No group has claimed a larger share of state arts funding than the New Jersey Symphony.

The orchestra has received $31.5 million - almost as much funding as all the arts groups in South Jersey in the past 20 years.

Since 1980, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts has showered $28.5 million on the symphony. The Legislature awarded an additional $3 million in 1996 to wipe out the symphony's debt.

How does arts council funding for the symphony compare to the support Pennsylvania and New York provide for the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic?

The symphony gets 11.5 percent of its $13 million budget from the New Jersey arts council. In contrast, the Philadelphia Orchestra receives $336,000 and the New York Philharmonic $267,000 in government funding, less than 1 percent of their total budgets.

Grants to the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic are minuscule parts of the total budgets of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ($14 million) and the New York Council on the Arts ($48.4 million). The $1.5 million grant for the New Jersey Symphony represents 8.6 percent of all the grants issued by the New Jersey arts council.

Lawrence Tamburri, the symphony's executive director, says it is unfair to compare funding for the symphony with support for orchestras in New York and Philadelphia.

"You have to be real careful with statistics," he says. " The key thing for our orchestra is that we perform subscription series in seven locations."

All seven are in North or Central New Jersey: Newark, Englewood, Morristown, Princeton, Red Bank, Trenton and New Brunswick.

The only orchestra in the country comparable to the New Jersey Symphony is the North Carolina Symphony. Based in Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham, the orchestra performs subscription concerts in 16 other locations throughout the state.

The North Carolina Symphony receives a $2.4 million grant from the North Carolina General Assembly, almost 30 percent of its $8.4 million budget.

The orchestra also receives additional support from the communities in which it performs.

With that level of financial support, Tamburri says the symphony could bring its concerts to South Jersey.