Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington State Cultural Policy: The State of...

Mapping State Cultural Policy:The State of Washington

J. Mark Schuster, editor

J. Mark Schuster, David Karraker, Susan Bonaiuto, Colleen Grogan, Lawrence Rothfield, and Steven Rathgeb Smith

Cultural Policy CenterThe Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies

The University of Chicago

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mapping state cultural policy : the state of Washington / J. Mark Schuster, editor.p. cm.

ISBN 0-9747047-0-91. Washington (State)—Cultural policy. I. Schuster, J. Mark

Davidson, 1950-F895.M375 2003306'.09797—dc22

2003024054

Photography and art credits. Front cover: “Seattle Public Art,” photograph by TimothyD. Lace, 1993, used with the permission of the photographer. Featured in the frontcover photograph is “Hammering Man,” a sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky, 1988, usedwith permission of the artist.

Back cover photographs, top to bottom: “Orcas Island Vista,” photograph by TimothyD. Lace, 1993, used with the permission of the photographer; “Chuba Cabra,” mask byRoger Robert Wheeler, 2000, used with permission of the artist; “Lisa Apple: In theMiddle, somewhat elevated,” photograph by Angela Sterling, 2001, used with permission ofthe photographer; “An Artist in His Element,” photograph of metal artist, ChrisHembree, by Darcy Van Patten, 2003, used with permission of the photographer;“Lewis and Clark Map 1803,” image by Nicholas King, public domain image providedby Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress; “Ezelle,” sculpture by Bruce andShannon Andersen, 2003, used with permission of the artists; “Seattle,” quilt by IvyTuttle, 1997, used with permission of the artist.

Printed in the United States.

© 2003 The University of Chicago, Cultural Policy Center

For more information or for copies of this book contact:Cultural Policy Center at The University of ChicagoThe Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies1155 East 60th Street, #157Chicago, IL 60637-2745

Phone: 773-702-4407Fax: 773-702-0926Cultural Policy Center website: culturalpolicy.uchicago.eduHarris School website: Harrisschool.uchicago.edu

The Cultural Policy Center at The University of Chicago fosters research to informpublic dialogue about the practical workings of culture in our lives.

The Cultural Policy Center is housed in and funded in part by The Irving B. HarrisGraduate School of Public Policy Studies.

This project was supported through a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views ofThe Pew Charitable Trusts.

Graphic Design: Catherine Lange Communicationsii

Foreword

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to study and map the many and diversepublic agencies and public policies thatinteract with the arts and culture, and tounderstand their intersections andinteractions.

Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State ofWashington is the result of the trusts’partnership with Professor Schuster, hisco-authors and the Cultural Policy Centerat the Irving B. Harris Graduate School ofPublic Policy Studies, The University ofChicago. It was made possible, as well, bymany willing and generous participants in the State of Washington. By puttinglanguage and form to the full extent ofWashington’s cultural policy system, thisreport helps us to understand the rich and complex mix of agencies and non-government organizations engaged incultural policy at the state level. To allthose who care about the great variety ofcultural resources and activities in Washing-ton, we believe it offers new informationand insights that will be useful instrengthening culturally relevant statepolicies and assuring effective culturalsupport. We also believe that this reportprovides a powerful and easily adaptablemethodology for cultural policymakersoutside Washington who wish to engagein a similar process of state-level analysis.

The report itself can be a catalyst for allthose involved or interested in culture torevisit and expand their thinking aboutthe impact of government policies on the cultural activity in their own states.Where are there untapped opportunitiesfor alliances and collaborations among

In 1999, The Pew Charitable Trustslaunched an initiative to foster broaderpublic appreciation of and support fornonprofit arts and culture and their rolein American society. This initiative,Optimizing America’s Cultural Resources, waspremised on the idea that the develop-ment of beneficial cultural policiesdepended in part upon providing moreand better information on arts and cultureto policymakers. Because even the mostbasic information about cultural organiza-tions and activities was fragmented,incomplete, and difficult to find or use,we invested in an array of projects togather, analyze, and make available dataon American arts and culture.

Similarly, the many public policies influ-encing cultural activity, with the exceptionof those related to the establishment andfunding of preservation agencies andgrantmaking agencies such as arts andhumanities councils, have also been frag-mented and little understood. The trusts’initiative also focused, in part, on analyz-ing and disseminating information aboutpolicies that either explicitly or implicitlyinfluenced cultural activity, with a specificemphasis on state-level policies. We werefortunate in having J. Mark Schuster,professor of urban cultural policy at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, asa partner in this work. Indeed, it wasProfessor Schuster who first pointed outto us the advantages of looking at states.Whereas most cultural advocacy hasfocused either on the federal culturalagencies or at the municipal level, statesoffer a hitherto unexploited opportunity

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agencies? How can cultural leadersenhance their “policy IQ” and help poli-cymakers improve their “culture IQ”?And, at a time when all states are feeling afinancial pinch, how can new insightsabout how cultural policies are developedand implemented assist states in increas-ing the efficiency and the effectiveness oftheir cultural commitments? In otherstates, as in Washington, policymakersmay not have a complete view of themany components of the cultural policylandscape. Therefore, it is imperative that cultural practitioners and supportersinvest the time and energy it takes tounderstand what their particular statesystem looks like. Only then will culture’sadvocates be able to engage in fullyinformed and productive dialogue withpolicymakers.

Marian A. GodfreyDirector, Culture ProgramThe Pew Charitable Trusts

Prelude

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To understand more fully the attributes ofstate level cultural policy and with an eyeto providing a service to individual stateswishing to consider and reflect upon thefull range of their cultural programs andpolicies as a unified whole, the CulturalPolicy Center at The University of Chicagoand The Pew Charitable Trusts teamedtogether for a pilot project: “MappingState Cultural Policy.” This project wasinspired by the very successful precedentof the Council of Europe’s Program ofReviews of National Cultural Policies,which has provided the opportunity forsome eighteen European countries toarticulate and receive comment on theirnational cultural policies. This report isthe result of our attempt to apply a simi-lar model to the State of Washington.

J. Mark Schuster, project director,with David Karraker, Susan Bonaiuto,Colleen Grogan, Lawrence Rothfield,and Steven Rathgeb Smith

Cultural Policy Center at The Universityof ChicagoThe Irving B. Harris Graduate School ofPublic Policy Studies

In my work as a state arts agency director, I found that most legislators and governmentofficials thought of culture as something separatefrom everyday life and everyday policy. It wasdifficult to find vehicles and language to articulatethe cultural policies implicit in, for instance, poli-cies and programs for tourism, transportation,education, economic development and social services.It was even more difficult to shape an overallvision that could guide the specifics of the culturalimpacts of policy decisions related to projects suchas highways, tourism positioning, public education,or construction of state facilities. This project willprovide a framework to help define that culturalvision and help everyone involved in policy makingto understand that there are ways to shape lawsand programs that will benefit the public’s cultural prosperity.

Susan Bonaiuto, former director, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts

State level support for the arts, humanities,heritage, and allied forms of culture has,for some time, been an important sourceof direct government support to theseendeavors in the United States. Moreover,it is now widely recognized that not onlylegislation, but also the projects, programs,and policies of a broad set of state-levelagencies have an important impact on thecultural life of a state. State cultural agencies,and their grant-making programs in par-ticular, provide the most visible supportfor culture, but the combination of policiesand programs across state government isa much better indicator of a state’s culturalvitality and its commitment to developingthe cultural life of its citizens.

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Table of ContentsM

apping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington

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Chapter I: Mapping State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1J. Mark Schuster

What is State Cultural Policy?What Do We Mean by “Mapping”?Why is State Cultural Policy of Interest?Conceptualizing State Cultural PolicyWhy Washington?How is Washington Different?On MethodologyOn MoneyA Guide for the ReaderA Research Agenda

Chapter II: Main Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21J. Mark Schuster

The Ecology of State Cultural PolicyStorylines

Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39J. Mark Schuster, David Karraker, and Susan Bonaiuto

The Washington State Arts CommissionBuilding for the Arts, Office of Community DevelopmentThe Arts in EducationOther Offices and Programs in the Arts PortfolioObservations and Conclusions

Chapter IV: The Humanities and State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Lawrence Rothfield and David Karraker

Humanities WashingtonThe Washington State Historical SocietyOther Offices and Programs in the Humanities PortfolioObservations and Conclusions

Chapter V: The Heritage and State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109David Karraker and J. Mark Schuster

The Office of Archaeology and Historic PreservationThe Heritage Corridors Program, Washington State Department of TransportationThe Washington State Historical SocietyCapital Projects Fund for Washington’s HeritageThe Eastern Washington State Historical Society/The Northwest Museum of Arts and CultureHumanities WashingtonThe Heritage CaucusState Heritage Policy from a Local Point of ViewObservations and Conclusions

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Chapter VI: The Land-Based Agencies and State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Susan Bonaiuto

Cultural Policy Themes in the Land-Based AgenciesPolicies and Programs of the Land-Based AgenciesObservations and Conclusions

Chapter VII: Native American Tribes and State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173Colleen Grogan

Introduction and BackgroundAreas of Significant Tribal Influence on State Cultural PolicyState Policy that Promotes the Creation of Tribal Art and/or the Interpretation of Tribal CultureObservations and Conclusions

Chapter VIII: Behind the Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189J. Mark Schuster and Steven Rathgeb Smith

The Washington State Department of RevenueNonprofit Facilities Program, Washington State Housing Finance CommissionCorporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund

Chapter IX: Observations and Theory — The Future of State Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209Steven Rathgeb Smith

The Enduring Influence of Federal PolicyThe Politics of State Cultural Policy and its ImplicationsLessons Learned for National and State Cultural Policy

Postlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221InterviewsDocuments Consulted/CitedProject StaffProject Advisory Board

Mapping State Cultural PolicyJ. Mark Schuster

Chapter I

1

The second factor that has providedresistance to the articulation of culturalpolicy is that there has been a generalreticence to be more explicit about policyin a field in which it has been popular tosay that that policy is reactive rather thanproactive—as in, “We follow the fieldrather than lead it. We respond to theneeds of the cultural sector and its manyconstituent cultural organizations. Wehave no policy, we are reactive.” But thisstance is problematic in two differentways. On the one hand, it can be seen as a policy in its own right; on the other, ithardly provides a normative reason forpublic sector intervention through policy.

It is possible that all of state culturalpolicy is simply the result of lobbyingpressure put on the state by the variousinterests in the cultural field, but we arenot quite ready to accept this explanationas to why it might seem plausible that astate “has no policy.”

Our view is different. If policy is theintentionality—or, more precisely, the set of intentionalities—of programs thatseek to achieve particular sets of out-comes in a field of government activity,can it be useful to identify those inten-tions and make them explicit? To somedegree, of course, those intentions aremade explicit—in legislation, in policydocuments, in strategic plans, and inmission statements—but other suchintentions are less clearly spelled out.Thus, we believe that it is also necessaryto identify the implicit cultural policy ofany agency or program of government byinferring intentionality from actual practice.The actions that a state and its manyoperational entities take that affect thecultural life of its citizens, whether directlyor indirectly, whether intentionally or

What is State Cultural Policy?It would likely be impossible to find adocument entitled, Our State’s CulturalPolicy, on the shelf of any governor, anystate legislature, or any state agency in theUnited States. This is attributable to twoprimary factors. The first is the difficultyof drawing a boundary around what isconsidered “cultural.” Does one wish totake an anthropological view in which allof the activities of humankind—sharedtraditions, beliefs, and ways of life—areconsidered cultural? Or does one wish totake what seems to be the more traditionalAmerican view in which “culture” is usedmore as a synonym for “the arts” and“the-arts-and-culture” becomes oneword? It is all too easy to be drawn into adebate over the definition of the word“culture.”

But it seems to us that there is a usefuland reasonable middle ground. We propose to take advantage of what we claim is ageneral societal consensus around a moretightly delineated area of cultural activitiesand interventions, which ought to beconsidered as a whole. Put one way, weare interested in all the ways that the stateassists, supports, or even hinders thecultural life of its citizens. Put another,a state’s cultural policy can be usefullythought of as the sum of its activitieswith respect to the arts (including the for-profit cultural industries), the humani-ties, and the heritage. Thus, state policywith respect to the arts, state policy withrespect to the humanities, and state policy with respect to the heritage makeup the primary components of statecultural policy.

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David Nicandri, director of the WashingtonState Historical Society, has captured thispoint nicely in his correspondence withus, and it is worth quoting his discussionof the metaphor at some length:

[M]apping is not value neutral. Mapping—creating names, typologies, characteristics, andidentities—though nominally scientific can have aset of concurrent values….[T]o take Lewis andClark as examples, there were multiple purposesto be found in their narratives and maps. Somewere explicit, conventional, and therefore obviousto the explorers themselves. Others werenot….[T]he creation of a map is still ultimately a matter of crafting perspective. The journals andmaps of Lewis and Clark say as much aboutthemselves as they do about the various objects oftheir observation, whether land, river, or people.Not knowing, perhaps any more than the Indianswho encountered Lewis and Clark did, what thefuture may contain as a consequence of thismapping study, I wanted to stipulate thisobservation in the project record.

This point is well taken, so let us begin bynoting our beliefs for the project record:

We see our work more as policy analysisthan as policy description, though framinga policy through description is certainlycritical to its analysis. We recognizethat the process of framing shapeswhat one ultimately sees.

We believe that there is value inmaking explicit what is often implicit.This facilitates and improves policydiscussion and debate.

We believe that choices are often made today simply because similarones were made yesterday and thatthere is value in stopping to askwhether other options have beenadequately considered.

We believe that particular attentionshould be paid to communication andcollaboration in policy making, but we do not believe that that necessarilyextends to a preference for centralizedbureaucratic control. It is important,we believe, not to confuse the two.And we believe that one must recognizethat communication and collaborationare not costless, particularly for smallagencies with few resources.

unintentionally, together constitute theeffective cultural policy of that state.Underlying these actions is a terrain ofintentions, some explicit and some implicit,and our goal here is to provide a descrip-tion and discussion of that terrain. This iswhy “mapping” is an appropriatemetaphor.

What Do We Mean by “Mapping”?While our goal has been, in part, todocument and to catalogue the elementsof the cultural policy of the State ofWashington, we have also endeavored todo something more. We have undertakento provide interpretations of that policyoffered by participants in the policyprocess, as well as to provide our owninterpretations of that policy. We haveraised questions; we have tried to pointout opportunities and pitfalls. We havehighlighted choices that have been madeand choices that consequently were notmade; we have tried to identify optionsthat were not recognized as choices andtherefore not considered. We have donethis not because we believe that the optionsnot chosen would have been preferable,but because we believe that informedchoice ought to be considered a valuablepart of ongoing policy inquiry and debate.

We chose the metaphor of “mapping”to capture the spirit of this intent. In anymapping exercise, the cartographer makeschoices: What should be included, andwhat should be left out? What should beemphasized, and how should that empha-sis be rendered? And, perhaps mostimportantly, whose map is it to be, andwhose map is it not to be? We understandthat we ourselves have made choices—choices as to what to emphasize andchoices as to what to pay somewhat lessattention to. As with any mapping exer-cise, if others had undertaken this exer-cise, they would have collected differentdata, and even if they had considered thesame data as we considered, they wouldhave drawn different maps. Indeed, it isthis attribute that makes mapmakingstimulating.

3

Chapter I: Mapping State Cultural Policy

but they also are home to a variety ofextra-curricular institutions that providepublic programming. We have chosen toinclude the latter, featuring a few exam-ples; we have also included the easilyseparable arts programs of the Office ofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction(elementary and secondary education),but we have not looked at the arts andhumanities curricula of the state collegesand universities. We have not expandedour inquiry to sports, even though manywould argue that sports are cultural (andeven though many countries have seen fit to include sports in their cultural min-istries, e.g., the Department for Culture,Media and Sport in the United Kingdom).

But part of our methodology was also tolisten during our interviews for cues as tohow Washington State might perceive theterrain of its own cultural policy. As aresult, we have ensured that our boundaryincludes the trustee agencies that arepublic-private hybrids (the WashingtonState historical societies), as well as organ-izations that operate at the state level and,arguably, have a statewide policy influ-ence, even though they are not state agen-cies per se (e.g., Humanities Washington).The cultural policies of the land-basedstate agencies also turned out to beimportant and distinctive—a componentof cultural policy that we had not quiteexpected at the outset; because of theirimportance, these agencies are consideredseparately in Chapter VI. Similarly, Washing-ton’s Native American tribes, functioningas sovereign governments, also needed tobe considered in relation to state-levelpolicy; they are addressed in Chapter VII.

Another component of mapping is thatcategories have to be constructed. Thishad led us to draw a basic distinctionbetween arts policy, humanities policy, andheritage policy. But these categories, whileuseful for organizing the chapters of areport, are somewhat crude and arbitrary.Many of the agencies we have studiedbelong in more than one of these cate-gories; occasionally we have split ourdiscussion of the agency where it seemedthat that split would help clarify the

We believe that public agencies that clearly articulate the goals andobjectives of their programs andcarefully monitor progress towardthose goals and objectives will have,and should have, an advantage in mak-ing their claim on public resources. Yethere, too, there are costs associatedwith articulation, monitoring, and eval-uation, and trade-offs are inevitable.

We believe that there is considerablebenefit embodied in the American sys-tem of public policy, which delegatesimportant components of publicpolicy implementation to quasi-autonomous agencies and to nonprofitorganizations, but we also believe thatone can learn important lessons fromother ways of organizing the ecologyof public policy.

And, finally, we believe that a map ofone state’s cultural policy can be bestunderstood once one has an atlas ofsuch maps. The fact that the currentstudy comprises the first such mapmust be kept in mind when consider-ing its implications. Ideally, we wouldbe able to compare and contrast cul-tural policy maps of five or six (ormore) states, states with different con-ceptions of, and structures for, theircultural policy. Only then would themost valuable conversation be possi-ble, one that would draw on multipleexperiences in varying circumstances.But one has to begin somewhere.

As with any map, boundaries have to bedrawn. In this report we have includedthe visual and performing arts; we haveincluded the cultural industries to theextent that state cultural policy inWashington touches upon them; we haveincluded the heritage (not only the builtheritage but also the movable heritage aswell as the musical, oral, and written tradi-tions of the state); and we have includedthe humanities as they are funded andpracticed in public by and for the publicrather than for students or researchers.Education poses something of a bound-ary problem. The state universities havearts and humanities programs and curricula,

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For fiscal year 2003, state legislaturesappropriated $353.9 million for the statearts agencies, which also received an addi-tional $23.5 million from other stategovernment sources (e.g., transfer fundsand public art money from state capitalbudgets).2 The appropriations for theNational Endowment for the Arts, on theother hand, were $116.5 million, of which$95.8 million was dedicated to grant mak-ing. Of this amount, $33.3 million waspassed through to the states.3 Thus, evenin a year in which state money declinedsubstantially, state support for the artsthrough state arts councils was still morethan 3.2 times direct federal support forthe arts through NEA. Taking transfersfrom NEA to the states into account,state influence over direct arts expenditurewas even higher. We argue elsewhere inthis report that drawing an analyticboundary narrowly around arts agenciesin this way can be misleading, but herethis simplified example makes the pointdramatically.

By contrast all of the state humanitiescouncils are private, nonprofit organiza-tions rather than state agencies. Whilethey receive support from the federalgovernment, they do not necessarilyreceive support from their respective statelegislatures. By 2002 the total income forstate humanities councils had grown to$59.9 million; federal money accountedfor $32.4 million (54 percent) of thisamount, while state funding accounted for$11.5 million (19 percent). In fiscal year2002, the appropriations for the NationalEndowment for the Humanities were$124.5 million—$18.4 million for agencyadministration and $106.1 million forgrants and programs. Of this amount,$31.8 million was passed directly throughto state humanities councils and regionalhumanities centers.4 But the combinedrevenue sources of the state humanitiescouncils are only part of the picture; forexample, all states make substantial contri-butions to the humanities throughhumanities programs at state colleges anduniversities, an expenditure that has nofederal equivalent.

agency’s activities. At other times, we have settled for discussing the agency inthe context of one of these categorieswhile recognizing that it also touchesupon other fields of cultural policy.

Why is State CulturalPolicy of Interest?The conceptualization of “cultural policy”as a separate field of public policy is arelatively recent phenomenon, particularlyin the United States where there has tradi-tionally been a fear of uttering this phrasewith all of its dirigiste implications.1 Todate, the limited cultural policy inquirythat has been undertaken in the UnitedStates has focused either on the nationallevel, which is a natural entry point forresearchers and policy analysts movinginto a field for the first time, or on thevery local level, which lends itself to fine-grained case studies of particular institu-tions or places.

Internationally there is no shortage ofstudies of national cultural policy. By com-parison, much less attention has been paidto the policies of intermediate levels ofgovernment—e.g., state policy in theUnited States and Australia, provincialpolicy in Canada, Länder policy inGermany and Austria, canton policy inSwitzerland, the policy of the comunidadesautónomas in Spain, or policy as it playedout through the regional arts boards inEngland. But there are good reasons tobegin to turn more analytical attentiontoward government cultural policy, andparticularly toward the cultural policies ofintermediate levels of government:

Direct support for the arts at thestate level is now—and has beenfor some time—a more importantsource of direct government aidto the arts in the United Statesthan is direct support at thefederal level. This may also betrue for the humanities and theheritage, but definitive data areharder to come by.

1 This section of this report isbased on J. Mark Schuster,“Sub-National CulturalPolicy—Where the Action is?Mapping State Cultural Policyin the United States.”International Journal of CulturalPolicy, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2002,181-196.

2 These figures include thebudgets of arts councils in special jurisdictions(American Samoa, PuertoRico, Guam, the VirginIslands, the NorthernMarianas, and Washington,D. C.).

3 The National Endowmentfor the Arts is currentlyobliged to pass along 40 per-cent of its program budget tothe state arts agencies.

4 The discrepancy between thefigures of $32.4 million and$31.8 million may be due toincome from other federalsources or to errors inbudget estimation.

Increasingly, cultural programsand projects are being adopted topursue a wide variety of societalaims (economic development,cultural tourism, interventionwith youth at risk, etc.), aims thatare more likely to be pursued atthe state and local levels becauseof their closer relationship to theconstituencies that are mostlikely to be affected.

These demands for improved and increasedcultural services and opportunities aremuch more likely to be expressed at thestate and local levels than at the nationallevel (except in the service of internationalrelations and diplomacy). Moreover, thepossible benefits from instrumentalizingculture are more likely to be articulatedlocally—e.g., heritage as a lure to culturaltourism. Thus, some elements of culturalpolicy may have been accorded a higherpriority in the states’ policy agendas thanhas previously been the case.

Government’s cultural agenciesand programs are increasinglybeing expected to exhibit greaterlevels of accountability andgreater levels of effectiveness.

In comparison to other fields of publicpolicy, government cultural policy has nottypically been subjected to the same levelof policy analysis and evaluation. Somewould say that the sector has been pro-tected from such inquiries because incultural policy goals and objectives aredifficult to measure, thereby frustratinganalysis and evaluation. But others wouldsay that the lack of insistence on analysisand evaluation has been more the resultof the relative size of the sector: it wastoo small (in policy terms) to pay muchattention to.

Recently this has begun to change.Criticisms of government cultural policy,particularly government arts funding, haveseemed to feature disagreement over pub-lic values, but they have also contained astrong measure of questioning about theeffectiveness of government’s involve-ment in the arts and culture. The phrase

Direct expenditure on the heritage andhistoric preservation, on the other hand,may well be less significant at the statelevel than at the federal level, though here,too, large-scale investment in heritage facili-ties, preservation, and history museumsmay tip the balance in favor of the states.

Finally, it is important to realize thatmuch of the direct support at the statelevel—particularly in the arts and historicpreservation—is required by the federalgovernment as a match to federal fundsthat are distributed to the individualstates. Some states only barely meet theminimum matching requirement (andsome do not even achieve that level), butothers appropriate amounts that exceedthe minimum matching requirement. Inrecent years there has been considerable(and successful) pressure to increase theproportion of federal funds that is passedthrough these state agencies, resulting in afurther increase in the amount of moneyavailable to be distributed at the state levelaccompanied by a higher expectation forstate-level matches.

The move toward delegation,devolution, and decentralizationin government policy makingand implementation has made itmore important to understandhow policy actually plays out atlower levels of government.

It is clear that the federal government isendeavoring to move many of the activitieshaving to do with cultural policy to thestate and local levels. Pass-through require-ments for the National Endowment forthe Arts provide increased resources tothe state arts agencies, and the Departmentof the Interior uses its system of statehistoric preservation officers to providean important portion of the work in thenomination of properties to the NationalRegister of Historic Places and in theadministration of various grant programsand rehabilitation certification programs.

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directed—because they will benefit fromhaving access to an increasingly transpar-ent and effective system of culturalsupport and from knowing what opportu-nities are available at the state level inwhichever agency they happen to reside.

Conceptualizing State Cultural PolicyBefore proceeding into the field to mapstate cultural policy in Washington, weneeded a set of common reference pointsfor that inquiry. Most important to ourearly thinking was a conceptual diagramof the ecology of actors involved incultural policy at the state level (FigureI.1). Equipped with this diagram and arelatively standard model of public policyimplementation, we would document thepolicy linkages, policy influences, and pol-icy choices in Washington State.

In summary form, the story suggested by this diagram and the model of publicpolicy making that is embedded in it is the following:

Policy is the intentionality behind thecollection of programs that areintended to achieve a particular set of outcomes.

Policies may be explicit—in which case they should be able to beobserved through existing docu-ments—or implicit—in which case they should be able to be inferredfrom the statements and actions ofthe agency.

Policies may be espoused or de facto. The difference should be able to be detected with carefulinterviewing.

A number of influences are brought tobear on policy, e.g., funding, directives,legislation, regulations, political influ-ence, lobbying, the behavior of sisteragencies, and federal rules.

Policy is implemented through anecology of policy actors, includingagencies, programs, and a wide

“value for money” has become an impor-tant touchstone for reconsiderations ofgovernment’s cultural programs. This is atrend that the field can hardly afford toignore. If a claim is being made on thepublic purse—as it is in most manifesta-tions of public policy—then the rationalefor that claim has to be made clear.

Taken together, these factors suggest that,whether or not it has been articulated as“state cultural policy,” this type of policyhas become an increasingly importantlocus of interest for those who are con-cerned with the health and stability of thearts, culture, and humanities in the UnitedStates, as well as with the overall qualityof American life. It has also been anincreasing locus of attention for thosewho would have us focus on the effective-ness of public policy. Yet this rise in theimportance of, and attention to, policiesrelated to culture at the state level has notgenerally been accompanied by a similarlyevolving understanding of the culturalpolicy system that has developed withineach state. In effect, cultural policy at thestate level has been the sum total of themore or less independent, uncoordinatedactivities of a variety of state agencies and allied organizations and institutions.The extent to which these entities pursuecomplementary aims or collaborate is notwidely understood, nor is there a clearsense of what types of state policysystems enable or foreclose variouscultural initiatives.

What seems to us to be clear is thatinformed public policy, with a sense ofcurrent initiatives, available and potentialresources, identified opportunities, visible gaps,and nodes of conspicuous effectiveness is anincreasingly important goal to pursue. It is important to the front line culturalagencies because the pressure is on themto be more and more focused on theeffective allocation of public resourcesand more and more creative about ways inwhich to take advantage of cross-agencycollaborative opportunities. And it isimportant for the “targets” of culturalpolicy—those at whom cultural policy is

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Four PremisesThough we tried to begin our fieldworkwith a tabula rasa, it is fair to say that fourimportant premises informed ourapproach from the beginning, and, thus,they deserve to be made explicit:

Many more agencies than thosethat are commonly understood to be the “cultural agencies”are involved in cultural policy.

All states have an arts council, a humani-ties council (though these are all privatenonprofit organizations), a state historicpreservation officer, and one or morehistorical societies. But it is also typicalfor state cultural policy to be delegated to state agencies beyond this core groupand/or to outside organizations and insti-tutions, each with related but distinctlydifferent notions of its role and its aims.Moreover, it is also increasingly commonfor other state agencies to create culturalprograms linked directly to their day-to-day operations.

