As Arts & Ideas revs up this week, civic boosters worry pending state budget cut may imperil next year’s fest — and torpedo the city’s tourism efforts.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell wants to cut $23 million statewide in the budget that starts July 1 for tourism advertising and support. A competing Democratic version of the budget pushed by the legislature would restore the $2.7 million total the state gives to New Haven venues including the arts festival, Shubert Theater, Amistad and the convention and visitor’s bureau.
The two sides are continuing to haggle over the budget in a special session, while back in New Haven Ginny Kozlowski watches with a fretful eye.
Kozlowski is president of the Greater New Haven Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB). She spoke about the approaching storm clouds in an annual report Tuesday to the city’s Economic Development Commission. (She’s pictured above at Tuesday’s meeting alongside Commissioner Kevin Ewing.)
Meanwhile Tuesday, Gov. Rell held a photo-op promoting summer “staycations” in Connecticut — even as she’s proposing cutting the Commission on Culture and Tourism’s budget by more than half. “I don’t want to cut anything if I don’t have to, but cuts have to be made,” she said when asked about the discrepancy. (Click here for Christine Stuart’s report.)
At New Haven’s development meeting, CVB’s Kozlowski presented an upbeat report overall on her group’s activities. More rooms were rented in the tourism district last year than in 2008, although the percentage went down from 60 percent to 54 percent because three new or renovated hotels with more rooms were available.
The 19-town district comprises towns from Durham and Wallingford in the north, to Killingworth in the east and Milford in the west.
In coming weeks, the tourism picture is bright with events such as the AAU Regional Championships on July 1; International Festival of Arts and Ideas starting this weekend and the Pilot Pen tennis tourney in August.
But what’s going on in Hartford may hurt the local tourism efforts beyond that, Kozlowski warned.
The governor’s budget has no money at all for the festival for the next two years. The festival got $950,000 this year, a cut of $50,000 from last year’s state funding. The Democrat-controlled General Assembly’s budget plan for the upcoming year includes $900,000 for it.
If Rell’s cut comes to pass, it may cause the two-week festival to shrink so much as be to be not worth putting on at all, Director Mary Lou Aleskie said in a telephone interview Monday.
In a recent interview, Kozlowski said Rell’s taking all state funding from next year’s tourism efforts would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Tourism returns $9.30 for every dollar invested in it, she said. It supports 170,000 jobs in Connecticut and is responsible for $14 billion in activity in the state.
The state levies a 6 percent occupancy tax on hotel bills in the state, money that used to be returned to the municipalities and then was returned to the five regional tourism districts. Now, it goes to the state’s general fund. It is up to the state to dole it out to tourism groups to help steer tourism-type business to the state, she said.
That business can be anything from a couple on a second honeymoon weekend to a national convention with thousands of participants. For example, her presentation Tuesday showed the upcoming AAU games had booked about 2,250 room nights.
The amount the state has been sending back to the tourism regions has been declining, from $900,000 for each region in fiscal 2008 to a proposed $750,000 for each in the present fiscal year, according to the original legislative budget. The governor had proposed $427,000 for each district for this year, dropping to $56,000 in the next fiscal year, Kozlowski said. The governor has since cut even that amid a budget crisis.
The state took in $89 million in the hotel occupancy taxes last year, Kozlowski said. She said that figure did not include room rentals at the two Indian casinos.
“The governor’s counterproposal eliminated all money for regional tourism, statewide tourism marketing money all arts grants and line items,” she said.
Kozlowski said the state provided 85 percent of the operating revenue for the convention and visitors bureau.
The General Assembly ‘s budget still contains $750,000 for the local tourism district, $427,000 for the Amistad Freedom Schooner that calls New Haven home, as well as $50,000 for the Amistad Committee for the Freedom Trail, according to a budget provided by the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis. The Shubert Theater would get $427,000 and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven would receive nearly $107,000 under the assembly’s plan.
Local tourism businesses also will share in a $2 million statewide culture, tourism and arts grant and a $1.5 million basic cultural resources grant, under the state legislature’s proposal.
In the governor’s budget, none of these line items would be funded.
Jeffrey Beckham, a spokesman for the state Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the Rell administration seeks to “suspend” tourism funding for two years in the interest of avoiding a tax increase.
“Once we moved through the budget, those items were given a lower priority,” he said. “Clearly those [tourism] efforts have had a rationale in the past, and will have in future,” he said, but other concerns trump it in the governor’s mind. The governor’s concept, he said, was “not to impose additional taxes on people.”
Emily Shepard, an analyst with the Office of Fiscal Analysis, said the impasse between the Democrat General Assembly and the Republican governor must eventually be broken.
“This is subject to negotiations that need to happen. This was the original position, and could end up being totally different,” she said. She said that although the fiscal year ends this month, it is possible that the impasse could last beyond that.
“The state comptroller’s books don’t close until September,” she said.
Beckham, the OPM spokesman, said it was possible that there “could always” be a compromise between the governor and legislature on tourism funding.
The committee that puts on Arts & Ideas is using its reserves to put on this year’s two-week-long festival, said Aleskie, its executive director. Because the festival is presented when the state budget is still being finalized each year, the festival committee lays out money for it and is then reimbursed by the state, she said.
The state’s $950,000 infusion in the current fiscal year is about 28 percent of its operating budget, but that money was used to reimburse the festival group for last year’s edition. She said in addition, the organization has experienced a 25 percent decrease in funding exclusive of the state pullback.
“We have to think and redo our structure because state funds make the festival as big as it is,” she said. The festival has a $19 million annual impact on New Haven and Connecticut, she said. For example, many of the vendors and artisans come from across the state and people travel from all around the world to attend and participate.
The size of the festival is vital to its success, because it is the size and reputation of the festival that keep international governments interested. For example, the government of Ireland is paying for two groups to come and perform, she said.
“It is unbelievable that they [the state] would cut that out. This is a public and private investment that has been paying dividends to the state for 14 years,” she said.
It is possible that, without state funding and the other income for which state funding is a catalyst, the festival could become so small that the international interest and financial support could wane and then the festival committee would have to determine if it is worth putting the festival on at all. “We don’t have a philanthropist waiting on every corner,” she said.
She said she doesn’t believe that that the governor and the region’s state legislators would allow that to happen.
In addition, other states are not suspending tourism spending, as the state administration wants to do, Kozlowski said.
Long Island’s two counties, Nassau and Suffolk, alone spent $2 million on tourism advertising last year. “Just turn on New York television, and you see ads from Michigan, which spends $60 million a year on tourism promotion, and other places,” she said. The “I Love NY” campaign is one of the most successful in the region, she said.
Kozlowski said the tourist market is quite competitive and lucrative. For example, the seven days of AAU competition are expected to bring in more than $2 million for tourist venues such as hotels and restaurants and 3,500 young athletes and their families from as far away as Virginia and Ohio.
“It’s a buyer’s market in travel,” she said, “but if you market your destination, people will come.”