy Conway, who has sold 250,000 albums, says, " Everything I've ever learned, I learned from Ed Fiscella and the Mainstage."
This year, Fiscella, Mainstage's executive director, asked the council for $86,000. He didn't get a penny.
On behalf of the South Jersey Performing Arts Center, Executive Director Barbara Fenhagen last year asked the arts council to help underwrite its first full season since opening in 1996. The council rejected the application and also nixed proposals from the Westmont Theatre Company in Haddon Township, the Garden State Philharmonic in Toms River, Ocean County, and Foundation Theatre at Burlington County College in Pemberton Township.
"When I see what the larger North Jersey organizations are getting, it's right there in black and white," notes Ruth Bogutz, executive director of the Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission.
The loss of funding creates problems for arts groups in South Jersey. A $25,000 or $50,000 grant makes a big difference to Mainstage, which has a projected budget of $ 433,700 this year, or the Ritz, which has a budget of $950, 000 this year.
Arts council officials don't argue that the Ritz has value to the community. But in written evaluations, the council decided the Ritz and 10 other South Jersey groups weren't good enough to get grants.
The council hires professionals - artists and administrators - to evaluate each arts group that applies for funding. But local leaders complain that council members never take the time to attend South Jersey performances and see the quality of work for themselves.
"I think an arts organization should be supported on the basis of artistic excellence, which is the standard we have always maintained," says arts council Chairman Leonard Fisher of West Orange, Essex County.
JOSE F. MORENO/Courier-Post
Lindsay Wolf, of Moorestown, applies makeup for a rehearsal of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' now playing at the Ritz Theatre, Oaklyn. After giving the Ritz $35,000 for three consecutive years, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts rejected the Ritz' s grant proposal for the 2001 fiscal year and then turned down the group's appeal.
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Fisher opposes reserving 25 percent of the council's money for South Jersey. "I've never been in favor of quotas in anything. We've always supported South Jersey, and I think it should continue to be supported without any kind of artificial quotas or goals."
Alan Willoughby, executive director of Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown, says the state council has been generous with South Jersey arts groups. "Good work gets funded," says Willoughby, who also is president of the South Jersey Cultural Alliance, a coalition of more than 150 arts groups.
This year, for example, Perkins received $180,000 from the council; the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts got $145, 350; the Haddonfield Symphony, $205,415; and the Glassboro Center for the Arts, $228,200.
South Jersey's funding future is uncertain. Collins will step down as Assembly speaker next year. His replacement is likely to be Assemblyman Paul DiGaetano, a Republican from North Jersey. It is unclear whether DiGaetano, from Bergen County, will look out for South Jersey's interests if the Republicans retain control of the Assembly.
Even one of South Jersey's newest council members, Frank Mazzeo of Winslow, Camden County, says he doesn't see a funding problem. Asked if reform is needed to help arts groups in his home county, he says, "I would say, absolutely not. This council, these people, their goal is for quality. They're very concerned for that."
But Mazzeo, a music teacher at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, says he has never seen a show at the Ritz, one of the groups denied funding in his home county. Russo, who was sworn in as executive director of the arts council 10 years ago on the stage of the Ritz Theatre, has never returned to see a show. Fisher, chairman of the council, hasn't been to the Ritz either.
"When we were rejected, we never had anyone (on the arts council) that came in and spent time with us," says Curless, the Ritz's director.
Fiscella of the Mainstage says no arts council member has bothered to see one of his shows. And Monsignor Marucci of Jubilate Deo says he has been visited only once in 10 years.
Curless says he would like council members to make an effort to find out more about community-based arts groups like the Ritz, "to learn about us, to see what we do."
"You know what I'd like to tell the arts council?" he says. "Talk to people. Talk to subscribers, the press, people who work with the organization."