Thus, we expected to find evidence ofcultural policy in many different agencies,departments, offices, and programs scat-tered throughout the state’s bureaucracy(in the event we were to discover that the land-based agencies in particular, suchas the Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission, the Departmentof Natural Resources, the Department ofAgriculture, and even the Department ofTransportation, among others, wereinvolved in activities that could bedescribed as cultural policy). In addition,we expected to find examples of policybeing delegated to independent or semi-independent entities whose actions weresimilar to and complemented statecultural policy but who were not solelywithin the orbit of state government.(Humanities Washington and theWashington State historical societiesturned out to be cases in point.)

variety of other public, semi-public, and private organizations.

Policies are translated into actionthrough programs.

Programs are composed of threeprimary elements:

They make use of the generic toolsof action that are available to thegovernment: government owner-ship and operation; incentives;regulation; information; and thedefinition, invention, and enforce-ment of property rights.

They draw upon available resources,e.g., cash, personnel, capital, andinformation.

They are designed with a particularinstitutional arrangement, e.g., directoperation by a state agency, use ofan external organization as a policysurrogate (through contracting or grant-making), or the establish-ment of a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization(QUANGO), a government author-ity, or some other type of arm’slength agency.

The tools, resources, and institutionalarrangements that are available topolicy actors are, themselves, subjectto policy. Any particular policy actormay have access to a restricted set ofelements because of policy constraintson their actions.

Programs have intended targets (individu-als, groups, or organizations whosebehavior is intended to change as aresult of the intervention) and intendedoutcomes, e.g., increased participation,improved financial stability. Actual out-comes are often different from intendedoutcomes.

The importance of Figure I.1 wastwofold: it gave us a framework aroundwhich to construct our field interviewsand research, but it also revealed thecomplexity that we were likely to find inthe field.

an important impact on cultural policywell beyond the boundaries of what one would normally consider to be statecultural agencies and far beyond theboundaries of the traditional grant-making programs of state arts agencies.

Why Washington?Many have asked us why Washington waschosen as our pilot state.

Is it a model for state cultural policy thatwe hope to see replicated elsewhere? Hasit made mistakes that other states oughtto avoid? Does it have interesting attrib-utes that suggest it as the first state tostudy in this way? Does it fit into a broaderset of case studies that would comprise acomparative study?

We had no reason to believe that wewould—or would not—find a modelpolicy system in the State of Washington.Nor did we have any prior indication ofsuccesses or mistakes. We believed thatany state would have interesting attributesthat would make its cultural policy worthstudying, so that did not make Washing-ton unique. But, of course, we werehopeful that Washington would be thefirst step in a more broadly comparativestudy in which we could look at states of different types (e.g., states with a cen-tralized office of cultural commissionerversus states such as Washington with nosuch central bureaucratic coordination).

In truth, the answer is a bit more prosaic.In searching for a state in which to con-duct the first such mapping exercise, werealized that we had to find a state whoseagencies would be interested in receivingand reflecting upon the results of such astudy and whose agency heads wouldopen up their agencies to us, encouragingtheir staffs to participate. We would needto avoid, at least in the first instance,states in which cultural policy had becomeso politicized that there would be very lit-tle interest in introspection and reflection.As we discussed the choice of state withour project advisory board and others,the State of Washington began to bementioned more and more often. It was

In such a policy context, it is notcommon to think of the aggre-gate of these agencies, institu-tions, actions, and policies asconstituting a conceptual whole.

Reliance on multiple agencies andmultiple programs stacks the deck againsta coordinated policy. It makes policydifficult to articulate and makes it difficultfor policy agencies to move in the samedirection. Yet, each component of thesystem can be understood to be imple-menting its own form of cultural policy,and together they constitute the effectivecultural policy of the state.

Much of state cultural policy isimplicit rather than explicit,being the result of actions anddecisions taken withoutexpressed policy intention.

We expected that few of the agencies weinterviewed would have adopted explicitpolicy documents to guide and informtheir work. Instead, we would have toconsider their programs and actions in an attempt to infer their policy fromthose activities.

Much of state cultural policy isindirect rather than direct, beingthe result of a wide variety ofinterventions beyond direct oper-ation or direct financial support.

We expected that we would find culturalpolicies well outside of the culturalagencies. We had good reason to believe,for example, that a large component ofcultural policy would be embedded in var-ious components of tax law, particularlyin the form of tax exemptions.

Taken together these premises led to a net that had to be widely cast. We expectedstate cultural policy to be complex, goingwell beyond the boundaries of state artsagencies to include state humanitiescouncils, historical societies, historicpreservation agencies, community devel-opment initiatives, parks and recreationcommissions, and many other agenciesand programs. Legislation, funding,projects, and programs would each have 9


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Washington. For them, the key questionsare: What can be learned from such amapping exercise? What might it highlightabout current policy practice? What doesit suggest might be done differently?

But to interpret it well, this report mustbe understood as an attempt to documentand understand the cultural policy of oneplace at one point in time. The impor-tance of timing is clear. As we conductedour interviews the policy framework keptshifting, particularly as the cultural policysystem adjusted to changes in the state’sbudget. (Two rounds of budget cuts wereannounced during the course of ourwork, the first a relatively minor adjust-ment to the second year of the 2001-2003biennial budget when it became clear thatstate revenues were declining and thesecond a much more major decline in theproposed 2003-2005 biennial budget.)Thus, large portions of what we havedocumented in this report may soon fallvictim to budget cuts (if they have notalready done so). If we had looked at adifferent two-year period, what we wouldhave seen would have differed, perhaps inunknowable ways.

Timing has another importance as well.Even though the policy terrain was shift-ing as we did our research, what is pre-sented here is essentially a snapshot ofWashington’s cultural policy at onemoment in time. For the most part, wehave not documented trends.

Finally, the importance of characteristicsunique to the selected state should not beunderestimated. This is, of course,immediately apparent when one thinksabout the extent to which one might beable to generalize about state culturalpolicy from the case of one state.Consider, for example, the differencesthat one might observe if one were tocompare a state that implements itscultural policy through a variety of semi-independent cultural agencies (e.g., Wash-ington and many others) with a state thatgathers these diverse cultural activitiestogether in a single agency, perhaps with acabinet-level cultural commissioner (e.g.,Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New

widely felt that the key agency headswould be receptive and encouraging, andthat has indeed been the case.

In November 2001 Kris Tucker, theexecutive director of the WashingtonState Arts Commission, convened ameeting at her offices at which we wereinvited to pitch this project to representa-tives of ten or so state agencies. No onein that room (least of all ourselves) knewwhat a “Map of State Cultural Policy”was and certainly none of them came tothat meeting with the view that they needed“one of those.” But a generous spirit andopenness to inquiry permeated the meet-ing. We were challenged to launch an evenbroader and deeper inquiry than we hadenvisioned, and we were promised opendoors and collaborative support, both ofwhich we have received in great measure.

That initial meeting at which the projectwas proposed was a harbinger of what wewould find in the field; some of the par-ticipants in that meeting remarked that itwas the first time in their experience thatsuch a group of agency representativeshad ever met in the same room togetheraround their common interest in andcommitment to “cultural policy.” If thatphrase was surprising to some of thosewho gathered that day, the notion thatthey were involved in the same businessturned out to be less so. We would like tothink that this project, even from its earli-est days, has provided an impetus for thecultural agencies and programs of thestate to work more collaboratively, to havea better sense of how to integrate theirpolicy activities across domains, and tohave an opportunity to engage in a policyconversation that could occur outside ofthe boundaries of their own agencies. Butit was pointed out to us from the verybeginning that collaboration entails choices,particularly choices about the allocation ofscarce agency resources, and it needs tobe adequately demonstrated that such aninvestment of agency resources will ulti-mately be rewarded.

We expect that the primary beneficiariesof this report will be those who areengaged in cultural policy in the State of

starkly with the much more sparsely pop-ulated rural and agricultural counties, par-ticularly to the east of the Cascades; theyrange from only 3.4 to 51 people per sq.mile. Spokane County, which serves as thehome of the “inland empire” and is theregional hub for nearly all of the agricul-ture, livestock-raising, and mining activi-ties in the state, is the eastern exceptionwith 237 people per sq. mile.

Early settlers came largely from theMidwest along the Oregon Trail, and itwas not until the first quarter of thetwentieth century that foreign immigra-tion produced substantial populationgrowth; large numbers of Scandinaviansand Canadians migrated until strict quotaswere imposed in the 1920s. At this point,Washington had a population of approxi-mately 1.4 million. Tremendous growthtook place after World War II with theexpansion of international trade (and theemergence of Boeing and the aerospaceindustry), and then again in the 1970s and1980s. By 2001, the state had reached apopulation of just under 6 million people.That number reflects a 21 percent increasejust between 1990 and 2000. At the turnof the twenty-first century, 1.27 millionpeople (just 22 percent of the population)resided east of the Cascades. Growththroughout the state has slowed substan-tially during the past five years, and aslower growth rate is projected for thenext several years. Most of the populationgrowth remains concentrated in the west,with the large Puget Sound counties andClark County accounting for 72 percentof the state’s population increase in the last decade. This trend is predicted to continue.

Well over half the population of Washing-ton now lives in the Puget Sound area(primarily in King, Pierce, and Snohomishcounties). With the highest per capitaincome in the Northwest, this prosperousregion ranks twenty-fifth when comparedwith the rest of the nation’s regions witha per capita personal income that is more than 50 percent higher than the nationalaverage. Over the past few decades,this region has developed a substantial

Mexico, Nevada, and West Virginia,among others).5 But this is also true whensimply attempting to understand what ishappening in a single place and why it ishappening. Each state is rather different,and in order to understand the culturalpolicy of that state it is important tounderstand those differences.

How is WashingtonDifferent?There are many ways in which one statediffers from another, and we certainlyhave not attempted to identify all of thosecharacteristics for the State of Washington.What is most important, for our purpos-es, however, is how those characteristicsare likely to impact cultural policy. As wehave discussed the results of our field-work and have debated how best tointerpret those results, we have foundourselves making repeated reference toseveral characteristics that seem particu-larly important.

To set the stage, a brief overview of thedemographics of Washington is helpful.

The physical terrain and climate do muchto define what is distinctive aboutWashington, and these are among themost important factors that have attractedpeople to live and work there. Washingtonhas two very distinct geographical regionsseparated by the Cascade Range. To thewest is lush forest and gentle terrain slop-ing to the Pacific—a region with heavyrainfall where lumber and fisheries oncedominated. To the east of the Cascades isthe large, flat and semi-arid ColumbiaBasin that is primarily agricultural, thanksto an elaborate and carefully plannedirrigation and waterway infrastructure.

The majority of the state’s population isurban and is clustered in a densely peo-pled swath running along a north-southline through Puget Sound, including KingCounty with 817 people per sq. mile;Pierce County 418; Clark County 549,and Snohomish County 289. It is also inthese few counties that one finds, notsurprisingly, the greatest commercialdevelopment in the state. This contrasts 11


5 See, for example, Lisa Wax,1994 State Arts Agency Profile(Washington, D.C.: NationalAssembly of State ArtsAgencies, January 1995).

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couple more had median householdincomes that were just slightly lower),reflecting what many perceive as a funda-mental economic difference between theeastern and the western parts of the state.But these numbers can also be under-stood in another way: rural counties inboth sections of the state lag considerablybehind urban counties, indicating that theunderlying economic disparity may bemore rural v. urban than east v. west.

Racial minorities comprise just under one-fifth (18.2 percent) of the population,up from 13 percent in 1990.7 A relativelylarge percentage of Washington’s popula-tion is of Asian descent: 5.5 percent ascompared to a national average of 3.6percent. At the middle of the nineteenthcentury Washington was home to around100,000 Native Americans belonging tomore than 100 separate tribes; todayNative Americans comprise 1.6 percent ofthe state’s population (just under twice thenational average of 0.9 percent). Hispanicresidents make up 7.5 percent ofWashington’s population, a percentagethat is lower than the national average of12.5 percent. Similarly, Blacks or AfricanAmericans comprise only 3.2 percent ofthe population, as compared to a nationalaverage of 12.3 percent.

Beyond these demographic factors, thereare a number of other characteristics ofWashington that may well influence theprofile of state cultural policy:

Washington is a young state, andthe state is still growing, result-ing in an emphasis on capitaldevelopment.

In other, older states the cultural infra-structure may be more highly developed.To the extent that this is true, one wouldexpect to see more investment in culturalinfrastructure in Washington than else-where. Atypically among states, Washing-ton has capital grants programs in boththe arts and heritage, and a considerableinvestment has recently been made in newmuseums, particularly in Tacoma.

technology sector (with Microsoft and themany smaller companies it has spawned),and it continues to diversify into areas likebiotechnology and information technology.This is in addition to aerospace andaircraft, long established areas of strengthin the Washington economy.

The rest of the state is, by contrast, muchmore sparsely settled and much less eco-nomically prosperous. In the past twenty-five years, the timber industry—long amainstay of the Washington economy—has been radically downsized. This is dueto the dwindling supply of old growthforest, competition from other parts ofthe world with cheaper labor, and thegradual imposition of strict environmen-tal regulations on the timber industry.Taken together, these factors have had aprofound impact on Washington’s econo-my, drastically reducing the number ofpeople who work in the timber industryand effectively removing both jobs and away of life that generations of Washing-ton residents considered part of theiridentity. Similar upheavals have takenplace among those who fished for a liv-ing, but advances in that industry havedulled the impact somewhat.

In 1999, Washington’s median householdincome was $45,776 as compared to anational median of $41,994.6 One out of ten residents (10.6 percent) lived belowthe poverty line, as compared to a nation-al average of 12.4 percent. But disparitiesin income across the thirty-nine countiesin Washington are substantial and reflect aconsiderable divide in wealth. Overall percapita income in the state in 1999 was$22,793 (as compared to a national aver-age of $21,587), but per capita income inWashington ranged from a low of$13,534 in Adams County to a high of$30,603 in San Juan County. The countyfigures suggest two patterns of disparity.Only one of the twenty counties to theeast of the Cascades had a median house-hold income that was higher than theoverall median for the state, but five ofthe nineteen counties to the west of theCascades had median household incomeshigher than the state median (and a

6 The analysis in this para-graph is based on data avail-able at two websites:http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_GCTP14_ST2_geo_id=04000US53.html

http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_GCTP14_US9_geo_id=01000US.html

7 If individuals who indicatedthat they were “Hispanic”and “white” are included in the definition ofminority, this percentage rises slightly to 21.2 percent.These calculations are basedupon data available at:http://www.ofm.wa.gov/census2000/sf1/tables/ctable19.htm.

State revenue raising is limited by Initia-tive 601, a citizen referendum passed in1993 that limited the amount that stategovernment can spend from the generalfund and imposed a supermajority votingrequirement on increases in state taxes—two-thirds of the members of bothhouses must approve any measure thatincreases state revenues or results in arevenue-neutral tax shift, and if anyadditional revenues will exceed theformula-based limit put in place by theinitiative, it has to be approved by amajority of the voters.

The combined effect of these factors is to limit the revenues that are available topursue policy of any type. For the artsand culture, this effect is magnified by thedesign and administration of tax exemp-tions. Nonprofit organizations are eligiblefor a narrower range of tax exemptions inthe State of Washington than would likelybe the case elsewhere. Because there is noincome tax, there is no incentive providedby an exemption from income tax, butsuch an exemption is not automaticallybuilt into the sales tax or the business andoccupation tax. Moreover, nonprofitorganizations in Washington (unlike thoseelsewhere) are not automatically eligiblefor certain state tax exemptions or incen-tives by virtue of their federal 501(c)(3)status; rather, they have to apply annuallyfor certain exemptions. The upshot is thatthe benefit of tax exemption is much lesssystematic in Washington than elsewhereand, consequently, it may also be lower.8But, at the same time, the cultural sectorhas been given access to several dedicatedstate taxes and fees, and these work to theadvantage of the sector.

It has been suggested thatbecause the value of being a nonprofit in Washington is lower than elsewhere, the nonprofit sector is less welldeveloped.

Some commentators have posited that the lower value of tax exemptions inWashington has hindered the developmentof nonprofit organizations. Of course, itis hard to know in what direction the

The economy of the state is quiteparticular. It has gone throughcycles of boom and bust becauseof the importance of cyclicalindustries such as naturalresource extraction, aerospace,and information technology.

These cycles have possibly led to a moreuneven development of private supportfor the arts and culture than has been thecase in other places with more stableeconomies. In any event, the ebb andflow of private support is an importantfactor that intersects with state culturalpolicy, particularly in the American frame-work, which relies so heavily on privateinitiative in this sector.

In Washington the governorshipis relatively weak as compared toother states.

The constitution of the State ofWashington was crafted during the pop-ulist movement of the late 1800s, and itwas designed to limit the governor’spower by fragmenting control and placingresponsibility for many state functionssuch as transportation and parks withindependent commissions and panels thatare not under the direct control of thegovernor. Because the governor is consti-tutionally weak relative to other states, heor she plays a weaker role in determiningthe direction of cultural policy.

The tax structure of the state isquite unusual.

Washington is one of seven states that donot have a household income tax and oneof only four states that have no form ofincome tax. Thus, no other state relies soheavily on sales taxes as does Washington.It also levies a gross receipts tax—thebusiness and occupation tax—on busi-nesses and a state property tax in additionto local property taxes. The ratio of statetaxes to local taxes is much higher inWashington than in many states because itfinances a greater proportion of govern-mental services, particularly education (K-12, vocational training, communitycolleges, and state colleges and universi-ties), at the state level. 13


8 These issues are discussed indetail in Chapter VIII of thisreport.

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national average of 8.7; but it is in themiddle of this group of comparablestates: Massachusetts has a higher numberof organizations per capita—indeed, avery high number that is nearly twice thenational average—while organizations per capita are approximately 25 percentlower in Indiana and Missouri, and nearly 50 percent lower in Tennessee.

Washington is also higher than the nationalaverage with respect to organizationaldensity by area: 9.2 such organizations per 1,000 square miles as compared to anational average of 6.9; but once again itis in the middle of this group of compa-rable states, higher than Missouri (6.1) orTennessee (7.8) but lower than Indiana(12.9). Massachusetts occupies the longright hand tail of this distribution all byitself with 127.6 arts and cultural organi-zations per 1,000 square miles (even NewYork has only 55.6).

Of course, both the presence and successof nonprofit organizations interact withthe philanthropic habits of the popula-tion. With respect to charitable giving,Washington lags behind other states. In1999 Washington had the sixth highestlevel of adjusted gross income perincome tax return filed, $52,735, but withrespect to average charitable contributionsdeducted per income tax return filed,Washington was fourteenth with an

absence of a tax coupled with the absenceof the corresponding exemption works. Itis true that nonprofit organizations inWashington are not offered a blanketexemption from either the sales and usetax or the business and occupation tax,and it is not clear to what extent nonprof-it organizations actually understand—and therefore take advantage of—theparticular tax exemptions for which theydo qualify. (These issues are discussed fur-ther in Chapter VIII.)

While we were unable to conduct acomplete analysis of the development of nonprofit organizations in Washingtonas compared to elsewhere, we were ableto look at some limited data. IRS Form990 must be filed by many nonprofitorganizations, and nonprofit arts andcultural organizations can be separatedout of the data that these forms generate.What do these data tell us about whetherWashington is more or less endowed withnonprofit arts and cultural organizationsthan other states?

Table I.1 summarizes these data forWashington, for four other states withsimilar populations, and for the UnitedStates as a whole for 1999. Washington ishigher than the national average withrespect to organizational density by popu-lation: 10.4 arts and cultural organizationsper 100,000 residents as compared to a

Table I.1: Density of Arts and Cultural Organizations — Washington Compared to Other States of Similar Size

Arts and Arts andArts and Cultural Cultural

Area Cultural Organizations Organizations Population (square Organizations per 100,000 per 1,000

(2000) miles) (1999) population square miles

Indiana 6,080,485 35,870.18 462 7.6 12.9

Massachusetts 6,349,097 7,837.98 1,000 15.8 127.6

Missouri 5,595,211 68,898.01 418 7.5 6.1

Tennessee 5,689,283 41,219.52 322 5.7 7.8

Washington 5,894,121 66,581.95 614 10.4 9.2

United States 281,421,906 3,536,341.73 24,575 8.7 6.9

Note: This table includes only “reporting public charities” that filed IRS Form 990 and were required to do so. Thefollowing were excluded: foreign organizations, government-associated organizations, and organizations withoutstate identifiers. Organizations not required to report include religious congregations and organizations with lessthan $25,000 in gross receipts.

Source: National Center for Charitable Statistics, State Profiles, http://nccs.urban.org/states.htm.

9 National Center forCharitable Statistics, “Profilesof Individual CharitableContributions by State,1999,” Appendix A(Washington, D.C.: TheUrban Institute, 2001).

10 We are grateful to DonTaylor, revenue analysismanager, Research Division,Washington StateDepartment of Revenue,for this insight. E-mailcorrespondence with theauthors, July 29, 2003.

11 Kelly Barsdate of theNational Assembly of StateArts Agencies characterizesthis situation in WashingtonState as “the exceptionrather than the rule amongstate arts agencies:

“A handful of states arelegally prohibited from giv-ing grant awards to individ-ual artists (Washington,New York Missouri, Texas,and Oklahoma)…. [M]ostof those states have foundother mechanisms—includ-ing regranting or other part-nership mechanisms—tofacilitate the delivery ofartist support. Oklahomaand Missouri are on the listof ‘non-general-operating-support’ states, as well. Soit’s possible that there arealso some legal parameters

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factor in providing incentives to thecreation of nonprofit organizations.

The referendum process inWashington makes it moredifficult to pursue long-termpolicy initiatives.

Citizen referenda, particularly tax limitreferenda, have a further influence onpolicy. Not only do they limit theresources that are available, they alsoincrease the uncertainty attached to policyplanning for the future. Our intervieweessuggested that in the 1980s there was agood deal more flexibility in state govern-ment. Now the State of Washington ismore tied up because of the effects ofvarious referenda that have been passedby the voters and the threat of new ones.This is seen as reflecting a more generalanti-government attitude, an attitude thatalso would seek to limit the boundaries of state policy.

State agencies can only contractfor services or products; theycannot provide unrestrictedgrants or general operatingsupport.

Article VIII, Section V of the WashingtonState constitution says, “The credit of thestate shall not, in any manner be given orloaned to, or in aid of, any individual,association, company or corporation.”The way in which the Washington StateSupreme Court has interpreted this clausehas led to a set of practices that differsfrom many other states.11 State moneycannot be used for unrestricted grants orfor general operating support. Thus, forexample, the Washington State ArtsCommission cannot give a grant. It has to write contracts for services to be paidon a reimbursement basis. Expenses have to be incurred before they can bereimbursed. This also has the effect ofprohibiting the use of state money forfellowships to individual artists to supporttheir careers; federal money has been usedfor this purpose (and continues to be inthe Folk Arts Program), but state moneycannot be used in this way. WSAC avoidsthis complication by channeling much of

average of $1,024. With respect to thepercentage of gross income devoted todeductible charitable contributions, Wash-ington was in the third lowest quartile ofstates—an average of 1.9 percent ofadjusted gross income was devoted todeductible charitable contributions (wellbelow the national average of 2.1 percent).9

But an important (partial) explanation ofthis difference may lie in the intersectionof American tax reform and the unusualstructure of taxation in WashingtonState.10 The federal Tax Reform Act of1986 had a rather particular effect inWashington. As part of this effort at tax reform, Congress disallowed thededuction of retail sales taxes for house-holds that itemize their federal income tax deductions, while continuing to allowthe itemization of state personal incometaxes. Because Washington relies veryheavily on the sales tax—the highestdegree of reliance in the country—andbecause Washington has no income tax,the result of this change in the TaxReform Act was that many fewer upperincome households in Washington foundit advantageous to itemize their deduc-tions on their federal income tax forms;they now simply take the standard deduc-tion. Since charitable contributions arealso one of the expenditures that qualifyfor itemization, the federal incentive for asignificant proportion of Washington resi-dents to make such (deductible) contribu-tions simply disappeared.

A fuller inquiry into the relative supply ofnonprofit organizations and their supportwould have to consider a number ofother factors not directly linked to thepresence or generosity of tax incentives:the fact that smaller organizations do notshow up in the Form 990 data, the factthat there are other organizations that wewould consider to be “cultural” that arenot categorized in the Form 990 data as“arts and culture,” the fact that nonprofitorganizations are likely to be older, onaverage, in eastern states than in westernstates and have therefore had greateropportunity to develop, and the fact thatdirect government aid may also be a 15


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Republicans were the cultural progressivesand the Democrats were the culturalconservatives. This is less true today. Butthe result is that it is not only difficult topredict the Legislature’s commitment tocultural policy, it is also difficult to predictan individual legislator’s commitment byhis or her political affiliation. In the endthis commitment among Washington’slegislators has more to do with personalexperience than with partisan politics.Generally it has been easier to gain sup-port for heritage policy than for artspolicy or humanities policy as legislatorsfind showcasing the history of the statean attractive thing to support. Yet, manyof the individuals whom we interviewedexpressed the concern that the number of legislators committed to cultural policyis dwindling.

On MethodologyThough extensive, our methodology has not been particularly complicated.Nevertheless, a few remarks are in order.Our data come from four sources: inter-views, legislation, policy and programdocuments, and budgets.

We conducted approximately one hundredand seventy interviews in two phases. (Alist of the interviews that we conducted iscontained in the Appendices.) The firstphase focused on individuals who wereparticularly knowledgeable about statecultural policy. Most of these were staffof state agencies, but we also interviewedjournalists who cover the arts and culture,state legislators, and other individualswhom we had reason to believe wereparticularly knowledgeable about one oranother aspect of state cultural policy.The second phase was to have been focusedon targets of state cultural policy—offices, organizations, and individualswhose behavior was to be shaped bycultural policy in one way or another—and we were able to interview many suchindividuals, but as our inquiries led tomore and more pockets of cultural policyin state agencies we found that we had toexpand our first round of interviews toinclude these as well.

its direct support to artists through ArtistTrust, an independent, private, nonprofitorganization.

Whether this is a good or bad thingdepends upon with whom you speak.On the one hand, there is greateraccountability in the support system—taxpayer money is less likely to find itsway into dark holes—and recipientorganizations know that they have to haveother sources of income in order tomanage their cash flow. To some thisseems appropriate, providing a test ofbroader support, but to others this seemsunnecessarily bureaucratic, ignoring thefact that many cultural organizations aresmall and without the substantialresources that would allow them to paytheir bills up front while waiting forreimbursement.

There is one way in which WashingtonState may be more typical of manyAmerican states, but this attribute mayhave unforeseen implications for cultural policy:

Politically, the state is quitepolarized. Both the House andthe Senate are basically splitalong party lines, making it diffi-cult to move in any particularpolicy direction.

Many American states have split legislativecontrol, often with a relatively even splitacross both houses between Democratsand Republicans, and many have a gover-nor who is of a different party than themajority of its legislators. In such a cir-cumstance, the Legislature tends not toprovide a strong or clear policy direction.Legislators may tend to be risk adverseand unwilling to go out on a limb.

In Washington, this balance is, to a largedegree, reflective of geography: Republi-cans tend to come from the eastern partof the state and Democrats from thewest, with Republican legislators now also being elected from the suburbs in the west. Interestingly, within the memoryof most adults, particularly during theadministration of Governor Daniel Evans(1965-1977), Washington’s moderate

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shaping their decisions about both kinds of grantfunding…. New Mexico isconstitutionally prohibited fromusing the term general operat-ing support, but they have been resourceful and found amechanism that essentiallyaccomplishes the same thingunder a different name…. Butagain, this is rare. There areonly a few states…that don’taward operating support ofsome form or another. Thosechoices are not necessarilyabout state legal restrictions,but…about how the agencydecides its thin resources canbe used most strategically.Depending on your state’sneeds and environment, generaloperating support may or maynot be part of the answer tothe question, Where can ourdollars have the greatest impactand critical mass? Maine is theclassic example here…. And afinal wrinkle… some otherstates may have legal restric-tions pertaining to theirexpenditure of state funds toindividuals (artists). There maybe states that are happily com-plying with those mandates by using federal funding (orsome other financial source) to support their artists andoperating awards.”

E-mail correspondence withthe authors, October 7, 2002.

There are two aspects of our interviews,however, that need to be kept in mind.We have wondered from time to time ifwe were getting mostly positive spin inour interviews. At least one intervieweedrew this distinction explicitly, telling usthat she would tell us only what she couldsay. It is only natural that intervieweeswish to put their (and their agency’s) bestfoot forward. Where possible we tried totriangulate on what we were hearing, ask-ing the same or related questions to avariety of individuals. Often, we receivedrather candid responses. We would like tothink that our status as “outsiders” withno local political agenda allowed ourinterviewees to interact with us moreopenly. When we completed a full draft ofthis report, we sent it to twenty of the keyindividuals whom we had interviewed aswell as to our project advisory board,and the comments we received and therevisions we made provided anotherround of such triangulation.

A second factor also deserves mention.There was some variability across agencieswith respect to whom we were able tointerview. In a very few cases, we werenot able to set up interviews with theheads of agencies or offices. Thisundoubtedly affected what we have heard,though it is hard to tell exactly how. Inone case, we were able to talk to theagency head but were unable to speakwith program staff, so our coverage is lessthan we might have liked. Still, we believethat we have accomplished what we setout to accomplish.

The Internet aided our investigation of legislation, documents, and budgetsconsiderably. Five years ago such aninquiry would have been much more diffi-cult than it is today thanks to the wide-spread and immediate availability of thesesources of information in digital form.We were astonished by how much wecould learn before ever going into thefield. Our research assistants were able toassemble briefing books that containedinformation on each of the agencies andmany of the programs that we needed tointerview. On-line directories of stategovernment (access.wa.gov) and on-line compilations of state legislation(available through the state library’swebsite) helped considerably. Much ofour correspondence was via e-mail, whichmeant that the laborious task of settingup and confirming field interviews wasgreatly simplified.

The research team met before and aftereach phase of the project in order to dis-cuss what we had been finding and toconsider our next steps. These meetingswere among the most interesting researchmeetings in which any of us have had theprivilege to participate. We hope that wehave captured a good measure of thosediscussions and debates in this document.

The project has been advised by a projectadvisory board, which was convened atthe outset of the project to help in itsdesign and which has provided advicealong the way as we have encounteredone or another difficulty.

But most of the credit is due to our inter-viewees. They willingly took time out oftheir busy schedules to do something thatthey normally have precious little time todo: sit back and reflect on their practice.We were welcomed into many corners ofWashington State government, thoughoften our gracious hosts were puzzled asto why we were there: “Just what do Ihave to do with cultural policy?” We hopethat we have given them good reason tosee themselves as components of Wash-ington’s cultural policy. 17


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A Guide for the ReaderThe organization of the remainder of thisreport is atypical. We present our broadfindings first in Chapter II. We then turnto a structured discussion of the individ-ual agencies, offices, departments, andprograms whose collective work comprisesthe cultural policy of the State ofWashington. Though our main task wasmapping to understand the ecology ofcultural policy action in Washington, muchof the information that we gathered wasin the form of assessments of variousagencies and their initiatives. We discussthese cultural policy entities and reportthese assessments over the course of sixchapters in order to give a fuller pictureof the policy options that have beentaken and those that have not.

Chapters III, IV and V focus, respectively,on the arts, the humanities, and the her-itage. In each case we discuss first theprimary vehicles of state cultural policyfollowed by a less detailed presentation ofthe other components. In order to presentthe material in this manner, we have hadto make some compromises. It is notalways easy to discern whether an agencyor a program falls into the arts, thehumanities, or the heritage. Others mightreasonably have made different choicesfrom the ones we have made.

In each case the primary entities arediscussed in some detail: organizationalstructure, profile of programs, the con-straints they confront, the degree towhich their work is shaped by outside(non-state) mandates, the degree to whichthey are free to shape the parameters ofstate cultural policy within their ownoperations, collaboration with/bridges toother agencies, organizations, and pro-grams, and evidence of effectiveness. Ineach of these chapters we also discuss thewide variety of other entities that areinvolved in that subfield of cultural policy.

Chapters VI, VII, and VIII evidence threeother non-disciplinary ways of organizingcultural policy. Chapter VI takes a ratherdifferent cut at describing cultural policyin the State of Washington. Because of

On MoneyWith respect to budgets, money is impor-tant and money is tight. Everyone wouldlike more, and there may be good argu-ments for increased resources, but wehave tried to steer our inquiry away frompure monetary issues. Indeed, much ofany such discussion has been renderedmoot by recent budget cuts in Washing-ton. Nevertheless, we are interested inrelative allocation of budgets, as thatreveals something about relative priorities.

It is very tempting in an exercise such asthis one to ask, “What is the total amountof money spent by the State of Washing-ton on cultural policy?” Such a calculationis relatively easy for the cultural offices,departments, and programs that are 100 percent dedicated to activities thatcome within the realm of cultural policy,and these entities are certainly key ele-ments in state cultural policy in Washing-ton, but there are many more entities forwhich it is nearly impossible to separateout expenditures that can be clearlylabeled as “cultural”—it is clear thatcultural policy is an element in theSalmon Recovery Project within theWashington State Parks and RecreationCommission, for example, but what por-tion? Moreover, it is also tempting to addin the value of tax savings that are theresult of various tax exemptions andconcessions, but, as is pointed out inChapter VIII, tax savings to one entity do not necessarily result in lower revenueto the state. They may be made up else-where as the tax system adjusts to theoffering of special provisions.

Thus, we have resisted the temptation tocalculate a grand total (and to then com-pare that grand total in a league table withother states, which would entail similarproblems for whatever state one wishedto investigate).

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making particular reference to the schol-arly literatures on state government andon cultural policy.

A Research AgendaAs the first such excursion into statecultural policy in the United States, weexpect that this report will raise far morequestions than it will answer. But we alsohope that it might launch a more ambi-tious research agenda. We would be verypleased if this project were to provide abase upon which to develop tools,approaches, and methodologies that couldlater be used for cross-state comparisonof a broader set of carefully selectedstates. And we would be even morepleased if it were to enable policy actorsin other states to compare their experi-ences and to learn from these results andapply them to their own policies.

We would expect to find that culturalpolicies vary across states, reflecting arange of ideas about what constitutes“culture,” about what the role of stategovernment ought to be in fostering andnurturing the arts and culture, and aboutwhat the concrete aims of cultural policyought to be. We would also expect toobserve interesting variation across thestates in the means chosen to implementpolicy goals. And, finally, we would expectto observe interesting and informativevariation in effectiveness.

Yet, at the same time, we would alsoexpect to find elements of considerablesimilarity across states. Such similaritymight derive from an agency in one stateconsciously modeling itself after a sisteragency in another state, or it might be theresult of regional collaboration acrossstate boundaries in which similar modesof policy implementation are adopted forconsistency. National organizations suchas the National Assembly of State ArtsAgencies or the Federation of StateHumanities Councils and regional organi-zations such as the Western State ArtsFederation or the New EnglandFoundation for the Arts foster this typeof cross-state learning. Focusing on such

the historic importance of the environ-ment and environmental policy inWashington and because of the linksbetween heritage and the environment,it turns out that much of what can becharacterized as “cultural policy” inWashington takes place under the auspicesof what might be termed the “land-basedagencies,” those agencies that in one wayor another are concerned with the naturalresources of the state and with the preser-vation or development of the naturalenvironment. But these agencies also havemoved into the other domains of culturalpolicy, often in interesting ways.

Chapter VII focuses on the role of NativeAmerican tribes in cultural policy at thestate level in Washington. It appears justafter the chapters on state heritage policyand on the contribution of the land-basedagencies to state cultural policy becausethe protection and preservation of eachtribe’s cultural resources in the natural andbuilt environment comprise much of theircultural policy concerns.

Chapter VIII backs away from stateagencies, departments, and programs toseveral other, more hidden influences onstate cultural policy. The first section ofthe chapter looks at the taxation structureof the State of Washington and docu-ments the ways in which special dedicatedtaxes help pay for cultural policy and theways in which special tax concessionsprovide a measure of support to variouscultural goals, activities, and organizations.This chapter then turns to a discussion ofthe Nonprofit Facilities Program of theWashington State Housing Finance Com-mission. It concludes with a discussion of the Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund (CCA), which, although aprivate nonprofit organization with littlerecognizable role in formal state policy,exerts a palpable influence on policy andon the state’s cultural agencies. Many ofour interviewees argued that we had totake account of the influence of CCA in mapping state cultural policy inWashington.

This report concludes with a discussionof the future of state cultural policy,

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questions would help in developing anunderstanding of institutional learning instate cultural policy.

Taken together, such observations wouldsuggest a rich set of further researchquestions to explore. The fifty experi-ments in cultural policy embodied in theaccumulated experiences of the fiftystates offer a mostly untapped resource of information that would be of consid-erable practical use to the field. Inquiriesinto state level cultural policy could assistin identifying “smart practices,”12 innova-tive programs and innovative structureswithin which innovative programs can be incubated. In other words, an inquiryinto state level cultural policy is likely tobe a “variety generator,” pointing topossibilities and suggesting a variety ofapproaches not previously considered.13

At the same time, it is quite likely that one would discover that it is possible tocharacterize the policy variation acrossfifty states not as fifty different policyapproaches but rather more succinctly asvariants on a much smaller number ofbasic approaches. Such an attempt atcategorization might actually serve as a“variety reducer,” helping to identify a setof fundamentally different approachesand to distinguish them from variants ofthe basic approaches; this would have theadvantage of highlighting the actual degreesof freedom that have been taken advan-tage of in the implementation of statecultural policy across the United States.

12 Eugene Bardach makes animportant distinctionbetween “best practices”and “smart practices.” He isrightfully skeptical of identi-fying best practices that willtranscend a wide variety oflocal conditions. Rather,he urges a focus on smartpractices, which build uponlocal knowledge and localconditions to create a betterpolicy fit. Eugene Bardach,A Practical Guide for PolicyAnalysis: The Eightfold Path toMore Effective Problem Solving(New York: Chatham HousePublishers, 2000).

13 The phrases “varietygenerator” and “varietyreducer” are borrowed fromChristopher Hood, The Toolsof Government (Chatham, NJ:Chatham House Publishers,1986), 115.

1 One set of exceptions maywell be found among thosestates that organize theircultural agencies under thedirection of a single culturalcommissioner, but ourexperience in Washingtonsuggests that even in thesestates one would find a widevariety of cultural programsoutside of the agencies thatare directly under the com-missioner’s influence.

Main FindingsJ. Mark Schuster

Chapter II

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used this phrase quite self-consciouslyinstead of the more prosaic “conclusions”or “cross-cutting themes” because we arequite aware of the fact that in trying togeneralize from the many interviews wehave conducted and from the documentswe have read, we have had to interpret andrepresent the cultural policy of the State ofWashington. We have brought our owninterests and perspectives to bear, and wehave chosen, both explicitly and implicitly,to highlight certain aspects of what wehave seen and to allow others to slip intothe background. Any such report, nomatter how careful, no matter howscrupulous, can only, in the end, offer aset of representations of the situationunder consideration. Others might look at the same data and come to a differentunderstanding, or they might insist thatthe data upon which we have focused areinappropriate to the task at hand, citinginstead other data from other sourcesthan those that we have tapped. Wewelcome the multiple interpretations thatcan be made and the multiple stories that canbe told from the material at hand.

The Ecology of StateCultural PolicyWhat is the institutional ecology ofcultural policy in Washington State? Howdoes this ecology operate?

These turned out not to be simple ques-tions to answer. Partly, this was becausethe cultural policy ecology of Washingtonis made up of a rich mix of state agencies,offices, programs, private nonprofitorganizations, and individuals whoseactions when aggregated make up thesum of cultural policy in the state; andpartly it was because of the indirect,

Our intent in conducting an “assessment”of cultural policy in one state was not toprovide a highly detailed evaluation ofeach component and each program withinthe cultural policy system of that state—it is difficult enough to evaluate any singleprogram and nearly impossible to evaluatethem all simultaneously. Rather, it was toprovide an overview of the opportunities,issues, and constraints that arise when onetries to infer the cultural policy that isunfolding at the state level. In the laterchapters of this report we will turn to amore detailed discussion of many of thecultural policy partners and their programsoperating at the state level in Washington,but here we turn first to a discussion ofthe main points that have emerged fromour research.

In this chapter we summarize the broadfindings of our inquiry into state culturalpolicy in the State of Washington. Whileour focus is on Washington, we believethat many of our findings are not uniqueto Washington but, rather, are morebroadly indicative of much of currentcultural policy at the sub-national levelthroughout the United States. We cannotsay this with complete certainty, ofcourse, because an equivalent inquiry hasnot been conducted for other states, butwe would be quite surprised to find morethan a few states with starkly differentcultural policy models.1

We discuss our findings in two mainsections. The first considers the overallecology of cultural policy in the State ofWashington: Who are the main actors?How do they interact? Where do theleverage points of influence seem to lie?

The second section focuses on what wehave come to call “storylines.” We have

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created because state agencies have cometo the realization that they are responsiblefor some component of the culturalresources of the state. All of these incli-nations lead to an implicit cultural policyof the state that goes well beyond “theusual suspects” to surprising corners ofthe state’s bureaucratic apparatus.

The Governor’s Policy StaffIf there is one place that might be expectedto be a locus of cultural policy, it wouldbe within the governor’s policy staff. Thisstaff, built around staff from the Officeof Financial Management and thegovernor’s Executive Policy Office andincluding the governor’s deputy chiefof staff, is responsible for communicatingpolicy initiatives from the governor’soffice to state agencies, assessing policyinitiatives emerging from the Legislaturein consultation with line agencies, andcommunicating to the governor policyinitiatives being introduced by the agencies.

From our early interviews, it became clearthat “state cultural policy” as a conceptualidea had little meaning among thegovernor’s policy staff. This in itself wasnot surprising, because the idea of cul-tural policy has not yet gained currency inthe United States. What was surprising,however, was the willingness with whichthe policy staff engaged in a conversationwith us about the idea of a “cultural policy.”It was clear to them that, though they hadto deal with cultural issues of one sort oranother on an ongoing basis, they wereforced to do so in a disjointed way—noone had articulated a coordinated visionof what the State of Washington was try-ing to accomplish with disparate programs.

Although individual staff members in thegovernor’s policy staff are designated asthe point person for various of the culturalagencies, the agency heads whom weinterviewed reported little or no contactwith their governor’s office contact per-sons. The most concrete example we weregiven was when the policy staff called theWashington State Arts Commission toascertain its view on a recent legislativeproposal to create the position of poet

out-of-view nature of much policy. Themetaphor of “mapping state cultural policy”that we have used to describe this projectperhaps suggested that we were settingout on a straightforward technical task. Itmost assuredly was not.

Cultural Policy Entities in WashingtonOur first forays into Washington govern-ment directories and on-line resources ledto a lengthy list of policy entities that hadto be accounted for in any map of Washing-ton’s cultural policy. It was clear, of course,that there were a number of key agencies,agencies that one would expect to be atthe center of cultural policy in any state:the Washington State Arts Commission;the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation; the Washington Commissionfor the Humanities (recently renamedHumanities Washington)—a private non-profit organization which, we wouldargue, functions as a surrogate for statehumanities policy; and the WashingtonState historical societies—private non-profit organizations designated as“trustee” agencies of the state, whichbridge the heritage and the humanities.But, it turned out that there were more,many more.

Table II.1 lists the agencies, organizations,and programs that we have identified asplaying a role in state cultural policy inWashington. By our count, the listincludes over sixty agencies, organizations,and programs involved in one componentor another of state cultural policy.2 Theextent to which cultural programs can befound throughout state government is,perhaps, surprising. Many of these pro-grams have grown up not because of adesire to aid the cultural life of the statedirectly, but because state agencies (andthe legislation that controls them) wanttheir activities to be culturally sensitive,either through paying due attention tocultural resources that might be impactedby state projects or through administeringstate programs in a way that is sensitive to the culture of specific target groups.Others of these programs have been

2 The actual count depends on how one wishes to splitthe programs and where oneultimately decides to drawthe boundary.

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Chapter II: Main Findings

Table II.1: State Cultural Policy Entities in Washington

Office of the Governor Governor’s Policy Group: Office of FinancialManagement, Governor’s Executive Policy Office, andDeputy Chief of StaffBlue Ribbon Arts TaskforceWashington Reading CorpsAdvisory Council on Historic PreservationPuget Sound Water Quality Action Team

State LegislatureHeritage Caucus

Washington State Arts Commission

Washington State Historical Society (private nonprofit organization functioning as a trustee agency)

Washington State History MuseumWSHS Research CenterState Capital MuseumHeritage Resource CenterCapital Projects Fund for Washington’s Heritage

Eastern Washington State Historical Society/Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture

(private nonprofit organization functioning as a trustee agency)

Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development

Building for the Arts Program, Office of CommunityDevelopmentOffice of Archaeology & Historic Preservation, Office of Community DevelopmentOffice of Trade & Economic Development

Downtown Revitalization Program (Main Street Program)Tourism DevelopmentRural Tourism DevelopmentFilm Office

Humanities Washington (private nonprofit organization functioning as a policy surrogate)

Office of the Secretary of StateState Archives and Records ManagementRegional ArchivesOral History ProgramState Library

Washington State Parks and Recreation CommissionResource Stewardship Program including Archeologyand Interpretive ServicesCultural Resources Management Policy/CulturalResources Action PlanFort Worden/CentrumCama Beach ProjectSalmon Recovery Project

Department of TransportationHeritage Corridors Program

Department of Fish and WildlifeWatchable Wildlife Program

Other Signatories to the Memo of Understanding/Interagency Agreement on Cultural Tourism

Department of Natural ResourcesInteragency Committee for Outdoor Recreation

Office of the Superintendent of Public InstructionCurriculum and Instruction, Visual and Performing Arts

Washington State Colleges and UniversitiesCultural Facilities with External Missions, for example:

University of Washington: Burke Museum of NaturalHistory and Culture, Henry Art Gallery, Meany Hallfor the Performing Arts, Simpson Center for theHumanitiesThe Evergreen State College: Longhouse Educationand Cultural Center, Evergreen Gallery

Washington State University Cooperative Extension Service

Department of Revenue/Office of the State TreasurerRevenues for Distribution

Convention and Trade Center TaxHotel-Motel Special Excise Tax (Transient Lodging Tax)Hotel-Motel Tax (Stadium Tax)Local Sales and Use TaxMaritime Historic Preservation

Tax Exemptions

TVW (state cable television station)

Department of AgricultureCommodities Commissions (e.g., Wine Commission,Apple Commission, Fruit Commission)Fairs Commission

Housing Finance CommissionNon-Profit Facilities Financing

Native American TribesTwenty-nine federally recognized tribes functioning assovereign governments.Tribal Liaisons in State AgenciesTribal Historic Preservation Officers operating in parallelwith State Historic Preservation Officer Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs

Washington State Commission on African-American Affairs

Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs

Washington State Commission on Hispanic Affairs

Washington Center for the Book (private nonprofit organization functioning as a policy surrogate)

The Center for Columbia River History (an unincorporated consortium)

Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund (private nonprofit functioning as a united arts fund)

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The LegislatureThe Legislature can be a second locus ofstate cultural policy, especially in a statewith a relatively weak governor. InWashington, the Legislature has mani-fested two divergent trends. On the onehand, in crafting and passing legislation tocreate state cultural agencies or programs,it has often included wording that makesreference to the cultural resources of thestate. Thus, the Legislature seems to becognizant of the importance of culturalresources while visibly stating its intentionto protect and nurture them. On theother hand, much of the legislation thathas been passed has focused on specificprograms that are favorites of particularmembers of the Legislature. But becausethese programs are not generally designedwithin the grain of an overall policy, theyoften end up awkwardly located withinthe state’s bureaucracy or poorly coordi-nated with other, related programs.Nonetheless, the Legislature establishesthe rules within which cultural programsare implemented, provides incentives forparticular types of behavior, and appro-priates funding for these initiatives.

Because of the lack of a centrally coordi-nated policy and because of the impor-tance of the Legislature, lobbyists canhave substantial influence on the conductof cultural policy, turning that policy toadvantage certain styles of programs andcertain types of recipients over others.

The Cultural Policy ConversationWith strong leadership from neither thegovernor’s office nor the Legislature,cultural policy in Washington has evolvedinto a horizontally organized system ofmany disparate and loosely connectedactors. With notable exceptions, there is a rather low level of cooperation amongthe primary policy entities. In a systemwith so many policy actors it is perhapssurprising that there is little duplication,but there is substantial opportunity forcoordination. We were impressed timeand time again with how little one policyentity knew about what the others were

laureate for the State of Washington. Theresult is that the policy staff ends upoffering technical assistance temperedwith a bit of political advice rather thanpolicy guidance, and there is no one inthis office with an overview of whatmight be termed the “cultural portfolio.”

The paths through which the culturalagencies report to the governor and theLegislature differ rather substantially. TheWashington State Arts Commission, onthe one hand, theoretically reports to thegovernor through the deputy chief ofstaff, who is responsible for the “smallagencies.”3 This isolates the commissionfrom the center of power, which, depend-ing on one’s perspective, has been con-strued as an advantage and also as asubstantial disadvantage. By contrast, theOffice of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation reports up through severallevels of the Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development fromwhat it sees as a disadvantageous position.On the other hand, the Washington StateHistorical Society, by virtue of its hybridstatus as both a state trustee agency and aprivate nonprofit organization appears tohave access most directly to the Legis-lature and to the secretary of state, whohas often been a supporter of heritageand history programs.

One implication may be that a privatenonprofit organization—albeit one withofficial state trustee status—has an advan-tage over state agencies in the competi-tion for state attention and state fundsbecause it can deploy the volunteer mem-bers of its board of trustees as represen-tatives of, and advocates for, theorganization, while lobbying from thepaid staff of a state agency is interpretedas being more self interested. Commis-sions, with their volunteer, appointedcommissioners, would fall in the middleof this scale of influence. It is also worthnoting that an agency operating in theheritage field also may have an advantagewith the Legislature, because it is in thisfield (rather than in the arts and humani-ties) that it is easiest to forge a politicalconsensus.

3 This position has beenvacant for some time.

4 One clear exception isCentrum, which is a jointinitiative of the WashingtonState Arts Commission, theWashington State Parks andRecreation Commission,and the Office of theSuperintendent of PublicInstruction.

cultural agencies are overseen by commis-sioners and commissions who monitorand shape the direction of the agenciesthat they oversee. These intermediate lev-els of influence can work to modify theintent of the governor or the Legislatureor can even insert other goals and objec-tives into the cultural policy process.

The term “policy conversation” on theother hand has been used to characterizethose communication links in the systemfor which the essential link is in the form of information flow between the twoentities. This might take the form of aunidirectional flow of information, as itdoes from policy targets to lobbyists tothe Legislature, or it might take more ofthe form of a reciprocal conversation.

The relative strength of the communica-tions links is depicted by the width of thearrows. While various commissioners andthe Legislature have, perhaps, the mostdirect influence on state cultural policy, ina number of cases the federal governmenthas even more influence. Generally, thisinfluence is exerted through federalmandates accompanied by federal grantsthat require a state match. The federalinfluence is particularly manifest in theoperations of the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation, whose activitiesand programs are closely tied to federalmandates and directives, but it is alsomanifest to some extent within theWashington State Arts Commission—some of the money they receive is tied toparticular federal goals and initiatives,though most is in the form of generalmatching support. The money thatHumanities Washington receives from theNational Endowment for the Humanities,on the other hand, is essentially unrestricted.

A number of the state’s cultural policyprograms are operated through whatmight be termed “surrogate cultural agen-cies,” non-state agencies that are enlistedto oversee, administer, and occasionallyrun cultural programs on behalf of thestate agencies. This is particularly true forthe Washington State Arts Commission,which supports certain programs throughArtist Trust and Arts Northwest and

doing. Often they lamented the fact thatthey were not cooperating because itseemed clear to them—and to us—thatcooperation could lead to even moreimpressive programmatic initiatives.

Yet, more than a few of the agency staffthat we interviewed pointed out animportant attribute of collaboration:Collaboration requires the investment ofagency resources, resources that are oftenalready quite limited. Thus, trading offcurrent activities in exchange for thepotential value that might come fromcollaboration is, at times, a difficult choiceto make; thus, we frequently heard com-ments such as, “Taking on something new is likely to limit my capacity to meetcurrent expectations.”

Instead of policy development, it mightbe said that Washington is involved in a“policy conversation” in which multipleentities come into contact with oneanother, more often informally thanformally, to share information. We didfind a few examples of truly collaborativeprojects among the state’s cultural policyentities.4 But, we were more likely to findthem operating strictly independently,seemingly with the hope that that inde-pendence would solidify their claim onstate resources for their unique programs.In few places did we find a sense that the whole could be greater than the sumof its parts, though there are exceptions such as the collaboration around thebicentennial of the Lewis and Clarkexpedition.

Figure II.1 is a diagram of the key lines ofcommunication in cultural policy makingin Washington. Several key aspects of thepolicy conversation are captured here. Inthis diagram, the term “policy directive”has been used to indicate ways in whichone entity in the system directly affectsthe activities of another. Policy directivesmight include rules, mandatory programs,grants, incentives, even policy suggestions,but they indicate clear influence of oneentity over another. It is clear from thediagram that many of the policy directivesin this system are mediated through otheractors. So, for example, several of the 25


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nonexistent with only a very few excep-tions. If each of these policy areas werestronger and more highly articulated, onemight consider them to comprise thethree pillars of cultural policy inWashington.

The institutional structure of culturalpolicy differs across these three areasbecause the organizational structure ofthe primary responsible agency itselfdiffers. While state arts policy is adminis-tered primarily by the Washington StateArts Commission, a state agency (thoughone with an oversight commission, whichallows it a certain measure of independ-ence from state government), state heritagepolicy is administered by a mixture of theOffice of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, a state agency, and the hybridWashington State historical societies,which are nonprofit organizations withtrustee status; and state humanities policyis primarily the responsibility of a privatenonprofit organization. Interestingly, thetendency is in the opposite direction atthe county and local levels: the CulturalDevelopment Authority of King County(a public development authority whichrecently evolved out of the King CountyOffice of Cultural Resources) combinesall three areas, as does the Culture andTourism Division of the TacomaEconomic Development Department(with the notable addition of tourism)and the City of Vancouver’s CulturalServices office.

Cultural Policy and Environmental PolicyAn important way in which state culturalpolicy in Washington differs from thecultural policy of other states is in itslinks to the environment. Because thenatural environment and the land featureprominently in the public’s conception ofWashington’s cultural resources, unusuallinkages are being made and cultural proj-ects are popping up in surprising placeswithin state agencies. The land-basedagencies—Parks and Recreation, NaturalResources, Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife,and Transportation—are all involved in

which is responsible for the creation andongoing operation of Centrum, a non-profit center for the arts and creativeeducation. The state historical societiesmight also be thought of as surrogatecultural agencies, though their privilegedposition as trustee agencies of the statemeans that they oversee their own pro-grams and policies rather than implementthe policies of other agencies. In a way,Humanities Washington can also beviewed as a surrogate agency, though it isquite independent from the state, launch-ing and running its own programs from anonprofit base. Indeed, it has made anexplicit decision not to seek state support,even though this is the norm in otherstates. Even so, one might wish to con-strue the mutual decision not to have adirect relationship between the state andHumanities Washington as a manifesta-tion of a type of state policy.

What Figure II.1 makes clear is that theweb of cultural policy communicationand directives involves a number of indi-viduals, agencies, and entities. As a result,very little of cultural policy in the State ofWashington is conducted through pro-grams designed and run by state agenciesthemselves. Cultural policy is generally,though not exclusively, focused on a set oftargets outside of government, whosebehavior that policy is intended to influence.

Several other points about the ecology ofcultural policy in the State of Washingtondeserve to be emphasized, though theyare not revealed in the depiction ofFigure II.1.

Arts Policy, Humanities Policy,and Heritage PolicyWhile we have tried to view culturalpolicy as an analytic whole, we have foundthat it has been useful to distinguishbetween arts policy, humanities policy,and heritage policy. These divisions corre-spond fairly well to the organizationalstructure behind cultural policy in theState of Washington. If policy conversa-tion and cooperation within each of theseareas is only weakly developed, policyconversation across these areas is nearly 27


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StorylinesIn this section we summarize the mainstorylines that form the bulk of our con-clusions. We have tried to restrict this sec-tion to storylines that cut across theagencies, organizations, institutions, andprograms that make up the ecology ofcultural policy. Findings that relate to par-ticular policy entities are reported in theirrespective chapters.

Washington does not have a single articulated culturalpolicy. Yet, even though this is the case, there are pockets of articulation that result from a variety of causes.

It was clear from the outset that we wouldnot find a document entitled The CulturalPolicy of the State of Washington on a shelfin any state office. In the United Statesthe articulation of an overall state culturalpolicy has been the exception rather thanthe rule.5 But the articulation of policymay be even more difficult in Washingtonthan it is elsewhere.

Washington is characterized by a lack ofcentral influence on policy. Its system ofgovernment accords the governor rela-tively weak powers; he has only limitedinfluence over the budget, for example.Washington embraced the reforms of theProgressive Era and, as a result, makesconsiderable use of commissions to over-see various components of “state” policyand enlists the institutions of civil society(i.e., private nonprofit organizations) asprimary delivery agents. Moreover, thesuperintendent of public instruction andthe commissioner of public lands, both ofwhom play a role in cultural policy, andthe insurance commissioner are all inde-pendently elected, insulating them fromgubernatorial and legislative influencemore than in other states.

All of these factors make the articulationof policy more difficult in Washingtonthan it otherwise might be. As a result,policy articulation tends to occur only atmoments of crisis (e.g., Investing in the Arts,

policy with respect to cultural resources,though these policies are rarely linked tothe agencies of arts policy and humanitiespolicy and only rarely to the agencies ofheritage policy. Thus, there is considerableenergy and enthusiasm outside the main-stream cultural agencies, though this energyis not normally conceived of as a compo-nent of cultural policy. Accordingly, weconsider cultural policy in the land-basedagencies separately in Chapter VI.

Native American Tribes and State Cultural PolicyAnother distinctive feature of state culturalpolicy in Washington is the role played bythe Native American tribes. In Washingtonthere are twenty-nine federally recognizedNative American tribes. These tribesfunction as sovereign governments, andtherefore may have activities that can becharacterized as manifestations of culturalpolicy. Although the relationshipsbetween the tribes and the mainstreamstate cultural agencies are minimal (themain exceptions being in the Folk Artsprogram of the Washington State ArtsCommission and in programs of the Officeof Archaeology and Historic Preservationthat interact with tribal cultural resources),the non-cultural agencies generally havetribal liaisons who interact with the tribesand facilitate access to state programs.The largest tribes have tribal historicpreservation officers, who operate in par-allel with the state historic preservationofficer and undertake many of the sametasks that are delegated to the states underthe National Historic Preservation Act.The role of Native American tribes instate cultural policy in Washington isdiscussed further in Chapter VII.

5 Both Maine and Oregonhave made interesting stepsin this direction. There maywell be others as well.

In Washington there arediscernable differences between the implementation of “arts policy,” “humanitiespolicy,” and “heritage policy.”These differences contribute to the weak links among these domains.

One of the choices that is fundamental to the implementation of public policy isthe choice between implementing policydirectly through an agency of the state or indirectly through other actors in thesystem. In cultural policy, choices aremade between creating state owned andoperated museums or supporting privatenonprofit museums, between purchasingand maintaining heritage sites and build-ings or encouraging their preservation inprivate hands. Another choice is betweenmaking grants and providing supportwithin the confines of a government-designed program. In the United Statescultural policy has traditionally beendistinguished by the degree to which it isbased on a hands-off model of policysupport. Ownership and operation tendsto be shunned, and grants are generallypreferred over more directive programs.

In Washington, to the extent that it isarticulated at all, arts policy is almostexclusively articulated by the funder butimplemented by grantees. The Washing-ton State Arts Commission has few pro-grammatic initiatives of its own, choosing,instead, to serve as a pass-through agencyfor state grants. Operating in a verydifferent mode, the Washington StateHistorical Society implements a good dealof the state’s heritage policy itself, usingits funding for its own programs morethan for grants to other organizations orinstitutions. Yet, it is also true that moreand more of state heritage policy is actu-ally being implemented by the variousland-based agencies who are coming tothe realization that important culturalresources fall under their ownership andwithin their mandate. Humanities policytends to fall in-between these twoextremes, and a portion of heritage policy

19986), when it is mandated by federalrequirements (e.g., Historic PreservationWorking for Washington, 20007), or wheninfluential individuals and creative staffperceive opportunities and stimulate it(e.g., Cultural Resources Management Policy,20018). Even so, planning may have aconservative effect, working to maintainand defend the status quo and to protectthe budgets of the agencies in whichcultural policy is vested. Thus, policyarticulation can become a two-edgedsword: On the one hand, it can be protec-tive, but, on the other, if it results in anagency increasing its profile too substan-tially, it can be seen as risky.

In cultural policy there is yet anotherfactor that mitigates against policy articu-lation: the claim from the recipients (targets) of that policy that cultural policyought to be supportive of cultural devel-opment and creative expression but nottry to dictate or lead that course or, putanother way, that it ought to be reactiverather than proactive. The essential ideahere is that cultural policy ought to followthe development of the various culturalfields rather than lead it. It is certainlyclear that the recipients of the support of cultural policy would prefer this stateof affairs and lobby strongly to push thesystem in this direction. Debates onnational cultural policy, in particular,are imbued with this point of view. Butthis point of view, of course, calls intoquestion the reasons for having a publiccultural policy at all. Presumably all publicpolicy is intended to encourage, cajole, orotherwise pursue public benefits thatwould not otherwise occur in the absenceof government intervention through pub-lic policy and public programs.

To declare our bias, to us it seems clearthat policy articulation should be encour-aged and rewarded at the state level. Therecipe for strong state support of culturalpolicy would surely derive strength fromarticulated policy coupled with successfulimplementation.

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6 Governor’s Blue Ribbon ArtsTask Force, Investing in theArts: Recommendations toGovernor Locke on State Supportfor the Arts, August 1998.

7 Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, HistoricPreservation Working forWashington: The State HistoricPreservation Plan 2000, 1985.

8 Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission,Cultural Resources ManagementPolicy, November 2001.

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The Washington State Arts Commission,the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, the Building for the ArtsProgram, the Washington State HistoricalSociety, and Humanities Washington runthe gamut from a relatively independentstate agency, through an office locatedwithin a broader state agency, through awell-defined program located in the samestate agency, and a private nonprofitorganization designated by the Legislatureas a trustee agency of the state, to a com-pletely independent nonprofit organiza-tion with minimal ties to the state. Thus,each assumes a different stance withrespect to the subfield of policy withinwhich it operates.

Cultural policy has not beenclearly responsive to thediffering needs of the easternand the western parts of thestate, though humanities policyand heritage policy have beenmore conscious of thesedifferences than has arts policy.

One might expect the very real demo-graphic, geographic, and cultural differ-ences between the eastern and westernparts of the state (as well as the differ-ences between the urban and rural partsof the state) to be an important compo-nent of cultural policy in the State ofWashington. When, toward the end ofeach of our interviews, we asked for anoverall assessment of state cultural policyin Washington, the most frequent obser-vation was that policy was insufficientlysensitive to differences between east andwest. In its most extreme form, this obser-vation took the view that “Washington isreally two different states and should havetwo sets of policy institutions with dis-tinct policies and programs.”

Arts policy, which emphasizes artisticquality in its decision making, is arguablyless responsive to these differences thanthe other areas of policy. One commentthat we heard concerning the programs ofthe Washington State Arts Commissionwas that these programs tend to be “one-size-fits-all” in that they are not

overlaps with humanities policy wherehistory is concerned.

There are exceptions to these generaltrends, however. There is clear evidencethat the Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, one of the agenciesentrusted with heritage policy, would liketo move toward more implementation ofpolicy through grants feeling that thiswould be an area in which it could beconspicuously effective by funding modelprograms and key development initiatives.On the other hand, the arts side, despitesome clear successes with implementationof policy through programs (e.g. Centrumand parts of the Folk Arts Program),remains committed to a grants-based modeof operation. The most visible manifesta-tion of humanities policy is, arguably,Humanities Washington, which focuseson grants for programs rather than onongoing support of humanities organiza-tions or humanists. (It is, in a way, ananalogue to the arts commission). Bycontrast, the Washington State HistoricalSociety, which is a contributor to humani-ties policy as well as heritage policy, servesin an advisory capacity to a grants programand invests in the Center for ColumbiaRiver History (a program that operatesbeyond its own administrative boundaries)but focuses on its own programs.

In our view, it would seem useful periodi-cally to remind the policy agencies of thechoices they have made and to ask thequestion whether other options mightprove more effective in pursuing theircultural policy goals.

The five most visible manifesta-tions of state cultural policy inthe State of Washington span arange of organizational forms,suggesting that state culturalpolicy can be implementedthrough a variety of institutionalstructures that offer a labora-tory in which to study thedifference that organizationalstructure makes.9

9 David Nicandri, director ofthe Washington StateHistorical Society, pointedout that this statement is areformulation of theProgressive Era ideal thatstates should be the labora-tory for experimentation andthat one model does not fitall situations. Of course, suchdiversity of organizationalform is not a guarantee thatsuch experimentation willactually be undertaken.

10 There may also have been apolitical calculation that itwas easier to discern theboundaries of “heritage”than the boundaries of“culture.” Nevertheless, thecaucus did continue to con-sider matters that includedthe arts, the humanities, andmatters of culture morebroadly construed. There wasalso a time at which it wasproposed that the caucus bedesignated the “HistoryCaucus,” a designation thatmost would perceive asnarrower.

be more indicative of Washington thanmanifestations of contemporary culture.Legislators, for example, are more likelyto be allied with heritage interests thanwith arts or humanities interests. As aresult, increases in cultural policy activityand funding come particularly at momentsof pride and moments of memory—thecentennial of statehood, the bicentennialof the United States, the hosting of theGoodwill Games, the bicentennial of theLewis and Clark expedition, the SeattleWorld’s Fair. These moments have beencritical for building consensus around new commitments to cultural policy inWashington.

We came across one very concrete exampleof the primacy of heritage in culturalpolicy during our field research. With theassistance and ongoing staffing support of the Washington State HistoricalSociety, several legislators have formed aHeritage Caucus, which meets periodicallywhen the Legislature is in session. Thecaucus meets with representatives of awide range of cultural agencies andorganizations to discuss policy issues ofmutual interest. At some point it was pro-posed that the caucus be renamed the“Cultural Caucus” in order to bring awider set of concerns and interests underits purview, but the proposal was defeatedto keep heritage interests foremost in itsdeliberations.10

Heritage interests seem to have had moresuccess than the arts and humanities ingetting narrowly targeted legislation passed.The Surcharge for Preservation ofHistorical Documents and the specialprovision for making voluntary contribu-tions for maritime historic preservationand conservation activities as part ofregistering one’s boat (see the discussionof dedicated taxes in Chapter VIII) aretwo cases in point.

The upshot is that one needs to be partic-ularly vigilant about the pressures to movecultural policy toward heritage and preser-vation and away from contemporarycreation in both the arts and humanities.

particularly tuned to such differencesacross the state. (This would seem to betrue mostly in the Awards Program andthe Art in Public Places program, butmuch less so in, for example, the FolkArts Program or the CommunityConsortium Grants within the Arts inEducation program, both of which have focused quite explicitly on regionaldifferences.)

Historic preservation, on the other hand,is fundamentally local, and clearly has tobe responsive to local difference. But theOffice of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation rarely has resources withwhich it can pursue locally crafted policyoutside its federally mandated functions.To some extent the two state historicalsocieties together span the gap betweenwest and east, though the predominanceof effort is still focused on the Washing-ton State Historical Society’s flagshipmuseum and programs in Tacoma. Localhistorical societies fill the gap as best theycan, with only occasional assistance fromthe state. Once again, the land-basedagencies are moving into the gap as theybegin to focus on the cultural aspects ofthe resources for which they are responsi-ble. Humanities policy is generally lessvisible, though it does seem to be at leastpartially tuned to regional differences.

A more articulated cultural policy would,by necessity, need to pay more carefulattention to differences between east andwest (as well as to differences betweenurban and rural). This, in itself, is an argu-ment for careful and transparent policyarticulation.

Once something is perceived asbeing of historical/heritagevalue, it is easier to get it ontothe state’s agenda (and perhapsto support it).

It is easier to build policy consensusaround the heritage than around the artsor humanities components of the culturalsphere. To many the history of the stateand its people and the physical manifesta-tions of that historical presence seem to 31


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The Memo of Understanding on CulturalTourism is one interesting example ofinstrumentalization in cultural policy.11

Nine state agencies and statewide organi-zations signed this agreement in 2001,along with the Seattle Support Office ofthe National Park Service. But, this agree-ment notwithstanding, the state’s politicalleadership has not embraced the idea ofculture and its link to tourism to the samedegree that has happened elsewhere or atlower levels of government.

The cultural field would normally applaudan emphasis on “pure” cultural policyover instrumental cultural policy, but thegeneral sense is that this relationship hasonly been maintained because theresources devoted to cultural policy by thestate are seen as being quite modest. It iscertainly true that where major increaseshave been achieved in public culturalbudgets those increases have often beenfueled by an increasing instrumentaliza-tion of cultural activity.

The role of the Legislature in defining cultural policy inWashington is relativelyinconsequential.

The Washington Legislature tends not tomandate programs or policy in the area ofculture. In part, this is because it isincreasingly constrained fiscally, but it alsoseems due to the fact that there has beena decline in the number of members ofthe Legislature who are interested inexerting cultural leadership. Bold visionaryinitiatives have not been forthcomingfrom the Legislature. Interesting excep-tions, however, are the two capital grantsprograms—Building for the Arts and theCapital Projects Fund for Washington’sHeritage (both discussed later in thisreport)—which directly involve the Legis-lature in making decisions about capitalgrants recipients for arts and heritageprojects.

The closer cultural policy gets tothe contemporary (particularlycontemporary art and humani-ties) the harder it is to get ontothe state’s agenda.

This is the flip side of the previous point.It is easier to build a public policy consen-sus around the already created (particu-larly the built environment) than aroundthe about-to-be created. It is much moredifficult to articulate policy with respectto the support of creativity than withrespect to the support of legacy. Legislatorsprefer the known to the unknown, andthe controversies that can (and do) occurwith the funding of contemporary artsare much more frequent than equivalentcontroversies with respect to the heritage(though the heritage is by no meansimmune from differences of opinion,particularly when it comes to the interpre-tation of history).

Two broad forms of culturalpolicy are in evidence inWashington—one in the serviceof culture, per se; the other inservice to other state goals,turning cultural policy into aninstrumental policy—but unlikeelsewhere, the first is stillstronger than the second.

Here there is always a tension. Instru-mentalizing cultural policy might attractresources and might be effective in pursu-ing those other goals, but this could comeat the cost of diluting the mission thatany cultural agency or program articulatesfor itself. Some agencies and programshave embraced the trend toward instru-mentalization; others have resisted it.Those who have resisted are criticized fornot cooperating, for not seeking commonground. Which direction leads to morerobust cultural agencies, programs, andpolicies is not clear. What is clear is thatinstrumentalization creates a tension anda temptation: “Maybe, if we clothe whatwe are doing in instrumental arguments,we can get support to do what we wish.”

11 “Memo of Understandingon Cultural Tourism,” signedby nine Washington agenciesor organizations and theSeattle Support Office of theNational Park Service,United States Department ofInterior, 2001.

Account. The accumulated donations arethen split equally between two specificmaritime heritage projects: the GraysHarbor Historical Seaport and theSteamer Virginia V Foundation. To besure, the donations that are collected arevoluntary, but it is clear that some politi-cal influence was exerted to promotethese two favored projects over others asa matter of state policy.

Such influence is also seen more broadlyas a result of lobbying by CorporateCouncil for the Arts/ArtsFund. CCAclaims parentage of a number of statecultural policy initiatives, most notably theBuilding for the Arts Program. While thisprogram and its sister program, theCapital Projects Fund for Washington’sHeritage, were created to establish a sys-tematic vehicle through which the statecould provide capital funding for artsprojects and heritage projects, they werestructured so that they would minimizethe effect of the actions of individual leg-islators who were continuously underpressure to insert willy-nilly favorite localprojects into the state’s capital budget.(These programs are discussed further inChapters III and IV.)

Cultural agencies tend to believe that they do better atgarnering state resources if they“stay under the radar screen” by lowering their visibility and by operating independently ofone another.

A palpable lack of collaboration is quiteevident among the cultural policy agenciesin Washington. In large part, this seems tobe resource driven. Agencies are eager toprotect their own resources and do notwant them poached by others. As statebudget cuts began to affect the sector in2002-2003, we heard time and time againthat the fact that the agencies operatedindependently and were therefore rela-tively small protected them from budgetcuts because there was little to be gainedfor the overall budget by cutting such asmall entity. One of our interviewees inthe governor’s office suggested that this

In a situation with weak centralpolicy direction and limitedresources, there is an incentiveto implement policy throughagencies that are seen to berelatively independent of thegovernment.

This is not without consequences, asrelatively independent organizations maybe more likely to fund different types oforganizations or to develop their ownprograms than entities more closely tiedto the state, which will be subject tostronger lobbying influences (in favor, forexample, of major institutions, institutionsin particular locations, and long termfunding that turns into an entitlement).

This has led to agencies migrating inorder to straddle the public/privatedivide. This can be seen most clearly inthe transformation of the King CountyOffice of Cultural Resources into theCultural Development Authority of KingCounty, but it is also true for the statehistorical societies whose trustee statusallows them to straddle that divide as well.

In a situation with weak centralpolicy direction and limitedresources but with stronglycommitted individuals inpositions of influence, there isan opportunity for thoseindividuals to succeed inimplementing limited culturalpolicy initiatives for targetedrecipients.

Our research turned up a wide variety ofcultural policy initiatives spread across thebureaucracy of the State of Washington.More than a few of these initiatives havebeen the result of someone who perceiveda window of opportunity. Particularlyclear examples can be found in the legisla-tion that governs the revenue raising ofthe state. For example, when Washingtonresidents register their boats they aregiven, by state law, the opportunity tomake a contribution to the MaritimeHistoric Restoration and Preservation 33


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The influence of the federalgovernment on state culturalpolicy in Washington isconsiderable.

Frankly, we were rather surprised by therole that the federal government plays instate cultural policy in Washington. Thisinfluence is exerted in three ways: throughfunding of state programs, typicallythrough a matching grant system; throughregulation and mandates; and through itsown programs, which serve as models forstate-level programs. Considerable por-tions of the budgets of the WashingtonState Arts Commission and the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservationare provided by the federal government.While the federal money that flows toWSAC is partially earmarked for federalpriorities (underserved communities andconstituencies), most of the federalmoney that flows to OAHP is tied directlyto that office’s role in enforcing theprovisions of the National HistoricPreservation Act. Humanities Washingtonis funded primarily through grant applica-tions to the National Endowment for theHumanities, a federal agency.

To the extent that federal money has beenthe carrot for state involvement throughdangling matching money, when that moneydeclines there is less incentive for a stateto maintain its match (and little apparentincentive for the state to step into thebreach). The unpredictable behavior offederal allocations, which are in even lesscontrol of the state, can wreak havoc withstate-level budgeting, which has been theexperience of the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation whose federalallocation comes from the HistoricPreservation Fund whose proceeds arederived from the federal leasing of off-shore oil drilling sites, a particularlyvolatile source of funding.

Because the State of Washington onlybarely meets the matching requirementsof these federal programs, the money thatis made available to these agencies goessubstantially into fulfilling the federalmandates.14 Little is left to pursue state-

may also be defensive in another way:most citizens would not want to supportthe arts or culture if they found out theywere actually doing so. With the exceptionof the Washington State Historical Society,the state cultural policy agencies have kepta relatively low profile, which in the endmay compromise their ability to make acredible claim on the state’s budget basedon their role in implementing state cul-tural policy even as it may protect themfrom budget cuts and citizen opposition.

The politics of state funding inWashington are such that theyresult in a shifting of initiativesaway from the state’s operatingbudget to the state’s capitalbudget.

Politically, it has been much easier inWashington State to fund capital projectsthan ongoing programs in the culturalfield. In large part this is due to the factthat the cost of capital projects can bespread over time through the issuing ofbonds, but it is also due to the fact that anargument can be made that constructioncosts are recouped rather quickly becausethe state sales tax applies to construction,and nonprofit organizations are notexempt from this tax. (This latter point is further explored in Chapter III withrespect to the Building for the Arts pro-gram.) Another factor is the easy identifi-cation of capital projects with legislativedistricts.12 The net result is a set ofmostly unintended rewards for capitalintensivity.13 Indeed, in the recent roundsof budget cuts the capital grants pro-grams in culture have been left uncut,unlike the operating budgets of the maincultural agencies. Another byproduct ofthis way of funding cultural policy, is thatthe cultural agencies in trying to rectifythe balance between ongoing operationsand capital investment—whether it is withrespect to their own activities or withrespect to their clients’ activities—aretempted, if not forced, to fund staff offof the capital budget, a choice that doesnot promote stability and predictability intheir operations.

12 It has been pointed out to usthat the governor uses thecapital budget in order togain approval of the operat-ing budget of the state.Legislators are promised thatfavorite capital projects intheir districts will not be tar-geted for elimination inexchange for the legislator’ssupport for proposed cuts inthe state’s operating budget.

13 One might argue that prop-erty tax exemptions alsoreward capital intensivity. See,for example, various papersin Evelyn Brody, ed., Property-Tax Exemption for Charities:Mapping the Battlefield(Washington, D.C.: TheUrban Institute Press, 2002).

14 Indeed, while we were in thefield the governor’s officecommunicated that it wouldnot allow state agencies inWashington to enter intonew programmatic relation-ships with the federal gov-ernment that would requirematching from the state. Thiswas done to relieve one setof growth pressures on thestate’s budget.

funding arts education. And they high-lighted a limited number of programs thathave forged partnerships with other stateagencies (e.g., Heritage Tours developedwith the Heritage Corridors Program ofthe Washington State Department ofTransportation).

In our view, the key to this dilemma liesin finding ways to encourage agencies toconceive and implement innovative pro-grams. This would clearly necessitateresources, but it would also necessitatepermission to depart from the politicalpressures that continually pull the agencyback to the “tried and true.” This is not toquestion the value of the “tried and true”per se. In cultural policy the key trade-offis often framed as innovation versus long-term, dependable support. As long asthese two are considered as mutuallyexclusive, it will prove difficult to strikeout in new cultural policy directions.

In state cultural policy—particularly in arts policy,humanities policy, and heritagepolicy—there is considerablepressure to cement long-termrelationships with selected(favored) policy targets.Succumbing to this pressuremakes it more difficult topursue more flexible policyinitiatives over time. This appearsto be less true in cultural policyemanating from the land-basedagencies.

The resources available for state culturalpolicy have grown at some moments andcontracted at others. A response to thisuncertainty has been to solidify and reifyexisting programs and existing grant rela-tionships. Often, this is accompanied bythe growing expectation of continuedfunding on the part of successful applicants.Funding becomes more of an entitlementthan a policy choice. Recognizing this pat-tern the Washington State Arts Commissionhas endeavored to fence off the portionof its support that goes into annualoperating support for pre-qualified

initiated and state-directed cultural policy,cultural policy that would reflect thedistinctiveness of Washington and itscultural life.

This point can be extended a bit further.In an environment of limited resourceswith a relatively weak governor the greateris the likelihood that the cultural policyagenda will be externally shaped, if notexternally determined.

Innovations in state culturalpolicy are more likely to occurwithin state-conceived andoperated programs than in theregular operations of the statecultural agencies.

Most agencies are attentive to what theyperceive as their “base” operations first.For example, the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation focuses muchof its efforts on its role in the listingprocess for heritage properties and its rolein overseeing Section 106 review of theimpact of federal actions. And the Washing-ton State Arts Commission considers itsprimary role to be passing grants throughto the state’s cultural organizations andcultural initiatives. But in our interviewsthe level of excitement and expressedcommitment always rose when agencystaff were discussing initiatives that theywere able to launch outside of their normalday-to-day activities. It was in theseinstances that these agencies felt that they could make a policy difference.

The Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation expressed delight for thoseyears in which their funding allowed themto actually provide seed grants to preser-vation projects around the state rather thansimply being reactive by fulfilling their“traditional” roles. At the WashingtonState Arts Commission, there was consid-erable enthusiasm over the success ofprojects and programs they had launched(e.g., Centrum) rather than just makinggrants in the traditional way. They wereproud of the Arts in Education Commu-nity Consortium Grants, which graduallyhave replaced the more traditional ways of 35


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not figure prominently in the program-ming decisions of the cultural agencies ofWashington State. This appears to be dueto several factors:

The way that funding works in Washington.Much of the support for cultural pol-icy is tied up in either the capitalbudget or in a multitude of tax con-cessions. Neither of these modes offunding lends itself to implementingnarrowly targeted policies.

The presence of the “rainbow” agencies (theGovernor’s Office of Indian Affairs,the Washington State Commission onAfrican American Affairs, theWashington State Commission onAsian Pacific American Affairs, andthe Washington State Commission onHispanic Affairs). The creation ofthese commissions has, arguably, raisedthe visibility of issues of race and eth-nicity within the state, but it may alsohave decoupled these concerns fromthe mainline agencies. The commis-sions are relied upon to set priorities.They will act first before it becomesnecessary for line agencies to act. Ifthere is a real need, the commissionswill work to place it on the agencies’agenda, rather than the agencies put-ting it on their own agenda.

The small number of ethnic and racial cul-tural groups receiving direct support. Eitherthere are fewer cultural organizationslinked to racial and ethnic groups thanone might expect in Washington, orthey are less likely to tap into theresources at the state level. Other thanNative American tribes, we saw limitedevidence of ethnic and racial participa-tion in any of the programs at thestate level and little evidence of thisconcern in policy.

Interestingly, these issues seem more likelyto show up on the state’s cultural agendawhen they have been put there by theinfluence of federal money (e.g., the por-tion of the National Endowment for theArts money that goes to the WashingtonState Arts Commission and is dedicatedto serving “underserved constituencies”)

institutions, but because of limitedresources it has been unable to dedicatesufficient resources to the other parts ofits operation in order to pursue flexiblepolicy initiatives that could make a differ-ence. (This is not uncommon across thecountry; many cultural funding agenciesnow make an implicit distinction betweenthe policy portion of their budget, whichis deployed to create new programs andpursue new initiatives, and the non-policyportion of their budget, which may oncehave reflected policy but now reflects theaccretion of decisions and tradition infunding procedures.)

The result of all of these factors is tomake new policy initiatives difficult, limit-ing the ability of the state’s cultural agenciesto follow desirable new directions withoutan infusion of external resources (prima-rily from the federal government or pri-vate foundations). Partially, this dilemmais of their own making—they could, intheory choose to make a different set ofdecisions—but political pressure coupledwith budgetary pressure is also an impor-tant factor.

One way out of this dilemma might bethe seeding of new projects and thenmoving on once they have taken hold.This does not seem to be an option thathas been tried often enough amongWashington’s cultural agencies to pursuepolicy objectives, though the WashingtonState Arts Commission’s encouragementof the Northwest Native BasketweaversAssociation is a notable exception. Certainprograms of Humanities Washington arealso an exception, though it is less con-strained by politics because of its status as a private, nonprofit organization.

Attention to ethnicity and race is less evident in state culturalpolicy in Washington than might be expected given thedemographics of the state.

Issues of ethnicity and race have becomeimportant in cultural policy debatesthroughout the United States. We weretherefore surprised to find that they did

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operating more or less independentlyfrom one another.

If one does not set out to designand implement an explicitpolicy, which is typically thecase with state cultural policyand is broadly the case inWashington, one is less likely topay attention to the question ofprogram assessment.

It was not our intent in this project to pro-vide definitive assessments of the effec-tiveness of the various programs to whichwe were introduced. We did, however, askour interviewees how they assessed theeffectiveness of their own programs to geta sense of the degree to which assessmentwas on their minds, which is, in turn, ameasure of the degree of attention beingpaid to policy. Occasionally, we did comeacross some evidence of such assessment,and we discuss that evidence in later chap-ters. Yet, in these instances it was clear thatsuch assessments have tended to be focusedon process or outputs rather than on out-comes, and on quantity rather than onimpact. This is broadly characteristic ofcultural policy in the United States and isnot a unique result for Washington State.

Put simply, the twin notions of outcomesand impacts are not foremost in the thoughtsof the agencies we interviewed. Yet, asportions of cultural policy become moreexplicit, as in the regular strategic plansproduced for WSAC or OAHP or the cul-tural resources management plan of theparks and recreation commission, increasingattention may well be paid to this question,and rightfully so.

or private money (e.g., the State Partner-ships for Cultural Participation that arebeing funded by the Wallace-Reader’sDigest Funds). It is also possible, ofcourse, that attention is more likely to begiven to these issues at the local levelbecause of the relative proximity of theseissues, or at the national level because ofthe degree of attention that has beenfocused there rather than at the state level.

On the other hand, the governor’s officehas issued a policy directive concerningthe ethnic and racial composition of stateboards and commissions. So, for example,eight of the twenty-three commissionersof the Washington State Arts Commissionare currently people of color (and one is adisabled individual).

Personalities matter. In theabsence of clearly articulatedcultural policy, entrepreneurialindividuals will win the day.

As we explored the question of policyeffectiveness, it became clear time andtime again that the quality of leadershipplayed a critical role in relative success.Those who could articulate a vision andgalvanize support of that vision couldlead cultural policy in a new direction.Otherwise, it has been very difficult tochange an entrenched system with well-vested interests. Yet, we saw a negativeside to this as well. Other agencies tend to be reticent to cooperate with those led by charismatic leaders, worrying thattheir programs and initiatives will be swal-lowed up. This mitigates against coopera-tion and further encourages a culturalpolicy characterized by multiple entities

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The Arts and State Cultural PolicyJ. Mark Schuster, David Karraker, and Susan Bonaiuto

Chapter III

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consequences of this relative degree ofvagueness are open to argument, but con-sidering them requires that we focus ourinquiry not so much on what is explicit inarticulated public policy but, rather, onthe actual workings of the state’s majorarts policy actors—those with specific anddefined arts-related purposes and aims aswell as the relevant activities of agenciesand programs whose purposes and activi-ties are far broader in scope.

This chapter examines the programs ofthose state agencies, departments, offices,and programs whose cultural policy activi-ties are focused on the arts. We begin byconsidering the two key arts policy entities:the Washington State Arts Commissionand the Building for the Arts Program.The first of these is an agency definedentirely by its support for the arts,although the rationale in support of itsprograms has been articulated in differentways at different points in its develop-mental history. Its commission statusgives it a degree of relative semi-auton-omy within the state’s policy hierarchy. Incontrast, the second is one of a numberof cultural programs that operate withinthe framework of the state’s major com-munity development agency.

We turn next to the issue of arts andeducation, looking specifically at theefforts of the Office of the Super-intendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) toinclude the arts among the essential learn-ing requirements that students in Wash-ington’s public schools are expected tofulfill. The interactions between OSPI andthe Washington State Arts Commission—and the role of a unique nonprofit centerfor the arts known as Centrum—in pur-suit of these aims are described and con-sidered. We conclude the chapter with a

The conservation and development of the state’sartistic resources is essential to the social, educa-tional, and economic growth of the state ofWashington. Artists, works of art, and artisticinstitutions contribute to the quality of life andthe general welfare of the citizens of the state,and are an appropriate matter of concern to thegovernment of the state of Washington.

Revised Code of Washington, §43.46.005

This statement, taken on its own, wouldseem at first glance to commit the Stateof Washington to ongoing support of thearts, artists, and arts institutions to somesignificant degree. However, it pales bycomparison to the Legislature’s statedcommitment of support for activity in theheritage realm. With respect to the her-itage, the Legislature’s intention is farmore emphatic and explicit:

…[The Legislature] finds that the promotion,enhancement, perpetuation, and use of structures,sites, districts, buildings, and objects of historic,archaeological, architectural, and cultural signifi-cance (are)…in the interest of…the general wel-fare of the people of the state; that the economic,cultural, and aesthetic standing of the state can bemaintained and enhanced by protecting the her-itage of the state.…[It is] the public policy and inthe public interest of the state to designate, pre-serve, protect, enhance, and perpetuate those struc-tures, sites, districts, buildings, and objects whichreflect outstanding elements of the state’s historic,archaeological, architectural, or cultural heritage,for the inspiration and enrichment of the citizensof the state.


What is Washington State’s commitmentto the arts? What is the rationale in policyfor any set of actions it might take insupporting them? Nothing exists in thepublic record to parallel this commitmentof support for heritage work as far as we have been able to ascertain. The

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advise the governor, the various depart-ments of the state, and the StateLegislature” and to “…make such recom-mendations as it deems proper for thebeautification and cultural development of the State of Washington.” Indeed, itwould have been difficult to do muchmore than give advice, since the 1962budget of the commission was exactly$198. One of the commission’s first con-cerns was the lack of cultural activities invarious areas of the state, and it investi-gated a touring program as a way to rec-tify this. Interestingly, in its early years itwas also involved in environmental issuesrelated to highway beautification and thedesignation of scenic highways, an effortthat continues today though under theumbrella of the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation.

In 1967 the agency hired its first full-timedirector. Legislation passed in that yearauthorized WSAC to “develop, promoteand administer any activity, project or pro-gram within or without the state which isrelated to the growth and development ofthe arts and humanities in the state ofWashington and [to] cooperate with anyperson or public or private agency to that end.”4 Four items are of particularinterest here:

The humanities were explicitlyincluded within the purview of theagency;

Projects or programs were specificallymentioned as a possible mode ofaction;

The legislation foresaw cooperationwith other agencies; and

Programs whose focus was outside ofWashington but which benefited thearts within Washington were also envi-sioned.

Taken together, these items suggest anagency that might choose to go wellbeyond the boundaries of narrowlydefined regranting programs.

The Legislature appropriated approxi-mately $70,000 for the 1967-69 biennium.The commission also received its first

discussion of several smaller offices, pro-grams, and institutions whose work is partof the “arts policy portfolio” within statecultural policy.

The Washington StateArts CommissionTo many in Washington the most impor-tant component of arts policy, if not cul-tural policy more generally, would be theWashington State Arts Commission(WSAC). It would certainly be the mostclearly identified cultural policy actor instate government. In part, this is becausecultural policy in the United States, to thedegree it has been articulated at all, hastraditionally been conceptualized morenarrowly as arts policy. In each of the fiftystates, the state arts agency is that agencymost visibly associated with the artisticlife of the state, and Washington is noexception.1 The perceived importance ofWSAC in Washington also derives in partfrom its relative longevity. Atypicallyamong American state arts agencies,WSAC was created in 1961 prior to thecreation of the National Endowment for theArts.2 It became the third state arts agencyin the country, following Utah (1899) andNew York (1960); Minnesota’s agency wasalso founded in 1961.3

As its name indicates, the organizationalform of the state’s arts agency is a “commission.” Washington makes use ofseveral organizational forms in its stateagencies. For an agency of the state, com-mission status provides a fair degree ofautonomy within the broad framework ofstate government. Its work is overseen inthe first instance by a commission—thatis, a group of individuals appointed toserve as a board of trustees, to which it isprimarily accountable. Today, the Washing-ton State Arts Commission has twenty-three members—nineteen citizencommissioners appointed by the gover-nor, and four legislators appointed by the two political caucuses in the Houseand Senate.

WSAC’s original function was advisory. Itwas directed to “…meet, study, plan and

1 There are also arts agenciesin six special governmentaljurisdictions—AmericanSamoa, Puerto Rico, Guam,the Virgin Islands, theNorthern Marianas, andWashington, D.C.—and theyare considered the organiza-tional equivalent of state artsagencies. They are, for exam-ple, members of theNational Assembly of StateArts Agencies.

2 Much of this account of thehistory of the WashingtonState Arts Commission isadapted from “History ofthe Washington State ArtsCommission,” undated pho-tocopy in the files of theWashington State ArtsCommission.

3 Research Division, NationalEndowment for the Arts, TheState Arts Agencies in 1974: All Present and Accounted For(Washington, D.C.: NationalEndowment for the Arts,April 1978).

4 Washington State ArtsCommission, “TheWashington State ArtsCommission at YourService,” November 1970.

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policy

5 Arts Alliance of WashingtonState, ARTSPLAN, draft ofa comprehensive plan for thearts in Washington State,1978.

6 Taxes, Funding, Arts andEducation, Functions of theState Arts Agency,Communications, Advocacy,the Individual Artist,Accessibility, SpecialPopulations, Arts at theLocal Level, and the Arts and Business.

recommendations in eleven broad cate-gories,6 some offered concrete sugges-tions for state action while many otherstook the form of exhortations forimproved behavior by one or anotheractor within the arts network.

The 1979 Legislature responded to thisfirst major advocacy effort by increasingappropriations to the commission by 72 percent and beginning a process thatled to many recommendations eventuallyfinding their way into state legislation,particularly those dealing with tax exemp-tions and what was termed the “Art inNew State Buildings Program” (ultimatelyimplemented as the “Art in Public Places”[1/2 of 1 percent for art] program).

As regards WSAC, the ARTSPLAN rec-ommendations are particularly interestingfrom a policy perspective. While callingfor more ongoing support for a variety ofrecipients—as one would expect—theplan also made a number of recommen-dations that would have implied a changein policy objectives. The report envisioned astate arts agency whose emphases wouldbe (1) advocacy of the arts, (2) publicinformation, and (3) financial and technicalassistance. What is noteworthy here is therelatively minor role assigned to financialassistance. The report called for the com-mission to become a central resource thatwould provide a wide variety of servicesto the field. It urged that the commissionexpand its technical assistance capabilities,perhaps in conjunction with other stateagencies. It called for the creation of acentralized service that could provide con-servation services to museums. It urged theimplementation of an arts awareness pro-gram. It envisioned the creation of a spe-cial program to reach specific populations.More broadly, it recommended that thecommission should create programs andthen spin them off to the private sectorwhenever possible. And it proposed thecreation of a regional office in easternWashington to facilitate communication,staff assistance, and accessibility. What is significant, in our view, is that inconceptualizing the commission as astrategic planning, programming, and pol-

basic state agency grant of $50,000 fromthe National Endowment for the Arts andanother $25,000 in a special federal grant.According to the commission’s own docu-ments it was federal funds that made pos-sible the first grants ever awarded by thecommission. In 1974 the Legislatureintroduced a line item into the commis-sion’s appropriations for the first time, anallocation to Centrum, the nonprofit artscenter at Fort Worden State Park (dis-cussed below). 1974 was also the year inwhich the Art in Public Places programwas created and funded through thestate’s capital budget. It was not until the1975-77 biennium that the Legislatureappropriated state funds—$180,000—tobe used at the commission’s discretion forprograms (previously state money hadbeen used only for administration and forline items specified by the Legislature).

Reports, Reviews, and PlansThere has been something of a traditionof task force reports and strategic plan-ning initiatives for the arts in Washington.To understand their significance, it isimportant to note that the thrust of thesedocuments has been directed for the mostpart not so much at broader cultural issuesand cultural support as at the commissionitself. The ebb and flow of these reportshas, to a large extent, mirrored the finan-cial fortunes of the commission; but theyhave also included, from time to time,hints of a fuller policy-based discourse.

ARTSPLAN, 1978This initiative was begun in 1977 byGovernor Dixy Lee Ray, who allocated$148,700 in discretionary funding fromthe Pacific Northwest Regional Commission(a federal agency serving Washington,Oregon, and Idaho) for the developmentof a statewide arts plan. The then existingGovernor’s Office of Cultural Affairs chosethe Washington State Arts Alliance, agrassroots organization of arts advocates,to develop the plan. The document thatemerged was based on an extensive sur-vey of the “needs” of the field followedby a series of discussions as to how thoseneeds might be met.5 Of a total of 112

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should budget 50 cents per capita per yearfor state support of the arts; when cut-backs occur, the arts should not sufferdisproportionately; municipal and countygovernments not currently providing sup-port to the arts should establish supportprograms; and the like. Most interesting,perhaps, is the very first recommendationdirected specifically to government:

A cultural policy should be developedby each level of government to setforth its commitment to the arts.

Given that the term “cultural policy” hasachieved little or no currency in theUnited States at either the state or federallevel, the fact that it appears in this contextin 1982 without qualification or apology isnoteworthy. The task force seems to havebeen seeking not just increased (or, atleast, stabilized) resources; it would appearto have been asking for clarification ofintent, as well. Also significant in thisregard is the task force’s call for the cre-ation of a Joint Legislative Committee onthe Arts. As far as we have been able todetermine, this recommendation was notacted upon, though later a JointLegislative Arts Committee did appear for a time.

Sunset Review, 1985

During its 1983 session, the Legislatureincluded the commission in its list ofagencies to be scheduled for a “SunsetReview” in 1984-85. In anticipation ofthis review, the commission published aWashington Arts Report within which itengaged in a degree of public self-analy-sis. In addition to a description (and adefense) of each of the commission’sprograms, the report spent considerabletime discussing the role the agency mightplay in governmental partnerships. Amajor recommendation, surfaced herequite clearly, was the development of athree-year plan for community develop-ment.9 What is meant here by “commu-nity development” seems clearly to be“arts community development” ratherthan “local economic development,”which is the more common contemporaryconnotation of the term.

icy entity, ARTSPLAN seemed to imag-ine an agency whose scope of activitywould take it well beyond the re-grantingof state funds.

Washington State Task Force on the Arts, 1982

Many of the budgetary gains of thecommission were reversed during theearly 1980s. Its appropriations were cut 58 percent while federal funds available tothe commission were also being reduced.Yet, this took place during a period inwhich the overall state budget increased19 percent. The Washington State ArtsAlliance again responded, asking that thegovernor appoint a special task force toaddress this financial crisis for the arts.This resulted in a Report to the Governor inMay 1982.

This report argued that the support sys-tem for the arts, which included manydifferent sources of revenue, had “lost itsbalance because one of the partners—government—has dramatically cut backits funding.”7 It went on to challenge thepresumption that corporations and indi-viduals would fill the resulting gap. So asnot to focus its recommendations solelyon state government, the task force’sreport made some thirty-five recommen-dations directed to each potential fundingsource—individual donors, businessdonors, foundations, unions, government,and arts organizations themselves. Itconcluded with a plea for increasedexpenditures on the arts in education invarious forms, and it reiterated the earlierARTSPLAN recommendation to amendthe state constitution to allow the provi-sion of direct support without having todistort the true nature of the relationshipbetween government and nonprofit recip-ients as one characterized by the purchaseof services.

With respect to its recommendations togovernment8—our focus in the currentdocument—the task force made anumber of recommendations of the sortone often sees in documents of this kind:taxes that inhibit or adversely affect supportto the arts should be eliminated; the state

7 Washington State Task Forceon the Arts, Report to theGovernor, 1982, 4.

8 Washington State Task Forceon the Arts, Report to theGovernor, 1982, 6-7.

9 Washington State ArtsCommission, “WashingtonArts Report,” December1984, 3.

10 Washington State ArtsCommission, Report: TheEconomic Condition of the Artsin Washington State,September 30, 1986.

11 By this time, apparently, aJoint Legislative ArtsCommittee had beenformed, but its purview wasfelt to be too narrow by theauthors of The EconomicCondition of the Arts inWashington State.

12 This may well be a strongerfactor in Washington than inother states because of itsfocus on trade relations withthe Pacific Rim.

2 percent, respectively). To address whatit saw as growing financial concerns, thecommission recommended that state sup-port for the arts be restored to a level thatwould represent four percent of theincome of arts organizations in the state.It also urged that state government con-sider programs intended to build cashreserves (though it recognized the consti-tutional difficulties such a program wouldhave in Washington). And it recom-mended a search for other sources offunding outside the general fund. Finally,it recommended the establishment of astanding arts committee in the Legislatureto address the lack of public policy andinconsistencies in government support.11

This slim report is also notable in anotherregard. It may well have been the firsttime that a broader rationale for statesupport had been spelled out so clearly:The public wants the arts; the arts are foreveryone; the arts are basic to education;the arts mean jobs; the arts benefit thelocal economy; the arts attract new busi-nesses to the region; like tourism, the artsgenerate dollars; and the arts are good fortrade.12

Investing in the Arts, 1998By the late 1990s a series of tensionsbetween the then executive director ofthe commission and the field had come toa head, culminating in the departure ofthe executive director. An interim execu-tive director was named, and in December1997 Governor Gary Locke established aBlue Ribbon Arts Task Force “to studystate support of the arts and recommendstrategic direction to the governor and theWashington State Arts Commission.” Forthe most part, the work of the task forcewas carried out external to the commis-sion. The task force focused on what itsaw as a declining state government role.Time and inflation, it said, had eroded the state’s modest funding support anddiminished its leadership in promotingpublic access. It noted what it saw as alack of confidence in the commission and its work, and in large part it saw itsprimary role as helping to restore thatconfidence.

The plan’s focus was not limited to grantmaking. It was also programmatic.Specifically, it would:

Establish a statewide comprehensivetechnical assistance program;

Establish a statewide arts advocacyprogram;

Establish a local arts agency networkand information program; and

Establish the structure for a perma-nent WSAC Community DevelopmentProgram.

Following the Sunset Review, the commis-sion was reauthorized for an indefiniteperiod and the Legislature appropriated thehighest level of funding the commissionhad received up to that time. Otherchanges included the conversion of con-tract personnel to state employees and achange in the manner in which legislatorswould be appointed to the commission(from a gubernatorial appointment to anappointment by the political caucuses inthe Senate and House).

The Economic Condition of the Arts inWashington State, 1986

The financial arguments being made bythe commission changed somewhat in1986. A variety of local and nationalreports had focused attention on the pro-file of support of arts organizations. Theconcern about absolute levels of supportwas displaced to some degree by attentionbeing paid to the relative proportion ofarts organizations’ revenues that wascoming from various sources. The com-mission took up this cause in The EconomicCondition of the Arts in Washington State.10 Itnow argued that revenues had not keptpace with the growth in the arts, and inparticular it publicly regretted the fact that the percentage of income for artsorganizations that was coming fromgovernment seemed to be dropping; thecommission noted that while city andcounty funding had stayed at approxi-mately the same percentages (4 percentand 1 percent, respectively), the federaland state proportions had both fallen(from 7 to 4 percent and from 4 to 43


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13 Governor’s Blue Ribbon ArtsTask Force, Investing in theArts: Recommendations toGovernor Locke on State Supportfor the Arts, August 1998.

14 Governor’s Blue Ribbon ArtsTask Force, Investing in theArts, 7.

15 Apparently, it would havefallen to the WashingtonState Arts Commission topromote and staff this initia-tive, which it has chosen notto do because of the per-ceived cost in staff time.

16 Governor’s Blue Ribbon ArtsTask Force, Investing in theArts, 8.

17 Washington State ArtsCommission, Planning on theArts: Washington State ArtsCommission’s Strategic Plan,submitted to Governor GaryLocke, June 2000; publiclydistributed as WashingtonState Arts Commission,The Arts Work for Washington,June 2000.

state agencies and to coordinate stateefforts.15

Taken together, these sound like a call formore active policy-driven intervention,one that would lead the commissionbeyond its traditional role as a grantmaker and would result in greater strate-gic coordination among the state agenciesinvolved in state arts (and cultural) policy.Yet, surprisingly, the task force concludedits encouragement of cooperative partner-ships by seeming to retreat to the statusquo ante of grant making: “These arrange-ments would allow the commission tofocus more directly on grant making.”16

This would seem to suggest that the taskforce envisioned that strategic directionwould actually emanate from agenciesoutside of the commission. But, havingmade this point, the task force reportimmediately veered back in the policydevelopment direction to conclude that“[t]he strategic plan should ensure thatthe Washington State Arts Commissionbecomes an active and aggressive agencyof advocacy for the arts and the role itplays—and should play—in the state.”Thus, one of the fundamental tensionsthat any state arts council confronts wasnicely embodied in the report itself.

Planning on the Arts, 200017

Planning on the Arts was the commission’sformal response to the Blue Ribbon TaskForce’s call for a new strategic plan. The1999 Legislature had approved the$750,000 increase to the commission’sbudget that had been requested, and thisincrease came with the requirement that astrategic plan be prepared and presentedto the governor by June 30, 2000.

To develop this plan, the commissionlaunched an unprecedented outreacheffort to hear the many voices of the artscommunity throughout the state. Morethan twenty meetings were held, an on-line forum was created, and a dedicatedphone line was set up. Well over onethousand individuals took advantage ofthe opportunity to voice their views.

The task force’s conclusion was that “witha relatively small investment, the state[could] widen the door of public accesswhile restoring its position as a modest,but influential, partner with local support-ers.”13 This report is another interestingstudy in the relationship between fundingand policy direction, and at times the taskforce seems to have wanted to do twothings at the same time: strike out in newpolicy directions, which might entail newmodes of action on the part of the stateagencies involved in arts policy, whilemaintaining (and increasing) support forcurrent grant recipients.

With respect to the commission itself, thetask force envisioned a dramaticallyaltered future: “The commission shouldconcentrate on long-range strategic plan-ning for the arts and on promoting thearts within state government and amongthe citizenry of the state.”14 The reportcalled for the development of a newstrategic plan for the commission (whichmay be what the task force meant by“strategic planning for the arts,” thoughstrategic planning for the commission is dis-tinct from strategic planning for the arts).The report called for state appropriationsto be increased by $250,000 in the follow-ing year and by an additional $500,000 inthe next year, with any further increasesto be linked to the strategic plan.

The report called for a careful evaluationof the potential for new cooperative part-nerships in the administration of selectedprograms. This point, based on the trackrecord of Artists Trust in administeringartist fellowships, seems to have beendirected in particular at the commission’stechnical assistance programs, which itenvisioned as being conducted in a similarway. Finally, the report urged the commis-sion to work more heavily with other state entities such as the Office of theSuperintendent of Public Instruction andthe Department of Community, Tradeand Economic Development. To this end,the task force called for the creation of anInter-Agency Arts Committee to identifypolicy opportunities among the various

18 Washington State ArtsCommission, Planning on theArts, 7.

19 Washington State ArtsCommission, Planning on theArts, 7-15.

graphic distribution of the commission’sprograms across the state.

This most recent plan was repeatedlymentioned during our interviews acrossthe state, often with regard to its empha-sis on participation from the field. Arepresentative comment:

I think WSAC is a lot more effective now….The long range planning process was successful—not so much because of the planning document butmore because of the public interest that got gener-ated by the planning process. They’re a lot leanerand meaner than they used to be.

In a word, the impression of this respon-dent, and many others, is that WSAC isnow more focused.

Each of these documents, whether theyare plans, strategies, or exhortations,responded to the politics of the momentin which it was conceived and the timeduring which it was developed. A recur-ring theme, of course, is the evolution ofa set of arguments to convince theLegislature (and, indeed, the citizens ofWashington) to invest more in the arts.Thus, it is not surprising that each one, inits turn, called for increased resources.

But several other key aspects of thesedocuments need to be kept in mind. First,each of these documents, in its own way,seeks to expand the work of thecommission in directions that would befar more responsive to policy initiatives.There is a constant push throughouttoward the identification of policy prioritiesand the creation of programs to pursuethese priorities. These priorities are typi-cally not presented as merely expandingthe currently existing programs of the com-mission; they are staking out new direc-tions. Indeed, as early as 1982 the phrase“cultural policy” appeared in the hopethat the various levels of governmentwould develop their own cultural policies.

Yet the directions that are advanced recurin plan after plan, suggesting that there iseither a very strong internal desire or avery strong external pressure (or both!) tostick with familiar programs and to con-

The resulting plan, which currentlyinforms the work of the commission, isstructured around four strategic themes:18

Communities thrive when the arts areintegrated into civic life.

Connections enhance effectiveness andempower individuals and organizations.

Education in and through the arts isintegral to the lives of all Washingtonresidents.

Promotion expands the power ofthe arts.

Each of these themes is divided intostrategies—thirty-two are spelled out—andthese strategies are to be implementedthrough a series of more than seventy-five specific action steps.19 In its attentionto detail, this document is much more ofa guide to specific action steps than anyof the earlier plans discussed above.

Implementation of the plan would dependon the infusion of increased resources(e.g., raising the minimum general operat-ing grant that the commission awards to$10,000 and then to $15,000, and increas-ing funding for artists’ fellowships andproject grants from $100,000 per bienniumto $170,000). But themes other than simplyincreasing resources that are passedthrough the commission’s grant-makingprograms make an appearance as well,some for the first time. The question ofevaluation is raised with the intent thatthe agency’s funding programs and guide-lines would be evaluated and restructuredas necessary. Cooperation and partner-ships continue to be a strong theme, withmany alliances with other state agenciesand nonprofit partners proposed. Theplan calls for the development of a state-wide strategic initiative each biennium toaddress a particular cultural issue at thelocal level. Each of these more policy-driven initiatives would be a major depar-ture for the commission, which hadbecome accustomed to operating frombiennium to biennium within a set ofwell-defined program boxes. A number ofthe proposed actions deal with the geo- 45


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as The Arts Work for Washington, is the cur-rent point of reference for the WashingtonState Arts Commission, and many of theindividuals whom we interviewed voicedthe view that it has had more than a salu-tary affect on the operations of the com-mission. Now, as choices are being made,there is always the question, “Is this inline with what we set out in the strategicplan?” This, of course, is what plans arefor. The commission revised the plan inNovember 2001, trimming back some ofits goals, noting that some actions hadbeen completed, and adding new ones.The updated plan is available on the com-mission’s website.

BudgetIn fiscal year 2001 the legislative appropri-ation for the Washington State ArtsCommission was $2,628.293.20 By FY2002 it had grown to $2,896,153.21 Thisappropriation ranked Washington twenty-eighth out of the arts councils in the fiftystates and the six special jurisdictions.22

Viewed in this way, Washington is some-where in the middle of the pack. But adifferent picture emerges when you adjustfor the relative size of the states.Washington ranked forty-third out of thefifty states in terms of legislative appro-priation per capita. When all sources ofrevenue to the state arts council wereincluded, it ranked forty-second. Theaverage per capita appropriation in theUnited States (including special jurisdic-tions) was $1.47 for fiscal year 2002, witha maximum of $5.26 in Hawaii and aminimum of $0.28 in Texas. Washington’sappropriation per capita—$0.49—wasone-third of the national average.

State arts agencies derive revenues fromsources other than legislative appropria-tions. Some state arts agencies receive andadminister public art funds—this is amajor component of the total revenue ofthe Washington State Arts Commission;some receive dedicated license platerevenues or interest from state culturalendowments; some receive dedicated por-tions of the proceeds of state lotteries.All state arts agencies receive grants from

tinue to focus on interacting with familiarrecipients. In theory, the commissioncould decide to deploy its currentresources in a variety of policy-informeddirections, but the results of these planssuggest that it tends not to make thischoice. Thus, new policy directionbecomes the rationale for increasedresources, but even when those resourcesbecome available it is very tempting toretreat to the known, to become captured,as Frank Hodsoll, former chairman of theNational Endowment for the Arts, hassaid, by “history plus or minus.”

Two other related attributes of these doc-uments are worth noting: (1) they are allfocused on the arts and are not construedmore broadly as “cultural,” and (2) theyfocus almost entirely on the WashingtonState Arts Commission and not on its sis-ter agencies. In many ways, this narrowattention is not surprising—particularly ifwe construe these documents as beingprimarily about the fortunes of thecommission rather than as being aboutthe health of the arts (or culture) inWashington. Yet, reference is continuallymade to increased cooperation, whetherat the legislative level (through calls forjoint legislative committees) or at theagency level (through calls for specificpartnerships or for the creation of an Inter-Agency Arts Committee). Nonetheless,there seems to be little inclination to increasethe boundary of attention to encompassall the cultural activities of the state andthe agencies engaged in promoting orsupporting them. As we point out else-where in this report, practice in other statesis beginning to depart from this model ofa high degree of separation toward a muchgreater degree of collaboration. A morecynical interpretation of these reportsmight also be advanced, however: perhapsthey are less targeted toward enhancingthe development of cultural policy thanthey are toward giving the appearance ofreform while making allowance for, oreven facilitating, budget cuts.

These observations notwithstanding,Planning on the Arts, popularly promotedthrough a set of meetings and brochures

20 Most of the data in this sec-tion are taken from NationalAssembly of State ArtsAgencies, “LegislativeAppropriations AnnualSurvey: Fiscal Year 2002,”February 2002.

21 The proportion of thisamount that came from thestate’s general fund was$2,873,000; the differencewas in compensation adjust-ments. The amount for fiscalyear 2003 was originally set at$2,874,000 at the beginningof the 2001-2003 biennium,but was trimmed to$2,788,000 as part of thegovernor’s budget cuttingmeasures in early 2002, a cutof only three percent.

22 American Samoa, the Districtof Columbia, Guam, theNorthern Marianas, PuertoRico, and the Virgin Islands.

share in the operating expenses of thecommission rises to 16 percent. The state’sgeneral budget provides well over half ofthe revenues of the commission, and ifthe allocation to public artworks is setaside, that percentage rises to over 80 per-cent. In some ways, the biggest differencebetween fiscal year 2002 and the projectedbudget for fiscal year 2003 is the fact thatthe Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds partici-pation initiative would have kicked inmore fully by that time, bringing increasedprivate sources of revenue into the mix.

The budget profile for a state arts agencyundoubtedly varies from state to state fora variety of reasons. Nonetheless, a com-parison between the Washington StateArts Commission and national averages isinstructive (Table III.2).

Much of Washington’s variation from thenational averages can be explained by thefact that in Washington the Art in PublicPlaces program is run through the artscommission with money appropriatedthrough the capital budget rather than the

the National Endowment for the Arts,though the variation across state arts agen-cies is relatively slight. Finally, state artsagencies might, and often do, receive othernon-state funding. This can include—singly and in various combinations—cor-porate support, foundation support,federal funds from agencies other than theNational Endowment for the Arts, andearned revenue. A look at the combinedrevenues of the commission as evidencedin the 2001-2003 biennial budget makesthis quite clear (Table III.1).

For fiscal year 2002, total combined rev-enues for the Washington State ArtsCommission were just shy of $5 million.Roughly 30 percent of the total amountcame from the state’s capital budget; thisamount was the result of the 1/2 of 1percent provision for the purchase of art-works. Over one-tenth of total revenuescame from the federal government—mostly the National Endowment for theArts—but if automatic expenditures forpublic artworks off of the capital budgetare left out of the calculation, the federal 47

Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural PolicyTable III.1: Washington State Arts Commission2001-2003 Biennium Budget Detail by Revenue Source

Fiscal Year 2002 Fiscal Year 2003cSource Amount Percentage Amount Percentage

State Government $4,345,391 87.1% $4,432,157 85.0%

State—General Fund $2,873,000 57.6% $2,874,000 55.1%State—Compensation Adjustment $23,153 0.5% $33,560 0.6%State—Capital Projects $1,449,238 29.0% $1,524,597 29.2%

Federal Government $568,500 11.4% $637,300 12.2%

Basic State Granta $394,100 7.9% $397,400 7.6%Arts Educationa $39,400 0.8% $39,100 0.7%Underserved Communitiesa $74,900 1.5% $76,800 1.5%Challenge Americaa $40,000 0.8% $90,000 1.7%Folks Arts Heritage Corridor Toursb $20,100 0.4% $34,000 0.7%

Private/Other $75,615 1.5% $145,500 2.8%

Strategic Planning $16,615 0.3% 0 0.0%Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds Grant $59,000 1.2% $145,500 2.8%

Total Revenue $4,989,506 100.0% $5,214,957 100.0%

Source: Washington State Arts Commission

Notes: a Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.b This program has been funded in various years with grants from the United States Department of Transportation and the United

States Forest Service in addition to allocations from the State of Washington.c The state budget figures for fiscal year 2003 are the ones that were included in the 2001-2003 biennial budget when the

Legislature first passed it. Some of these budgetary amounts were decreased in 2002 as part of budget cuts in the supplementalbudget.

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for Washington’s Heritage, both discussedelsewhere in this report.

How are revenues attached to specific pro-grammatic initiatives? Disaggregating thebudget of the Washington State Arts Com-mission by source of revenue (Table III.3)reveals several patterns worth mentioning.

Focusing first on aggregate figures:

General agency administration,Art in Public Places, and Grants toOrganizations each account forapproximately one-quarter of thecommission’s expenditures. But theagency has very little control over theexpenditure in one of these programs,the Art in Public Places program,which is, for the most part, the auto-matic result of activity in the state’scapital budget.

The only “discretionary” portion here is the small amount that thecommission is able to allocate fromoperating funds each year for mainte-nance of the State Art Collection. Infiscal year 2002, $34,641 was budgetedfor maintenance.

From a programmatic perspective,nearly 70 percent of total revenues isdedicated to program expenditures inArt in Public Places, Arts in Education,and the Awards Program. (Note thatthis percentage does not includeadministrative costs attributable to theadministration of these programs.)

Institutional Support Grants (to alimited group of the largest artsorganizations) and CommunityConsortium Grants under the Arts in

general (operating) budget of the state.Other states may not have public art(Percent for Art) programs, or they maynot administer them through the state arts agency.

One factor that affects many state artsagencies—but which does not appear toaffect the Washington State Arts Commis-sion—is the use of line items. Half of thestate arts agencies have line items that arepassed through their budgets directly toanother agency or organization. (TheCalifornia Arts Commission has hadsome forty-two line items predeterminedwithin its budget.) When Centrum (dis-cussed below) was first brought within thecommission’s budget, it was as a specificline item; more recently, while it stillreceives an annual appropriation from thecommission, the amount is no longerspecified by the Legislature in this manner.

One should be careful not to focus toonarrowly, however. The concern aboutline items has been voiced in two forms:a more specific concern about constrain-ing a state arts agency through placingline items within its budget, and a moregeneral concern about increasing theinfluence of the Legislature on statecultural policy through the use of lineitems (which may be marshaled outside ofthe arts agency’s budget). In Washingtonthe Legislature has not made it a practiceof adding line items to the commission’sbudget, though, as we will see, it does useline items for arts and culture elsewherein its budgets, most notably—and mostcreatively—in the Building for the Artsprogram and the Capital Projects Fund

Table III.2: Profile of Total Revenues of State Arts Agencies—Washington State Arts Commission Compared to National Averages, 2002

Washington State Arts National AverageCommission (percent) (percent)

Legislative Appropriations 56.8% 87.2%Other State Funds to the State Arts Agency 28.5% 5.1%NEA Grants 11.1% 6.3%Other Non-State Funding 3.6% 1.4%Source: National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, "Legislative Appropriations Annual Survey: Fiscal Year 2002," February 2002, 7.

Note: The relative percentages in this table differ slightly from those in Table III.1 because of minor definitional and calculationdifferences.

49Tabl

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Arts

Com

mis

sion

—Al

loca

tion

of R

even

ues t

o Pr

ogra

m E

xpen

ditu

re C

ateg

orie

s, F

isca

l Yea

r 200

2

Stat

eSt

ate

Priva

te/

Oper

atin

gCa

pita

lFe

dera

lOt

her

Prog

ram

Exp

endi

ture

Cat

egor

yTo

tal

Colu

mn

%Bu

dget

Row

%Bu

dget

Row

%Go

vern

men

tRo

w %

Sour

ces

Row

%

Tota

l Age

ncy A

dmin

istra

tion

$1,3

63,5

3027

.3%

$1,0

96,5

8380

.4%

$211

,022

15.5

%$5

,625

0.4%

$50,

300

3.7%

Gen

eral

Age

ncy

Adm

inis

trat

ion

$508

,536

10.2

%$5

08,5

3610

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%Co

mm

issi

oner

s’ E

xpen

ses

$21,

524

0.4%

$21,

524

100.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

Prog

ram

Ser

vice

s an

d Pr

ogra

m A

dmin

istr

atio

n$8

33,4

7016

.7%

$566

,523

68.0

%$2

11,0

2225

.3%

$5,6

250.

7%$5

0,30

06.

0%

Art i

n Pu

blic

Pla

ces T

otal

$1,2

72,8

5725

.5%

$34,

641

2.7%

$1,2

38,2

1697

.3%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

Art i

n Pu

blic

Pla

ces

$1,2

38,2

1624

.8%

$00.

0%$1

,238

,216

100.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%Ar

twor

k M

aint

enan

ce$3

4,64

10.

7%$3

4,64

110

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%

Arts

in E

duca

tion

$764

,121

15.3

%$7

07,3

4692

.6%

$00.

0%$5

6,77

57.

4%$0

0.0%

Com

mun

ity C

onso

rtiu

m G

rant

s$5

69,3

5111

.4%

$535

,576

94.1

%$0

0.0%

$33,

775

5.9%

$00.

0%Re

side

ncie

s$7

0,10

01.

4%$7

0,10

010

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%Ar

ts C

urric

ulum

Gra

nts

$86,

720

1.7%

$86,

720

100.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

Rura

l Res

iden

cies

$37,

950

0.8%

$14,

950

39.4

%$0

0.0%

$23,

000

60.6

%$0

0.0%

Awar

ds P

rogr

am (G

rant

s to

Orga

niza

tions

)$1

,425

,220

28.6

%$9

83,8

2069

.0%

$00.

0%$4

41,4

0031

.0%

$00.

0%

Inst

itutio

nal S

uppo

rt$6

33,0

0012

.7%

$303

,685

48.0

%$0

0.0%

$329

,315

52.0

%$0

0.0%

Orga

niza

tiona

l Sup

port

$429

,862

8.6%

$410

,462

95.5

%$0

0.0%

$19,

400

4.5%

$00.

0%Pr

ojec

t Sup

port

$129

,500

2.6%

$97,

600

75.4

%$0

0.0%

$31,

900

24.6

%$0

0.0%

Coop

erat

ive

Part

ners

hips

$232

,858

4.7%

$172

,073

73.9

%$0

0.0%

$60,

785

26.1

%$0

0.0%

Com

mun

ity D

evel

opm

ent

$17,

100

0.3%

$12,

500

73.1

%$0

0.0%

$4,6

0026

.9%

$00.

0%

Trav

el A

ssis

tanc

e$1

2,10

00.

2%$7

,500

62.0

%$0

0.0%

$4,6

0038

.0%

$00.

0%Co

mm

unity

Dev

elop

men

t Pro

ject

s$5

,000

0.1%

$5,0

0010

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%

Folk

Arts

$105

,100

2.1%

$45,

000

42.8

%$0

0.0%

$60,

100

57.2

%$0

0.0%

Mas

ter A

ppre

ntic

eshi

ps$3

0,00

00.

6%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$3

0,00

010

0.0%

$00.

0%Fo

lk A

rts

Resi

denc

ies

$5,0

000.

1%$5

,000

100.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

Fello

wsh

ips

$10,

000

0.2%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$10,

000

100.

0%$0

0.0%

Her

itage

Tou

rs$4

5,10

00.

9%$2

5,00

055

.4%

$00.

0%$2

0,10

044

.6%

$00.

0%Fo

lk A

rts

Proj

ects

$15,

000

0.3%

$15,

000

100.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

Misc

ella

neou

s$4

1,57

80.

8%$1

6,26

339

.1%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$25,

315

60.9

%

Stra

tegi

c Pl

anni

ng$2

3,37

80.

5%$6

,763

28.9

%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$1

6,61

571

.1%

Gov

erno

r’s A

rts

and

Her

itage

Cer

emon

y$6

,500

0.1%

$6,5

0010

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%W

alla

ce-R

eade

r’s D

iges

t Fun

ds In

itiat

ive

$8,7

000.

2%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$8,7

0010

0.0%

Mis

cella

neou

s Co

ntra

cts

and

Awar

ds$3

,000

0.1%

$3,0

0010

0.0%

$00.

0%$0

0.0%

$00.

0%

Tota

l Rev

enue

s$4

,989

,506

100.

0%$2

,896

,153

58.0

%$1

,449

,238

29.0

%$5

68,5

0011

.4%

$75,

615

1.5

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(90 percent of the 26.1 percent pro-vided by the federal agency).

What is particularly interesting aboutthese allocations of federal money isthat many of them are dedicated tovery particular situations existing inWashington—rural constituencies,underserved constituencies, indigenousfolk artists—situations that one mightexpect the state to be targeting with itsresources. But the commission, in orderto maximize its revenues, has to makea surprising choice: to pursue federalmonies for clearly local priorities.

Finally, with respect to non-govern-mental sources of revenue, two sepa-rate initiatives are in evidence. Privatesupport assisted in the printing anddistribution of the commission’s newstrategic plan, picking up more than 70percent of the cost. And the participa-tion initiative funded by the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds shows up inboth program expenditures ($8,700)and in general agency administration($50,300).

The allocation of the separate revenuestreams to the commission’s programs isthe result of several factors. Some of therevenue streams are dedicated to particu-lar projects, e.g., the grant from theWallace-Reader’s Digest Funds or themoney for the Art in Public Places pro-gram. Some are restricted to particulartypes of programs—NEA money outsidethe basic state grant, for example. Someare allocated in a particular way becauseof restrictions on other sources of rev-enue—state money can only be used tocontract for goods or services inWashington, and therefore it is federalmoney that is used to fund the masterapprenticeships and fellowships in theFolk Arts Program. Finally, to the extentpossible, the commission attempts to allyprograms with single revenue sources soit is relatively easy to say, “This is whatyour money has been supporting.”

Education program are the two largestprogram categories over which thecommission has direct influence. Eachof these programs re-grants approxi-mately one-eighth of the commission’stotal revenues. Organizational SupportGrants (to smaller arts organizations)are the next largest category, distribut-ing slightly more than 8 percent of thecommission’s total revenues.

A consideration of the relationshipbetween program expenditures and rev-enue sources is also revealing:

Many program categories are com-pletely reliant on the state’s operatingbudget, which is not surprising giventhat it is the single largest source ofrevenue for the commission, butcertain programs are heavily reliant on other sources.

As expected, the purchase of artworksunder the Art in Public Places pro-gram is entirely covered by the statecapital budget. Because the commis-sion is allowed to expend up to 15 per-cent of the amount thrown off by thecapital budget for administrative costsrelated to administering the Art inPublic Places program, a substantialportion of agency administration (15.5percent of the total, 25.3 percent ofprogram administration) is covered bythe capital budget.

The federal government is a majorsource of revenue for a number ofprograms. Partly, this is because of therestricted nature of the federal pro-grams providing these revenues:Master Apprenticeships (100 percent),Fellowships (100 percent), andHeritage Cultural Tours (44.6 percent)in the Folk Arts Program; RuralResidencies (60.6 percent) in the Artsin Education program; and ProjectSupport (24.6 percent) in the AwardsProgram. Other awards programs arefunded quite substantially from theunrestricted basic state grant throughthe National Endowment for the Arts: Institutional Support Grants (52percent) and Cooperative Partnerships

categories more than four out of five.But one has to be careful not to read toomuch into these statistics. For example,the Folk Arts Program finds that it isquite difficult to get artists from diverseethnic and racial communities to apply forthese grants; it has to encourage applicationswhile trying to be careful that the rejec-tion rate does not rise too high becauseexperience shows that unsuccessfulapplicants will not apply a second time. Inother words, the application rate is man-aged by commission staff to encourageboth current and future applications.

Within each of these programs there canbe considerable variation in grant size, avariation that is hidden by focusing onaverages. This is particularly the casewithin the Awards Program where Institu-tional Support Grants and CooperativePartnership Grants are quite large,whereas Project Support Grants are quitesmall. Many of the grants made by thecommission are quite small, and we heardmore than a few comments about therelationship between the work involved inapplying and the money that is likely to be

Five + One ProgramsAs we have seen, the work of WSAC isstructured into five programs, with a sixthunder development. Two of these pro-grams, the Awards Program and Arts inEducation, are primarily grant-makingprograms. The Wallace-Reader’s DigestArts Participation Initiative, funded by theWallace-Reader’s Digest Funds and cur-rently being implemented, will also be pri-marily a grant-making program. Twosmaller programs, the Community ArtsDevelopment Program and the Folk ArtsProgram, mix grant making with thedirect involvement of WSAC staff inprojects. The sixth program, Art in PublicPlaces, has a unique set of characteristics.

We turn first to the existing grant-makingprograms (Table III.4). On an annual basis,the commission makes approximately 300grants. Most of these are in the AwardsProgram (Grants to Organizations); 60-65percent of the total grants funded were inthis category in each of three recent years.Generally speaking, a rather high percent-age of applications succeed—in many 51

Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural PolicyTable III.4: Washington State Arts Commission—Grant Program Application and Funding StatisticsFiscal Year 1999—Fiscal Year 2001Grant Program Number of Number of Percentage Total Grants Average

Applications Grants Funded Funded Funded Grant Amount

Fiscal Year 1999

Awards Program (Grants to Organizations) 217 179 82.5% $1,045,524 $5,841Arts in Education 87 74 85.1% $539,465 $7,290Community Arts Development Program 29 22 75.9% $35,658 $1,621Folk Arts Program 24 16 66.7% $64,299 $4,019

Total 357 291 81.5% $1,684,946 $18,771

Fiscal Year 2000

Awards Program (Grants to Organizations) 224 200 89.3% $1,192,548 $5,963Arts in Education 99 50 50.5% $594,517 $11,890Community Arts Development Program 47 40 85.1% $61,370 $1,534Folk Arts Program 38 20 52.6% $46,000 $2,300

Total 408 310 76.0% $1,894,435 $21,687

Fiscal Year 2001

Awards Program (Grants to Organizations) 228 188 82.5% $1,230,220 $6,544Arts in Education 73 66 90.4% $695,108 $10,532Community Arts Development Program 23 21 91.3% $14,165 $675Folk Arts Program 45 16 35.6% $80,000 $5,000Total 369 291 78.9% $2,019,493 $22,751

Source: Washington State Arts Commission analysis.

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theater company met the criteria but wasnot approved because, even though it wasmoving “in a WSAC direction,” its out-reach was not deemed good enough. Achorus was not approved because it doesnot pay its chorus members, only itssoloists. In years in which competition forInstitutional Support is opened up, thepanel that reviews applications has onecommissioner and two outside members.In other years, the commissioners them-selves review the grants that will be made.The commission has, on occasion, tem-porarily removed organizations from theprogram. They are typically given a graceperiod within which they can re-qualify.But generally those who drop out go outof business. Thirty-three organizationsare now eligible for, and are guaranteedsupport through, the program.

The amount each qualified organizationreceives each year is determined by aformula. First, each organization submitsan audit. Program staff then calculate theorganization’s “actual operating income”(as defined by WSAC criteria). Each quali-fying organization is guaranteed a baseamount. Until recently, this base amounthad been $10,000, but it is being decreasedbecause of state budget cuts. The remain-der of the program’s budget—once thebase amounts have been subtracted—isthen distributed to each qualifying organi-zation according to its relative percentageof the total actual operating income of allof the qualifying organizations. In recentyears, individual grants have ranged from$10,000 to $50,000. Thus, this is a programthat rewards budget size (with a floorestablished by the base amount). Once anorganization is qualified its grant is moreor less automatic, and the program can berun with a minimum of administrativeoverhead.

Even though grants under the InstitutionalSupport category are for ongoing operat-ing support, because of the state constitu-tion’s prohibition against grants, theymust be set up in the form of contractsbetween the organization and the com-mission. Typically the agreement with therecipient organization specifies that the

available. Yet, organizations in the ruralparts of the state felt that even a smallgrant was important in “getting them onthe map.” An imprimatur from Olympia,even one with limited resources, was seenas valuable.

The work of the commission can only beunderstood through the work of its indi-vidual programs, and we now turn to adiscussion of each of them in turn.

The Awards Program (Grants to Organizations)The Awards Program (Grants to Organiza-tions) is the primary grant-making divi-sion of the commission. It providesfinancial support to Washington’s non-profit arts organizations through operat-ing or project grants in four differentcategories: Institutional Support, Organiza-tional Support, Project Support, andCooperative Partnerships.

Institutional Support. The InstitutionalSupport program component providesongoing, unrestricted operating supportto the more major institutions. Nonprofitarts organizations go through a qualifica-tion process to determine whether theywill be allowed to participate. To be con-sidered, an institution has to have anannual budget of over $500,000 and hasto be paying its artists and managers.Other criteria may also be applied. Oncean institution qualifies, it is guaranteed toautomatically receive a grant on an annualbasis. Occasionally, an open competitionis announced, which may lead to moreorganizations being qualified. Each com-petition is opened at the discretion of thecommission, and a new competition isheld only when it is felt that sufficientnew money is available to avoid dilutionof the money expected by previouslyqualified organizations.

Six new organizations were recently quali-fied, marking the first time in eight yearsthat a new competition had been held. Inthis competition, some institutions werenot approved because they were not ableto provide audits. A theater company wasfinally approved after three applications;previously it had paid its actors for per-formances but not for rehearsals. Another

23 Jonathan Katz, chief execu-tive officer of the NationalAssembly of State ArtsAgencies, makes the pointthat in some states the recipi-ents of ongoing operationalsupport through a formulamechanism provide signifi-cant political support for theagency’s budget, support thatmay ultimately determinewhether additional funds forinnovation become available.

inexpensive way of dispensing a portionof the support the state arts agency pro-vides. Some states use it more than othersdo, but it is nevertheless quite common.One might argue that the use of a for-mula undermines a policy perspective inwhich each decision is made with refer-ence to current policy, but the counterar-gument to this is that the formula, itself,is the embodiment of the policy.

The value of providing ongoing operatingsupport through a formula is probablyunderestimated in cultural policy becauseit is so poorly documented. If grant recip-ients were asked to describe the specificuses of funds received in this way interms of increased financial stability,improved artistic product, reaching newparticipants, sustaining jobs, or providingother benefits, the value of this form ofsupport could be compared to otherforms of support and better articulated.

The use of a formula can, however,become ingrained, with the resultantfunds being thought of as an entitlementrather than as an agreement between thestate and the organization to continue tooperate in the public interest. This is onereason the commission is so careful abouthow often it opens up this category tonew entrants. But the fact remains: Theuse of formulas may make it more diffi-cult to steer a state arts agency in thedirection of desirable policy initiatives.23

Organizational Support. The second prongof the Awards Program is OrganizationalSupport. This program component alsoprovides operating funds, but to organiza-tions that are smaller than those qualifyingfor Institutional Support. To qualify, anorganization must either be a nonprofitorganization incorporated in Washingtonor a government agency, have a minimumannual cash income of at least $75,000,and have a minimum three-year history ofoffering arts program to the public inWashington with at least one part-timepaid staff member or a five-year historyof arts programming for all-volunteerapplicants. A wide variety of organiza-tions can (and do) apply.

service that is being provided is access tothe public at a reduced (lower than wouldotherwise obtain) price.

The budget for Institutional Support iscurrently upwards of $600,000. As withmany WSAC programs, this one is fundedout of a combination of state (tax rev-enue) money and federal money. For fiscalyear 2002 the available funds included$329,315 from the basic federal grant(from NEA) and $303,685 from the stateoperating budget for a total of $633,000.Here the commission wants to be able todemonstrate to both the state and the fed-eral government that it is using taxpayerdollars for top-of-the-line arts organiza-tions. Commission staff believe that thisis their program with the widest impact,but this impact is simply based on aggre-gating the reported annual attendancefigures for the qualified organizations.The underlying assumption of this pro-gram seems to be that WSAC is filling abudget gap, allowing recipient organiza-tions to keep prices down, thereby pro-viding more access.

The Institutional Support component ofthe Awards Program has several impor-tant properties that bear notice. First, itplaces a fence around support for themajor institutions in the state. Separatingoff support for major institutions in thisway, and making it more or less automaticonce the organization has been qualifiedfor the program, recognizes one of themain political realities that is confrontedby all state arts agencies: the relative influ-ence of the large institutions. One mightargue that the larger, better-known institu-tions should be able to function with lessof a draw on state support, but they willalways have the clout and reputation toget back to the table, and they providepowerful support for the commissionitself at budget time.

The second important property is that itemploys a formula for dispensing grants.“Formula funding” has often been criti-cized when attempts have been made touse it in cultural funding. However,formula funding has been adopted inmany states as an efficient and relatively 53


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This program component is fairly typicalfor arts support agencies in the UnitedStates—a competitive process with appli-cations assessed by a panel—though moreoften than not the process is used forproject support rather than for ongoingoperating support. It is worth noting thatmembers of the commission sit on eachof the panels, which bring the two stepsof the approval process—panel recom-mendations and commission approval—into closer contact with one another. Onewould expect this to minimize any poten-tial conflict between the views of the pan-els and the views of the commissioners.Indeed, Kris Tucker pointed out that thepanel process is expected to be appropri-ate, professional, and credible; in her fouryears as executive director the commissionhas not found it necessary to overturn orrevise a panel’s recommendation.

Project Support. The third Awards Programcomponent, Project Support, is designedto provide project support with a quickturnaround. There are two competitionsand two deadlines (March and October)each year. The same types of organiza-tions can apply as can apply for the otherawards programs, but WSAC receives fewapplications from government agencies orgovernment organizations. Project Supportmight, for example, fund a chamber ofcommerce if it is the only organizationwith any history of arts programming in aparticular community. One can applythrough a fiscal agent—an organizationalstructure through which the grant will befunneled. This is the only program cate-gory in which this is allowed; this is notatypical for small grant programs.

Within the Project Support category,grants are made for identified componentsof a project, usually artistic fees, facilityfees, guest artist fees, or advertising. Theapplication specifies the project and thecomponent for which funding is beingsought. Any component that is funded isreimbursable as a specific expense.

Unlike the commission’s more major grantprograms, the grant review decisions in thiscomponent are made by a committee ofstaff members, with the final decision

The program is competitive on a biennialbasis (corresponding to the state budgetcycle). A five-person panel, including onecommissioner, reviews grant applications.The panelists are knowledgeable individu-als from the arts community who have noconflict of interest with respect to theapplications under consideration. Panelistsneed to be able to analyze a budget, andthey are instructed to make their recom-mendations based on overall attendance,artistic merit, and financial soundness.

Recently, budgets for OrganizationalSupport have been approximately$400,000 per year for a total of $800,000each biennial budget cycle. In fiscal year2002 the budget included $19,400 in fed-eral money dedicated to underserved pop-ulations and $410,462 from the state’soperating budget. During the first year ofeach biennial grant the recipient receives aportion of the roughly $400,000 that isavailable; the remainder is paid during thesecond year, assuming the budget level ismaintained. Organizational Support Grantsrange from $3,000 to $7,500. There is amatching requirement, but organizationsare simply allowed to report their totalbudgets, net of state aid, as their match.The next to last time this program wasopened 114 applications were submittedand ninety received funding.

According to program staff, Organiza-tional Support reaches into more cornersof the state and touches more diversepopulations than any of the other grantprograms. Interestingly, this seems to betrue even in comparison to ProjectSupport (see below), which one mightexpect to be disbursed even more widely.Because the program is basically an oper-ating support program, it is not proactivein the sense of pursuing any particularpolicy initiative.

Although the evidence is unclear, pro-gram staff believe that artistic merit,public benefit, and quality managementare being rewarded. One attribute of thisprogram that recipient organizations par-ticularly like is the fact that the biennialfunding pattern means that they only haveto apply every other year.

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural PolicyCooperative Partnerships. The final compo-nent in the Awards Program falls underthe rubric of “Cooperative Partnerships.”These allocations are not exactly grants inthe sense of the three componentsdescribed above. Rather, they fund organi-zations that provide services to and onbehalf of the commission, or they pay formembership dues that the commissionowes to networks of which it is a part.Thus, this component operates very dif-ferently from the other grant categories.Here the commission identifies unmetneeds that it feels can be met only on astatewide or regional basis. It thenapproaches a partner organization to pro-vide these services. It is not a competitivegrant process; once funded, organizationstend to stay in this program for manyyears providing the services for which thecommission has contracted. One staffmember made a telling comment: “This isthe only commission program that allowsthe commission to spend money on itsown identified statewide priorities.” Thismore or less amounts to saying that this isthe only program under which the com-mission can actually pursue a policy of itsown devising. The annual budget forCooperative Partnerships has been slightlyless than $250,000.

In recent years six recipients have typicallyreceived funds from this component, fourof the first type (providing services in line with policy) and two of the second(membership dues). The first four areexamples of the commission using “pol-icy surrogates” to implement policy on itsbehalf: Artist Trust, Arts Northwest, theArts Network of Washington State, andCentrum. Each is described below.

Artist Trust is an independent nonprofitorganization that provides technicalassistance, advocacy, and fellowship sup-port to individual artists. WSAC hadoffered artists’ fellowships of its own butrealized that its program was virtuallyidentical to Artist Trust’s. Artists had tofill out two different applications for theparallel programs. Thus it made sense tocombine the two programs, allowingArtist Trust to award and administer the

being made by the executive director.Thus, the commissioners are not directlyinvolved. Project Support Grants gener-ally range from $1,000 to $4,000; most areat the lower end and some have gone aslow as $500 to $750. The budget for thisprogram is approximately $200,000 perbiennium. The fiscal 2002 budget, forexample, was $129,500—$11,900 fromfederal money targeted to underservedconstituencies, $20,000 from a federalchallenge grant, and $97,600 from thestate’s operating budget; the fiscal 2003budget was $82,000, including $68,700from the state’s operating budget and$13,300 in federal monies.

Between forty and sixty applications arereviewed after each deadline; thus, some100-120 applications are received eachyear. Approximately eighty of them arefunded. The commission has been able toincrease this program in size over time,but it has not been able to keep up with,for example, the statewide increase inpopulation, which has gone from 3.1million in 1970 to nearly 6 million today.

The staff feel that the available funding isinsufficient to meet the demand forProject Support Grants, but the commissionis also able to use this fact to a policyadvantage; it helps train applicants onhow to develop and present their propos-als, resulting in better proposals. Seen inthis way, limited resources may have asalutary affect on the quality of proposalsultimately funded.

The Project Support component receivesapplications from a wide variety ofgroups—newly formed groups, tiny groups,rural groups, and groups with ethnic orracial diversity—and, in a way, this pro-gram serves as a feeder program towardhigher levels of support. The implicit goalis for organizations to build up to Organiza-tional Support and perhaps even toInstitutional Support.

When asked if the commission monitorsthe success of funded projects, the staffsaid, “Yes, the commission reads the finalreports and informs grantees when theyare disappointed with the results.”

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Artist Trust receives a total of $67,000from WSAC, $36,000 for the fellowshipsand $31,000 that is divided between GAPfunding and administration.

Artist Trust acknowledged a commonperception that only Seattle-based artistsreceive their grants. It is true, they said,that the lion’s share goes to Seattle/KingCounty; but this is simply a reflection ofthe character of the applicant pool. ArtistTrust does not want to ask its panels tochoose geographically; they do not wantto say, “artistic quality and…” This isbecause their constituents say it meansmore to win from a statewide system.Artist Trust does receive money on occa-sion that is designated to a particular classof recipients, but it returns the money ifthere are no qualified recipients in thedesignated class.

Arts Northwest is a nonprofit organizationthat serves as a clearinghouse for artistsand presenters. Supported by three statearts councils (Washington, Oregon, andIdaho) and the Western States ArtsFederation (WESTAF), it is premised onthe idea that it is less expensive for hostorganizations to hire performing artists ifthe artists are part of a tour.

Arts Northwest holds an annual bookingconference that is heavily attended andused by almost all the performers andpresenters in the region. They also createa juried, touring arts roster each year;selective in nature, this gives the variousregions Arts Northwest serves a chanceto book a constellation of talented per-forming artists without having to makeindividual determinations about quality. Inareas of the state with few artists and fewarts organizations, such a service can beextremely helpful in facilitating perform-ances. The annual budget is $134,000;about one-quarter of this amount comesfrom the state arts commissions andWESTAF in the form of grants, halfcomes from registration fees at the annualbooking conference, and one-quarterfrom membership fees. Growth has beensteady, and both presenters and artistsmake it clear that they have come to relyon the services of this clearinghouse and

WSAC fellowships to individual artists.Today Artist Trust awards six $6,000WSAC fellowships (WSAC provides someadministrative costs on top of this) andfifteen $6,000 fellowships that are fundedfrom other sources. The WSAC fellow-ships are identified as such and fundedthrough WSAC’s Cooperative Partnerships.In most respects the WSAC fellowshiprecipients are quite similar to the otherrecipients; however, Artist Trust is carefulto select a geographically diverse group ofrecipients for the WSAC awards. Inexchange for public funding, Artist Trustrequires a public “meet the artist” elementas part of the fellowship. Out of each$6,000 fellowship, $500 is withheld untilthe “meet the artist” event is held; regret-tably, some artists forfeit this amount.The work of those artists who receiveWSAC fellowships is presented annuallyto the commissioners. The fellowshipprogram is run on an alternating yearrotation: in one year applications in dance,design, theater, and visual arts are consid-ered; in the next year applications in craft,literature, media, and music are consid-ered. The panels are discipline specificand include three artists and/or arts pro-fessionals.

Artist Trust also awards Grants for ArtistsProjects (“GAP funding”). These grantsare for up to $1,400, though an applicantcan request less. In 2002 Artist Trust gavefifty-six GAP grants (out of a total of643 applications) totaling $73,000. In thisprogram, if the panel selects the applicantto be funded, the panel must fund at thelevel requested. These grants are to begin,further, or complete a specific work orbody of work. This can be interpretedloosely. These grants have, for example,been used to pay for childcare, to ventilatea studio, or to pay actors for a stagedreading of a new work. GAP panels aremore diverse than the fellowship panels;three panels with five members each meetover a two-day period to make decisions.Typically, Artist Trust has been able tofund between 10 and 15 percent of theapplications, but in 2002 it was able tofund only 9 percent.

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24 The Art in Public Places pro-gram is similarly a longstand-ing program, but one thatwas created by action of theLegislature, not by the com-mission itself.

different sites around the state had beenconsidered before Fort Worden wasselected and Centrum was created in1973. The Fort Worden site could providethe facilities that WSAC had hoped tocreate, particularly the establishment of aFort Worden Conference Center withaccommodations and dining facilities,which would complement the proposedarts facilities. The arts became the way touse the buildings and to keep them fromfalling apart. Thus, a park/conferencecenter/arts-based retreat facility was created.

Centrum is unique in that it is the onlylongstanding program created by anaction of the commission and continu-ously supported henceforth.24 Centrum isthe largest single grantee of WSAC, cur-rently receiving a bit more than $100,000per year. It began as a line item entry inthe commission’s budget, though it is nolonger treated this way. It must now applyevery two years, like any grantee, but itsgrant is virtually protected, and it hasbeen able to plan on an annual grantmuch as if it enjoyed line item status.Centrum also has an additional contractwith the Office of the Superintendent ofPublic Instruction for approximately$175,000 per year to provide students ingrades 5-12 experiences in creativity. Bothof these sources of funding are as pre-dictable and as reliable as any suchsources can be. The total annual budgetof Centrum is on the order of $1.8 mil-lion. Sixty-five percent is earned income,35 percent is unearned. Eighteen to 20 percent of Centrum’s total incomecomes from government sources—thestate and the National Endowment forthe Arts (in most years), along with somelocal and county support. Fundraisingprovides 15-17 percent, half of whichcomes from corporations and foundationsand half from individual donors.

Centrum provides four types of programs:Experiences in Creativity (its school pro-gram); Multigenerational Workshops andFestivals in various art forms (summer);an Artists’ Residency program with resi-dencies of one week to two months; andElderhostel programs in the arts.

would find it difficult to function in itsabsence.

The Arts Network of Washington State is anonprofit association of local arts organi-zations—one of a set of arts “assem-blies” created in many states during the1980s and ’90s. The network’s focus hasbeen on capacity building and technicalassistance to smaller arts organizations.Its main activity is an annual “CulturalCongress” in which many different work-shops are presented. For a few yearsduring the mid 1990s, technical assistanceto and capacity building among rural artsorganizations was a major focus—espe-cially arts organizations focusing onunderserved populations.

Over the years, the Arts Network hasreceived money directly from WSAC andNEA to support its activities. Recently theArts Network has been reorganized tosolve funding and staffing problems. Avery successful Cultural Congress washeld in spring 2002, and the Arts Networkhas merged with the Washington StateArts Alliance, reestablishing a 501(c)(3)arm of that organization. WSAC nowprovides funding for these purposesdirectly to this foundation arm of thealliance.

Centrum: A Nonprofit Center for the Arts andCreative Education differs from other recip-ients of Cooperative Partnership grants inthat it was created by WSAC in collabora-tion with the Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission and the Office ofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction.Centrum is a nonprofit arts and educationcenter that is a tenant of the Parks andRecreation Commission, which owns andmanages Fort Worden State Park and FortWorden Conference Center.

Fort Worden functioned as a fort until the1950s, when it became a juvenile deten-tion facility. A state park was created on aportion of the property while the deten-tion facility was still operating. Ultimatelythe state had to figure out what to dowith the site. WSAC had been talking tothe Parks and Recreation Commissionabout creating a place for the arts. Eleven

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update information on the form at thestart of each review cycle with samples of their latest work. Part of the consciousdesign of this program is that the artisthas to be proactive, signaling every twoyears that he or she wishes to stay in theprogram. The commission is not merelypassive—it actively recruits artists to getthem into the pool. Each funded schoolhas free choice from among the artists onthe roster, though commission staffadvise that selection.

Grants of three different kinds are madedepending on the distance the artist hasto travel (local, mid-distance, and distant).The basic funding formula is $50 perhour with a total of forty to sixty hoursper residency plus mileage plus a per diem.The commission’s half of each fundedgrant ranges between $1,500 and $3,200.

Over the years the resources allocated tothe residency program have varied consid-erably—between $70,000 and $250,000per annum. The current level is approxi-mately $70,000. This is the direct result ofa good deal of evaluative review having todo with how best to do Arts in Education.As other programs have been tried out,more traditional components such as thisone have diminished in size. It is the onlyArts in Education program componentdating from twelve years ago that is stillpart of WSAC’s program.

Two critiques are frequently made of theartist residencies. One is that they are solimited in scope that it is hard to imaginethat they are having a substantial impact.Rather, it is argued, they are simply keep-ing the flag of the arts flying in schoolswhere that flag would otherwise be low-ered and stored away. A related argumentinvolves a more general critique of Artsin Education expenditures by WSAC:Why is WSAC paying for schools toupdate their curricula? Should that not bethe job of another state agency, e.g., theOffice of the Superintendent of PublicInstruction, or of the communities in whichthe schools are located? (In Washington,where much of the money for localeducation comes out of state revenues,this latter point is less relevant than it is

Two other organizations receive revenuesthrough the Cooperative Partnershipscategory, both in the form of member-ship dues: the National Assembly of StateArts Agencies, a national organization towhich nearly all state arts agencies belongand contribute, and the Western StatesArts Federation, a regional arts organiza-tion to which twelve state arts agencies inthe western states belong. Both organiza-tions provide a variety of services to theirmembers as well as a forum for discussionof issues of common interest.

Arts in Education

WSAC’s Arts in Education program,which has several components, has a totalannual budget of approximately $750,000and has the commission’s authorization tosplit its money among its subprograms asthe staff see fit. As with most WSAC pro-grams, funding for the Arts in Educationprogram comes from a combination ofstate revenues and federal money viaNEA; approximately $700,000 is statemoney and the remainder federal.

Artists in Residence. Artist residencies arethe oldest component (30-35 years old) ofthe Arts in Education program. The typi-cal funded project is a two-week artist’sresidency with a minimum of ten percentof the artist’s time devoted to teachertraining and ten percent to outreach tothe community in which the residencytakes place. Over the years, the content ofresidencies has been updated based on thepath of educational reform in Washington.

This is a matching grant program cate-gory. Both schools and government agen-cies may apply; if a proposal is funded,WSAC pays half and the recipient payshalf. Schools must choose from a rosterof artists prequalified by WSAC through apeer review process. Qualification for theroster is based upon the quality of theartist’s work, the artist’s experience withchildren, and the artist’s familiarity withthe state’s arts education standards. Lessonplans are submitted and judged by thepanel. Applications from artists to beincluded on the approved artist roster areopened up every two years. Artists may

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policyparticularly important in building up thosearts organizations that went on tour, butit reportedly had little impact on the fieldof arts education more broadly. By allaccounts, subsequent educational reformdid not change the equation very much.

By the 1990s WSAC was serving as thebooking agent for the program. Roughlyhalf the schools participating were enthu-siastic and half were not, as evidenced bysuch actions as canceling scheduled per-formances at the last minute. In responseto ideas that came for the most part fromthe more rural/eastern half of the state,the program was reformulated so that itwas no longer confined to performancesalone. Rather, each project from thatpoint forward would be required toinvolve families of schoolchildren and thecommunity at large. Thus, a newly recon-stituted program to pursue arts educationthrough community consortia was created,with the ultimate goal of building localschool district commitment to arts educa-tion to such a degree that it would cometo be viewed as indispensable, whateverthe vagaries and limitations of artseducation funding overall.

Today, any nonprofit or governmentagency may apply for an Arts EducationCommunity Consortium Grant, but theconsortium must include either a schoolor a partnering institution. Consortia mayapply for two-year grants correspondingto the state’s biennial budgeting process.Applicants must document what they arealready doing and identify the missing com-ponents that would make arts educationmore effective locally. The applicationmust articulate a plan to accomplishspecific educational outcomes. This grant-making program is more problem-orientedand problem-driven than many of thecommission’s other programs, in that tobe funded each consortium must identifysome aspect of the local arts in educationeffort that is deficient or absent. Most ofthe work must take place locally, but pro-posals must still draw from WSAC’s rosterof qualified artists. WSAC peer panelsreview applications annually, with at leastone commissioner on each panel.

elsewhere.) Project staff told us that thereare school districts that “depend on” thisprogram, but it is hard to know exactlywhat this means.

Linda Bellon-Fisher, manager of the Artsin Education program, is of two mindson this question: “You could say that artseducation in this state is an unfundedmandate, or you could say that school dis-tricts do have the money and could decideto use it in this way.” Here in a nutshell isa dilemma of much arts funding: Why arewe spending money to get someone to dosomething that they could do on theirown if they really wanted to? This ques-tion particularly plagues Arts in Educationprograms throughout the nation becauseof their natural ties to state departmentsof education. These concerns are revis-ited in the section of this chapter thatdeals with the Office of the Superinten-dent of Public Instruction’s program ofsupport for arts education.

The Artists in Residence program reput-edly has an excellent roster of teachingartists and has been welcomed in partici-pating schools. But there is also a percep-tion that this component is the least up to date of the WSAC’s Arts in Educationinitiatives in terms of its ability to advancearts education. It is not a program gearedto effecting major changes or towardimplementing dramatic arts educationpolicy initiatives.

Arts Education Community ConsortiumGrants. This most recent of WSAC’s Artsin Education initiatives has triggered agood deal of enthusiasm, as we discov-ered during our field interviews. Anhistorical perspective is necessary to fullyunderstand the basis for this response.

At one time Washington had had thenation’s most extensive arts educationtouring program, which began with Title Ifunding during the 1960s. The Legislaturepaid for touring to the schools throughwhat was then termed the “CulturalEnrichment Program,” initially locatedadministratively within the Office of theSuperintendent of Public Instruction and later at WSAC. The program was

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funding through the National Endow-ment for the Arts’ Challenge Program,which WSAC administered in WashingtonState. Its rationale lay in the fact thatmany rural school districts lacked thematching resources required by WSAC’sstandard residency program. The RuralResidency component was established inresponse. It was reportedly “very hands-on and labor-intensive” for WSAC staff.Projects were funded for one week andone time only.

The Community Arts Development Program

The Community Arts DevelopmentProgram operates differently from otherWSAC programs. Although it does have asmall amount of grant money at its dis-posal, this program relies primarily on pro-viding services to the field, typically in theform of its program manager, Bitsy Bidwell,a self-styled “Visiting Nurse of the Arts.”Ms. Bidwell described herself as a “handholder, cheerleader, and general nurturer.”

The program is built on providing serv-ices (technical assistance, information, andreferrals) to the field. Thus, it is primarilyan information program providing in-kindassistance; it is intended to:

Provide opportunities for and infor-mation about arts management;

Build organizational capacity; and

Provide management information and assistance, guidance andencouragement.

Over time the program has evolved a setof seven workshops that can be presentedon request around the state. It is nowmuch more common for these workshopsto be packaged together and organizedinto two-day events that might happen asmany as five times per year in variouslocations, though the staff recognizes thatthis model is efficiency driven rather thandemand driven.

Some money is available for grantsthrough the Professional DevelopmentAssistant Program (PDAP) category andthrough a new category of CommunityDevelopment Projects. PDAP makes

Commission staff reported that overallapplications have been imaginative and ofhigh quality. An independent evaluationhas confirmed that broad communityparticipation in planning and decisionmaking has been a key factor in makingthis among the commission’s more suc-cessful arts education initiatives.25

In its first year the program received morethan sixty applications. It now receivesroughly forty each year; of these, aboutthirty are usually funded. Grants can beup to $35,000, with a $10,000 maximumfor small schools. $569,351 was budgetedfor the 2001-2003 biennium—$535,576 instate funds and an additional $33,775from NEA’s Arts in Education program.

Arts Curriculum Grants. This componentwas initiated in 1993 with a grant fromNEA.26 Its major objective is to developand implement new standards and expec-tations for arts curricula in the publicschools. The aim is to develop sequentialand comprehensive visual and performingarts curricula. Support is provided to pub-lic school districts for assessing their artscurricula, designing new curricula, trainingteachers, and developing means of assessingstudents’ competencies in the arts. Mostrecently, the program received fifteenapplications and funded ten. The totalamount of grant money budgeted forthese grants is $80,000, with $10,000 asthe maximum for any one grant. Schooldistricts are limited to three grants withina ten-year period.

Funding limitations have preventedcommission staff from assessing theextent and degree of this component’scurrent impact on public school curricu-lum development in the arts. In previousyears staff made site visits and have com-missioned outside evaluations, but currentbudgetary constraints have brought theseactivities to a halt.

Rural Residencies. This component has been discontinued because of budgetrestrictions, and may ultimately be foldedinto WSAC’s regular Artists in Residenceprogram. The original impetus for theseresidencies came from the availability of

25 Rebecca Severeide, EarlyChildhood Strategies, “TheWashington State ArtsEducation CommunityConsortia Program: YearTwo Report,” WashingtonState Arts Commission,December 2001.

26 A substantial number ofprograms have their originsin federal initiatives, whichcontinue to be funded eitherwith federal money adminis-tered by state agencies orwhich eventually becomeincorporated by stateagencies as their own.

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policypass them through to the Arts Network,but the questions of how much institu-tional infrastructure there should be andwho should fund it remain.

When asked whether WSAC was settingitself up in competition to the many artsmanagement consultants in the field, Ms.Bidwell answered, “No,” because she trav-els to all parts of the state and does notwork nationally. The clients for thesegrants do not have the resources to hireconsultants, she said; indeed, they do notknow where to start. Yet, we also heardindividuals in the field question whetherWSAC ought to be providing this service.Some felt that arts organizations would bebetter served by outside consultants orother organizations who were perceivedto be more up to date in their approachesto technical assistance; others wouldundoubtedly prefer WSAC to simply foldall such programs into general operatingsupport grants, irrespective of their merits.

When asked how the Community ArtsDevelopment Program is assessed, theanswer is, “Right now we simply talkabout the number of hours of projectassistance. Other than that we use anec-dotal information.” But in our interviewsstaff posed all the right questions: Whatare we doing here? How can we beaccountable? Are we creating stableorganizations? How do we know? Howfar should the commission’s responsibilityfor the health of arts organizations in thestate extend? Despite having asked them,for the most part these questions remainunanswered.

The Folk Arts ProgramThe Folk Arts Program works throughtwo different methods: grants and proj-ects. Grants are made in three forms:Master Apprenticeships, which are grantsto master teachers allowing them to takeon an apprentice, Folk Arts Residencies,and fellowships to individual folk artists.

Master Apprenticeship Grants are on theorder of $2,500-$3,000. The master teacherapplies along with a proposed apprentice.The master teaches the apprentice forapproximately 100 hours over a year

small matching travel grants to allowartists and arts organizations to developtheir professionalism through attendanceat workshops, conferences, or other suchlearning opportunities. Up to one half ofthe cost of attendance or a maximum of$500 can be awarded. In fiscal 2002$12,100 was available ($7,500 in statemoney and $4,600 in federal money tar-geted to underserved constituencies).Though the grants are small and theopportunity is not advertised too heavily,there are always many requests. Applicantsonly need to apply about six weeks aheadof the event they propose to attend.Money is granted until it runs out, andwhen it runs out the demand stopsbecause the word passes quickly throughthe field. In any given year some addi-tional money may become available fromanother budget item. For example, WSACalways budgets approximately $3,000 forcosts related to grants appeals that mighthappen throughout its programs; whenthis budget item is not needed, the excessis transferred to PDAP.

Community Development Project moneyis used to provide support for staff initia-tives. It has been used in the past, forexample, to support a convening ofindigenous artists, but if it continues tobe available in the future, it may be usedin any number of community develop-ment projects.

Over the years this program has workedin parallel with the Arts Network ofWashington State. When that organizationwas fully functional it also provided tech-nical assistance to the field, and the ques-tion was asked whether both programswere needed. A division of labor evolvedin which the network would take on theestablished organizations and WSACwould be responsible for emerging organ-izations. But funding for this parallel sys-tem became problematic. It had alwaysbeen difficult to find appropriate levels offunding for the Arts Network; local agen-cies found it difficult to raise funds forother than their own direct programs.WSAC has, on occasion, managed tosecure some local grants from NEA and

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throughout the state. The Heritage Tourprogram dates back to 1995 when anNEA grant was used to do a field surveyof the folk arts in Washington with an eyeto beginning a project. The Folk ArtsProgram teamed up with the HeritageCorridors Program in the WashingtonState Department of Transportation andproposed that it could present informa-tion to their clients in an exciting way:with a cassette in your car that includesnarration and music. This is a rare exam-ple of a concrete collaboration betweenWSAC and another state agency. Theproject was initially funded with $25,000from the Washington State Departmentof Transportation and $25,000 fromNEA. The fourth tour, the OlympicPeninsula, was done with the assistance of the U.S. Forest Service, which added$15,000. A fifth tour has just been fin-ished. The first tapes were produced in1,000 copies, which retailed for $15. Thefirst one sold out. The fifth tape, Seattleto Vancouver, covers a more traveledroute, and 4,000 copies have been made.Funding is in place for two more plus afinal CD to add appropriate images. Slidesare now being digitized in anticipation.

Washington has assisted with eight similarprojects in other states, and this programis widely considered to be a success story.The Folk Arts Program hopes that even-tually it will be able to incubate it out ofWSAC to become an independent effort.

Beyond Heritage Tours, WSAC budgetsapproximately $15,000 annually for otherspecial projects in the Folk Arts Program.It facilitated, for example, a convening ofNative American basket weavers to dis-cuss their particular needs (especiallyaccess to natural resources). Initiated byWSAC and incubated for three years, itwas then spun off into an independent501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Similarly,a more recent project will convene NativeAmerican woodcarvers. WSAC knew thatthe basket weavers, almost exclusivelywomen, would want to join forces andwork together; but they are less sure as towhat the woodcarvers, almost exclusivelymen, will want to do. There is clearly an

receiving $25/hour. Each year the pro-gram receives twenty to thirty-five appli-cations and makes ten awards. Languageand cultural barriers make individuals reti-cent to apply and particularly reticent toapply if they have already been turneddown once. Thus, the program has to becareful about the way in which it solicitsand encourages applications. The programis in contact with various fieldworkerswho help identify potential applicants, andit has become trusted by Native Americancultural leaders, so quite a few unsolicitedapplications routinely come from NativeAmerican master teachers.

Two folk arts fellowships are available per year—$5,000 each—selected fromtwenty-two applicants. Choosing fromamong so much diversity is particularlydifficult. Peers from nearby states areoften used to judge the applications. Thisprogram is designed to recognize folkartists’ contributions to their communi-ties; the intent is to honor, showcase, andrecognize their work, holding them up asmodels for young people. Because theseawards are structured as recognition ofthe artist’s work rather than as a perform-ance-based contract, federal money isused to fund these fellowships.

It is worth noting here that MasterApprenticeship Grants and Folk ArtsFellowships are administered directly byWSAC rather than through Artist Trust.Federal money targeted to underservedcommunities allows this to happen, butWSAC staff also feel that they have par-ticular expertise in identifying goodcandidates in the folk arts field.

In recent years, some money has alsobeen available for Folk Arts Residencies.In fiscal year 2002, $5,000 of state moneywas available for these residencies.

The Folk Arts Program also supports awide variety of special projects. It is cur-rently in the midst of a relatively largeproject producing Heritage Tours. Thesetours combine booklets with tape cas-settes and include history, sounds, andimages of artists and their living traditionsalong preplanned cultural heritage routes

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27 An alternative option forcommissioning is to involvethe artists directly as part ofthe design team for the newbuilding, integrating the artinto the architecture.

the amount of money generated is greaterthan $25,000 (or greater than $20,000 inthe case of schools), Art in Public Placeswill oversee the commissioning of a newwork of art.27 The majority of projectsunder this program are smaller, however.If the budget is less than $25,000 (lessthan $20,000 in the case of schools), themoney is typically used to purchase anexisting work of art.

Some 300-400 projects may be fundedunder each biennial budget, and, in orderto keep the program manageable, artistswhose work might be commissioned orpurchased (see below) are prequalifiedinto an Artists Resource Bank. Oncequalified, the artist either submits slides of works that are available for sale orsamples of work to indicate the type ofwork that might be commissioned. In thelatter case, the artist specifies a pricerange within which he or she would con-sider commissions. Approximately everytwo years there is an open call for artiststo submit work for possible inclusion inthe Artists Resource Bank. Any artistfrom the Pacific Northwest (Washington,Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming,Alaska, or British Columbia) may apply;artists from outside the region can applyif nominated. Currently, approximately 75 percent of the qualified artists arefrom the Pacific Northwest and 25 per-cent are from other parts of the UnitedStates. A jury of peers (artists, arts educa-tors, arts administrators, and curators)makes the decision based on whether ornot the work is of professional quality.Once you are in the register, your slidesget seen. If you then continue to provideslides of existing work your slides willcontinue to be seen.

With respect to the purchase of preexist-ing works of art, the local building sitesends a committee to one of a series ofmeetings that WSAC holds around thestate. At that meeting the committee isshown some 400 slides (four slides eachfrom 100 artists) and given the opportu-nity to select the work of art that itwishes to buy. Once an artwork isselected, its slide is replaced by another

interest in preserving traditions, preserv-ing copyrights, and preventing piracy ofindigenous designs. While there are fewworld famous basket weavers (maybe oneor two), there are five or ten world-renowned wood carvers, so the dynamicis likely to be different.

The Folk Arts Program offers a differentmodel. It is aggressively raising outsidemoney, much of it from federal agencies.The program director estimates that hehas submitted approximately thirty grantproposals to various NEA programs thatgive money to folk and traditional arts.Much of what can be accomplished isfacilitated by federal money—and in away this program is tied to the fortunes ofthe NEA budget—even though the activi-ties supported are intimately linked to thepeoples of Washington.

Art in Public PlacesIn 1974 the Legislature passed legislationcreating Washington’s “percent for art”program. This legislation mandates thatan additional 1/2 of 1 percent be addedto capital appropriations for the construc-tion of state buildings and that this addi-tional amount be dedicated to thepurchase of works of art to be includedin these buildings. Washington’s programis the second oldest in the nation afterHawaii’s. It is one of only four thatincludes the public school system withinits purview.

For state agencies and public schools this1/2 of 1 percent for art program appliesto the state portion of financing for newconstruction. For state universities andcolleges, this program applies to anyrenovations whose costs exceed $200,000as well as to new construction. In anygiven year, 15 percent of the allocationthat is spun off the capital budget for thisprogram is made available to WSAC forthe administrative costs of running theprogram. (This pays for 3.5 FTEs toadminister the program plus necessarygoods and services.)

WSAC serves as intermediary between theagencies whose building is involved andthe artist whose work is to be included. If

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and conservation of the collection. Thiscommitment has been maintained on abiennial basis by WSAC—no longer as aline item but out of its general operatingbudget—but as the State Art Collectionages its conservation needs grow. Worksdisappear, they are stolen, or they arevandalized in addition to more normalwear and tear. There is a deaccessioningpolicy for works of art that are stolen ordamaged beyond repair (beyond reason-able cost), or if the site changes. The Artin Public Places program is beginning towork with the sites where the works ofart are located to enlist them as stewards.

When asked about the effectiveness ofthe Art in Public Places program, staffsaid, “We are meeting our legislative man-date. We are acquiring work. But it is nota wholehearted success.” Reservations areparticularly expressed about the portionof the program that purchases preexistingworks of art. This part of the programwas described as “desultory.” Some arenot comfortable with the role that WSAChas to play to facilitate these purchases.

In other states, percent for arts programshave run into difficulty with certain typesof construction. In Massachusetts, forexample, the percent for art program wasdiscontinued when it was discovered thatthe only state facilities that were beingbuilt were prisons, and a public outcrygreeted the installation of the accompany-ing works of art. In Washington, by con-trast, state agencies have a considerableamount of flexibility in siting works ofart. They can be sited on any publicland,28 and the Washington Departmentof Corrections has used this flexibility ina creative way. They split their allocationin half: 50 percent for the facility in ques-tion and 50 percent for the community inwhich the facility is located. A travelingexhibit that a number of our intervieweesreferred to, “Beyond the Blue Mountains,”was paid for by Department of Correc-tions percent for art money. In a similarvein, the legislation has been amended toallow for pooling (within school districts,for example). To take but one example, atraveling exhibit was created for which

and the cycle continues. An artist cansend in up to ten slides of available work.Four are loaded, and then replaced withanother slide when a work is sold. Anartist can sell up to five pieces in eachbiennial period.

When a work of art is to be commissioned,WSAC staff contact the site directly toexplain the opportunity. If there is adecision to go ahead, a series of meetingsover an eighteen month period follows:orientation, artist selection, interviewingthe artist, bringing the artist on site, devel-oping criteria for the piece, and presenta-tion of the artist’s proposal. The localcommittee can then accept or reject theproposal. If it is accepted, a contract isdrawn up. Some twenty-five to thirty newworks are commissioned each year.

All of the artworks acquired under Art inPublic Places are viewed collectively asthe State Art Collection. There are cur-rently over 4,300 artworks in the collec-tion, and it is growing by some 200 peryear. By one estimate the works in thecollection have an acquisition value ofover $16 million, making Washingtonhome not only to one of the oldest statepublic art collections, but also to one ofthe largest and most valuable.

The size and the dispersion of thecollection have led to its greatest prob-lems. It is difficult for WASC to monitorthe collection once the pieces are boughtor commissioned. They often adornoffice walls, despite the fact that they areintended to be in accessible public places.There have never been sufficient resourcesto properly catalog the collection. (WSAC’sstrategic plan has called for placing it allon-line, but the resources to make thispossible have never been available.)

Making the situation even more difficult isthe fact that although WSAC is legallyresponsible for the care of the collection,the percent for art funds that flow toWSAC from the state’s capital budget maynot be used for the conservation of thecollection. In July 1994 the Legislaturefinally designated $50,000 of state generalfunds specifically for the maintenance

28 Whether this flexibility wasintended in the original legis-lation is the matter of somedebate.

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29 The DeWitt Wallace-Reader’sDigest Fund and the LilaWallace-Reader’s DigestFund, known collectively asThe Wallace-Reader’s DigestFunds, have recently beenmerged and renamed TheWallace Foundation.

30 This is made quite clear onthe Wallace-Reader’s DigestFunds website, whichdescribes the grant toWashington as follows:“The Washington State ArtsCommission will develop,implement and assess theimpact of new and expandedgrant programs that increasearts participation in currentlyunderserved communities.The commission willstrengthen its skills andcapacity by developing newtools and criteria for measur-ing arts participation.Documented results of thisprogram will be used to jus-tify requests for budgetincreases from theLegislature.”[http://www.wallacefunds.org/frames/framesetart.htm]

under this initiative, a commitment of$500,000 over five years.

The goals of this program go well beyondaudience development to greater directinvolvement of artists, stewards, donors,and the audience in the entire artisticexperience. WSAC’s proposal focused onencouraging greater arts participation intraditionally underserved populations: thedisabled, ethnic minorities, rural citizens,and low-income people. WSAC expects toaward grants of up to $10,000 a year forthree years to approximately ten nonprofitorganizations that have a history of work-ing with these target populations aroundarts and cultural issues.

The Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds fund-ing is accompanied with a requirementthat grantees participate in professionaldevelopment opportunities related tothese participation grants. In addition, thefunding requires that each funded programbe evaluated with an evaluation compo-nent to be designed by WSAC staff. Thehope is that the evaluation design willprovide grantees with useful informationon the relative success of their initiativesand with the skills necessary to applyevaluation methods to their other activi-ties and will provide WSAC redesignedevaluation methods that will be able toguide such initiatives over the long term.

While hoping to build a better track recordat working with these target populations,WSAC also hopes that this initiative willhelp it to better understand the needs forcultural programming throughout thestate and that a case will be able to be madefor an increased state commitment.30

WSAC staff are now traveling around thestate encouraging local arts organizationsto apply for funding from this programand providing technical assistance tosmaller organizations interested in prepar-ing a grant application. The guidelineshave only recently been issued. Curiously,they state that an organization has to havea history of working with the target pop-ulations, but they do not have to proposea new initiative. Thus, an organizationcould, presumably, receive funding for doing

works of art were acquired, a catalog wascreated, and a tour to public schools wasarranged. Now this exhibit is permanentlysited after having traveled for ten years.

At the end of the day, however, the staffof WSAC are aware that a rather largepercentage of their budget is tied up witha program whose parameters they have nopower to change, yet they do enjoy theprerogatives involved in selecting juries,maintaining the Artist Resource Bank,convening art selection committees foreach project, advising agency staff andcommittee members, and establishing theshort list of artists/works of art fromwhich the selection committees select. Itis a complex and demanding program, butone over which staff feel that they havelittle influence, and the design of the pro-gram engenders the inevitable complaintsfrom client agencies, selection commit-tees, and individuals who feel that theprogram overly constrains their choices.

The fact that the Art in Public Placesprogram has been sited within the statearts agency rather than elsewhere in stategovernment makes it a bit clearer whatthe opportunity costs are of investing cul-tural policy resources in this way, thoughit is still funded through a separate budg-etary source, the state’s capital budget,which renders those funds unfungible.

Arts Participation Initiative: Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds

The newest program at the WashingtonState Arts Commission is fully funded bythe Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds29 undertheir initiative to increase participation inthe arts. One element of that initiative isState Arts Partnerships for CulturalParticipation, through which exemplarystate arts agencies have been funded toenable them to adopt new, more effectiveguidelines, programs, and funding prac-tices aimed at encouraging broader publicparticipation in the arts. The key goal hereis eventually to encourage state arts agen-cies to change their guidelines and grantstipulations so that all applicants will bemore participation oriented. Washingtonis one of thirteen states to receive grants

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In SummaryBy being the most easily identifiable statecultural agency, the Washington State ArtsCommission finds itself at the center ofstate cultural policy. But it has not gener-ally embraced that ground. Rather, itseems that in order to achieve stability inits budget and in its relationships to theLegislature, the governor, and its variousconstituencies, WSAC has evolved amethod of working that involves a seriesof well-defined and separate programsthat function more or less smoothly withlittle consideration of new directions orpolicy options.

The programs that arouse the mostexcitement among WSAC’s staff are thosethat allow new directions to be pursued,even if in relatively limited ways.Interestingly, these initiatives tend to befunded either through federal money,which offers more flexibility or whichcomes with policy direction attached to it,or through private money. One wonderswhat would happen if the allocation fromthe state’s operating budget were to beginto increase once again after recent budgetcuts. Would WSAC choose to do more ofthe same but with somewhat higher fund-ing levels—as is suggested by much of itsstrategic plan—or would it choose tobecome more proactive in shaping andfollowing a new policy direction? Thereare powerful forces on any state artsagency to maintain the status quo, not theleast of which is the lobbying of thosewho consider themselves to be its (major)constituents.

As we interviewed the staff of each pro-gram area, we asked how they evaluatedthe work of their programs. With theexception of the Arts in EducationCommunity Consortium Grants, whichhad commissioned an outside evaluation,the answer was always couched in volumes:number of organizations funded, num-bers of artists involved, number of peo-ple in attendance, and number of dollarsspent. At times this approach is taken toextremes, as is the case on the commission’swebsite, which reported that in fiscal 2001the Awards Program benefited precisely

what it is already doing. Furthermore, itappears that the grant will come withessentially no strings attached so themoney can be spent on any program area(except capital expenditures). The factthat the grant guidelines allow an agencyto apply based upon its past record—itdoes not necessarily have to propose anew initiative to receive funding—compli-cates the evaluation task as it becomesmore difficult to know exactly what toevaluate.

While this grant was a welcome additionto WSAC’s budget and its programming,it reveals some interesting attributes ofthe commission’s work. In the implemen-tation choices that have been made so far,it looks as though this money will be usedto allow some organizations to do moreof what they have been doing already.There is nothing wrong with this; indeed,the desire is very strong to help a smallnumber of organizations do better work,to help a program or project “from goodto great.” But seen from another perspec-tive, one must note that even with theseextra resources WSAC seems unwilling topart very dramatically from recent prac-tice. Here is an opportunity to stake outnew policy directions, and if that oppor-tunity is not embraced when new resourcesare brought to the table, how could oneever expect new directions to be chosenwithin the agency’s normal budget cycle?

Put another way, WSAC already fundsprojects specifically for these target com-munities. To be sure, many of the projectsare not designed to promote arts partici-pation. But the isolation of this programfrom the rest of WSAC grant programssuggests that this program is likely to haverelatively little impact on WSAC or itsother programs. If, on the other hand,this program were to result in increasedtraining of and interaction among agencystaff and an increased appreciation ofevaluation as a tool to advance the workof the agency, it will have proven a majorsuccess. This program also raises thequestion of what a private foundation canreasonably expect to be the outcomes ofa program of this nature and scope.

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31 These statements are drawndirectly from the website ofthe Department ofCommunity, Trade andEconomic Development.

Building for the ArtsOffice of CommunityDevelopmentBuilding for the Arts is the second keyelement in the arts component of statecultural policy in Washington. In contrastto the Washington States Arts Commission,Building for the Arts is a program, not anagency in its own right. It is administra-tively located within the Office ofCommunity Development (OCD), one oftwo offices of the Washington StateDepartment of Community, Trade andEconomic Development (CTED) whosecharge is to “(assist) in the building andsustaining of strong social, environmentaland economic foundations.” Within thatbroad context, the mission of the Officeof Community Development is “to pro-vide financial and technical resources tobuild livable and sustainable communi-ties.”31 OCD’s program array ranges fromfarm worker housing and domestic vio-lence prevention to historic preservation,community development block grants,support for early childhood education,and growth management.

The Building for the Arts program awardsgrants out of the state’s capital budget toperforming arts organizations, art muse-ums, and other cultural organizations todefray up to 20 percent of the capitalcosts of new facilities or major renova-tions. Working through a citizen advisoryreview board, the program conducts acompetitive grant process every two yearsto solicit and select the worthiest projectsfrom throughout the state. From the pro-gram’s inception in 1991 through the endof 2002 the Legislature has appropriatednearly $32 million for seventy-eightprojects statewide.

Perhaps the most novel feature of thisprogram, and one that has attracted con-siderable attention, is that organizationsapply for funding before the annual capitalbudget appropriation for the program isapproved by the Legislature. During ourfield interview Dan Aarthun, capital proj-ects manager, described Building for theArts in the following way: “We aren’t

9,886,326 individuals—67 percent higherthan the entire population ofWashington!—and 79,825 artists. It is noteasy to assess the work of arts councils,but that does not mean that it would notbe worthwhile.

Our descriptions of the Arts in Educa-tion initiatives and the Community ArtsDevelopment Program, in particular, bothsuggest that the idea of mapping could beusefully extended to a detailed analysis ofsuch programs. Such an exercise wouldidentify program components, fundingstreams, staffing, allied networks, intendedoutcomes, appropriate evaluation methods,and the like, so that benchmarking andcomparison would become possible andthe possibility of experimenting with pro-gram design could be seriously considered.

Should state arts funding parallel othersources of funding or complement them?Should it endeavor to bring resources tobear on new initiatives, or should it workto sustain some sort of equilibrium?Should the state arts council assume aleadership position in state cultural policy,should it enter into a partnership with theother state cultural agencies, or should itoperate more or less on its own? Wouldfewer, but larger initiatives be moreeffective than a program of many smallgrants? Would a structure centeredaround programmatic initiatives (such asis the case in the Folk Arts Program andthe Community Arts Development Programand with Centrum in the CooperativePartnerships category) be more effectivethan a structure centered around re-granting? All of these questions and many more were raised in our interviews.

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process of searching for capital grantsfrom the state, moving it away from therandom process of one-off lobbying thathad been the case previously whereby indi-vidual arts organizations requested capitalsupport for arts-related facilities directlyfrom the Legislature and succeeded inrough proportion to their political cloutrather than to their contribution to statecultural policy. On this latter point, thedesign of the Building for the Arts programwas characterized by one of our inter-viewees as “programmed pork.”33 What-ever term one uses to capture this uniquefeature of the program, almost everyonewe interviewed expressed the opinion thatit had made the process of seeking capitalgrants from the state much more rationaland much more transparent, attributeswhich were widely seen as desirable.

Representative Val Ogden from Vancouverwas a key early player in establishing theprogram. She served on the HouseCapital Budget Committee and, in tandemwith Peter Donnelly, president ofCorporate Council for the Arts, and JoeTaller, then in charge of corporate givingfor Boeing, was instrumental in setting upthe procedures by which both arts andheritage organizations seeking state sup-port for capital development, renovation,and restoration projects could pursuesuch grants without getting caught up inthe rough-and-tumble world of internallegislative politics. Prior to that period,she said, decisions about which projectsgot funded depended much more uponwhich party was in the majority at thetime and which influential individuals hadwhich legislator’s ear.

Corporate Council for the Arts led thepush for the creation of the Building forthe Arts Program in 1991. It did so bycreating its own suggested list of capitalprojects that it felt the state should sup-port. CCA compiled a recommended listof capital projects from arts organizationsaround the state, gathered those organiza-tions to contribute to the cost of a lobby-ist, and then approached the Legislaturefor a capital request for the entire list.This strategy was successful and the

running a program. We’re simply bringingcapital development project opportunitiesto the Legislature.” Understanding thisway of framing the program is crucial tounderstanding its design. The programhas an interesting and critical property: itis the Legislature that ultimately can takedirect credit for the funding decisionbecause it is the Legislature that approvesexplicit line items for the recommendedprojects as part of its approval of thestate’s capital budget.32 Thus, the ultimatedecision rests with the Legislature and notwith the advisory panel or with the staffof any state agency.

During each funding cycle, the advisoryboard reviews applications and creates alist of recommended projects. The list isthen included in OCD’s capital budgetrequest, which is forwarded to thegovernor’s office for inclusion in the gov-ernor’s biennial capital budget request.Criteria that are used during the reviewprocess include an applicant’s capacity tocarry out the project, documented need,local community support, history of serv-ice to a broad range of constituencies,geographic distribution, and a fair repre-sentation of artistic disciplines among therecommendations in the aggregate. Manyof the people serving on the advisoryboard are themselves museum directorsand corporate giving officers. When theseassociations create a conflict of interestor the possible appearance of conflict, theindividual in question recuses himself orherself from the process. Thus, thisprocess parallels the peer panel reviewprocess used in other cultural agencies,particularly WSAC.

In our interviews, a number of individualsclaimed paternity for the Building for theArts program. What does appear to beclear, however, is that the CorporateCouncil for the Arts (CCA) was a keyproponent of the program, perhaps seeingthe proposed program as a way to furtherdefine the various funding pools for thearts in the state, perhaps seeing it as a wayto leverage its own operating support withstate money on the capital side, or per-haps seeing it as a way to regularize the

32 If there were ever a contro-versy surrounding one ofthese capital grants decisions,it would also be theLegislature that would haveto bear the downside of thatdecision.

33 Max McCortle, a politicalstrategist who has consultedwith The Pew CharitableTrusts, has characterized asimilar program in Florida as“sweet pork.” M. ChristineDwyer and Susan Frankel,Policy Partners: Making the Casefor State Investments in Culture(Philadelphia: The PewCharitable Trusts, 2002).

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34 RCW §43.63A.75035 Appropriations leveled out at

the $4,000,000 level in the2001-2003 biennium. Prior tothe stabilization and formal-ization of the program,appropriations had generallybeen higher: $11.250,000 in1991-93, $6,000,000 in 1993-95, $3,000,000 in 1995-97,$6,000,000 in 1997-99, and$5,600,000 in 1999-2001.

purposes at the same time—but at thatmoment in time it was felt that WSACwas not in a position to assume such pro-gram responsibility. One intervieweedescribed WSAC during this period as hav-ing been beset by “mild internal anarchy”and “poor leadership.” Another describedit as “effectively dysfunctional.” By allaccounts WSAC has since successfullyresolved these issues, but they were amajor factor in the decision to leaveBuilding for the Arts under the aegis ofCorporate Council for the Arts at theoutset and then subsequently move it intothe Office of Community Development(OCD) within the Department of Com-munity, Trade and Economic Develop-ment. When OCD finally became thehome of this program, administrativeresponsibility was assigned to the state’scapital projects manager.

Today an individual arts organization may apply for up to $1 million in a singlebiennium. The Capital Projects Office isauthorized to draw down 1.57 percent ofcurrent appropriations to offset its admin-istrative expenses related to this program.Because of the constitutional restrictionsalready mentioned above, funds arepayable on a reimbursement basis only, sothat participating organizations must sub-mit proof of actual building costs toreceive funding. The program managerreported during our March 2002 fieldinterview that of the ninety-three projectsfunded to date, only one has failed to ful-fill the terms of its agreement with thestate. The proposed projects of twenty-one organizations were approved by theLegislature for a total of $4,100,000 incapital funding through the program forthe 2001-2003 biennium (Table III.5).

The diversity of the artistic aims of thevarious 2001-2003 program participantsspeaks for itself. Several of them are basedin the Seattle/Tacoma area, and theyreceived some of the largest allocationsamong the grantees. However, the list alsoincludes a number of organizationslocated in central and eastern Washing-ton—two in Spokane and others inlocales such as Pullman, Harrington,

Legislature appropriated $11,250,000 forthe 1991-1993 biennium.

In 1993-95, Corporate Council for theArts repeated the process of compiling alist of recommended projects, gatheredthe recommended applicants together,calculated the cost of hiring a lobbyist tohelp assure that the recommendationswere ultimately voted and prorated thosecosts across the recommended applicantsaccording to the relative size of the grantsbeing recommended, secured the lobbyist,and successfully convinced the Legislatureto reauthorize the program for anothertwo years. $6 million was appropriated forthat biennium.

For the 1995-96 biennium the applicationreview process was moved from CorporateCouncil for the Arts to the Office ofCommunity Development, which wasdesignated as the agency responsible forpublicizing the program, receiving appli-cations, and screening the proposals forbasic eligibility. A citizen’s advisory panelwas established to develop a ranked list ofworthy recipients according to the pro-gram’s established criteria. But CorporateCouncil for the Arts has continued to beinvolved in assembling the biennial lists ofrecommended recipients and managingthe advocacy effort, securing a lobbyistpaid with prorated contributions from therecommended applicants. In 1999 theLegislature enacted further legislationauthorizing the program on a more per-manent basis (through 2007).34 When thislegislation was passed, the Legislaturespecified that the list of capital projectscould not exceed $4 million in the aggre-gate in any biennium (but that it couldinclude a list of alternates for another$1/2 million should some of those rec-ommended at the top of the $4 millionlist drop out before they received theirfunds).35

One might have expected that programadministration would be assigned to theWashington State Arts Commission—the parallel capital grants program forheritage organizations (discussed inChapter V) was assigned to the Washing-ton State Historical Society for managerial

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Forest near the Little Pend OreilleWildlife Area. The region is home to theKalispel Indian Tribe, which has histori-cally been isolated from the rest of thepopulation of approximately 11,200 peo-ple. The area has at various times had thehighest levels of unemployment inWashington. A modest investment ofcapital in this instance has had a signifi-cant impact on CREATE’s capacity to usetheater arts to build community andimprove the quality of public education.

By most accounts, the Building for theArts program is working effectively.Among the evidence offered for this con-clusion were the following:

Cost efficiency. Program funds are usedexclusively for construction or renovation,expenditures that are subject to (notexempted from) sales taxes. If Buildingfor the Arts contributes its maximum con-tribution—20 percent of the total capitalcosts—to a project, thereby leveraging the

Chelan and Ellensburg. The $400,000approved for the Orcas Theatre inEastsound—a small community on DoeIsland not far from the Canadian bor-der—was third largest of the projectsapproved, and the $230,000 allocated tothe Spokane Symphony for that bienniumranked fourth. This list suggests that dueattention is being paid to issues of geo-graphic distribution, a factor less likely tobe recognized in a “free-for-all” system inwhich the most influential organizationswould be able to achieve greater successin getting line item support from theLegislature.

Moreover, the size of any given allocationis not in itself an accurate gauge of theprospective impact of any given project.The $21,000 allocated to CREATE inNewport, for example, supported thedevelopment of a theater facility in a pro-foundly rural setting north of Spokane atthe Idaho-Washington border, on thesouthern tip of the Kaniksu National

Table III. 5: Capital Budget Allocations, Building for the Arts Program 2001-2003 Biennium

Project Name Location Project Amount

Orcas Theatre Eastsound $400,000Empty Space Theatre Fremont $29,000Music Works Northwest Bellevue $475,000Hands On Children's Museum Olympia $130,000Spokane Symphony Spokane $230,000Mount Baker Theatre Bellingham $128,000IKEA Performing Arts Center Renton $135,000Seattle Art Museum Seattle $1,000,000Town Hall Seattle $175,000Gladish Center Pullman $29,000Broadway Center Tacoma $50,000CREATE Newport $21,000Spectrum Dance Theatre Seattle $78,000Gallery One Ellensburg $225,000Lake Chelan Bach Fest Chelan $38,000Historic Seattle Preservation Seattle $390,000Historic Everett Theatre Everett $350,000Holy Names Music Center Spokane $50,000Youth Theatre Northwest Mercer Island $67,000Arts West Seattle $87,000Harrington Opera House Harrington $13,000Youth Theatre Northwest [Alternate] Mercer Island [$158,000]

Total $4,100,000

Source: Capital Budget of the State of Washington, 2001-2003 biennium.

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36 The Public DisclosureCommission, PictorialDirectory of RegisteredLobbyists 2001 (Olympia,WA: Public DisclosureCommission, 2001), 99.

and the political benefits to theLegislature and the financial benefits tothe recipients are quite high. This pro-gram design is ingenious and effective.

Simplicity. The process is straightforwardand transparent, with extremely limitedbureaucratic involvement in the reviewand ranking of applications and the devel-opment of recommendations to theLegislature.

This said, there are a number of attributesof the program that do raise eyebrows.

While Corporate Council for the Arts wasan important actor in the initial years ofthe program, it has retained some fairmeasure of influence on the program,even though day-to-day management hasbeen turned over to the Office of Commu-nity Development. It appears to be activein the process of advisory board reviewof project proposals, though the extent ofits influence in this regard is unclear. Inthe earliest phases of the program,Corporate Council for the Arts wasdirectly instrumental in hiring a lobbyistwho would then lobby the Legislature toassure that the recommended programswere ultimately included in the capitalbudget. The role of lobbyists persistseven today. Once the list of approvedprojects to be recommended to the Legis-lature has been compiled by the advisoryboard, the recommended applicants areinvited to a meeting by Corporate Councilfor the Arts where they are informed thatthey are expected to contribute in propor-tion to the size of their expected grant toa pool for the hiring of a lobbyist whowill work to assure that the Legislatureapproves the recommended line items aspart of the capital budget. This is whatmight be expected with any governmentgrant program—possible recipients lobby-ing on behalf of their own interest—butin its “List of Lobbyist Employers,” the2001 Pictorial Directory of Registered Lobbyistsfor the State of Washington identifiesBuilding for the Arts, which is a state pro-gram, as employing a lobbyist (though,curiously, the address that is given is anaddress for The Empty Space Theatre inSeattle).36 This arrangement gives the

remaining 80 percent of total project cost,the return on the original “investment” ofstate funds is perceived by its proponentsin the following way: the tax receipts onthe immediate investment—the sales taxesthat are applied to all professional servicesand materials—have, in effect, been multi-plied by five, resulting in a 32.5 percent“return” on the state’s investment (the 6.5percent sales tax rate multiplied by five,equaling the sales tax on the entire capitalinvestment). Moreover, the sales tax rateis as high as 8.9 percent when local salestaxes collected in certain localities by thestate are added in; the “return” in thiscase would be perceived as 44.5 percent!Not a bad investment over one year—though, of course, this “return” is limitedto a one-time payment and is not recurring.

The rationale for the program wouldbecome even more compelling if thelonger-term impact of capital projects onrelated local economic activity were fac-tored into the calculus. However, we weretold that the advisory board has electednot to formally collect and disseminatedata to support this rationale for the pro-gram, despite the fact that it is located inthe Office of Community Development,because the “low profile, below the radarscreen” strategy has worked well on itsown. Thus, this program seems to be anexample of the “less-said-the-better”approach that characterizes a good deal ofthe strategy that informs the investmentof public resources in the arts and culturein Washington.

Rationalized Decision Making. This processfor making capital grants goes a long waytoward establishing a rational basis for thedistribution of targeted capital develop-ment dollars. Since the Legislature has avetted list of projects in hand when itauthorizes funding, since that list is con-structed to simultaneously address theinterests of so many different locales, andsince the benefits to be realized by eachcommunity are so explicitly understoodby everyone involved, the political risksand costs to any given legislator associ-ated with approving the recommendationsin their entirety are virtually nonexistent

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operations (though it does provide con-siderable unrestricted operating supportfor arts organizations), and its grant-making programs are restricted to KingCounty and Pierce County, while theBuilding for the Arts program operatesstatewide. In our view, when state taxrevenues are at stake they should berecognized as coming from the state’s taxpayers; more complicated, ambiguouslyclever attributions strike us as inappropriate.

It should also be noted that the formaliza-tion of the Building for the Arts programhas not entirely eliminated the temptationto lobby the Legislature for line item capi-tal grants. A careful reading of the state’scapital budget will reveal that other artsprojects are funded from time to timethrough line items that do not appearwithin the Building for the Arts program.

In a sense, these observations are nothingmore than observations of the politicsthat surround any state program, butbecause of the unique nature of theBuilding for the Arts program (and itssister capital grants programs) theseobservations have a bit more traction. Insome sense they work to undo the trans-parency that is one of the hallmarks ofthe intended design of this program.

It is also worth noting that as the statehas implemented dramatic budget cuts,the Building for the Arts program has sofar been left alone. Partly this may be dueto the impression that it is rather small onthe overall scale of the state’s budget, andpartly this may be due to the fact that thecapital budget is funded through borrow-ing rather than through current revenues,but it also may be due to the fact that theexplicit attention paid to geographic dis-tribution within the program makes it anattractive bargaining chip when budgetarydecisions are being negotiated.

In the end, what is significant here is thatthe State of Washington has made acommitment to capital funding as well asoperational funding. The decision to sepa-rate the two has been the subject of muchdiscussion: Should the same agency overseeboth so that capital investment does not

impression of a state program lobbyingon its own behalf.

This procedure has had repercussionselsewhere in the arts system. The Washing-ton State Arts Alliance is an advocacyorganization that represents the interestsof the arts organizations who are its duespaying members. Some organizations arereportedly reluctant to pay dues to thealliance, arguing that they have alreadypaid for lobbying through the Building forthe Arts program. While these transac-tions are, in some sense, outside of statecultural policy, they illustrate how one partof the funding system can have an impacton other components of the system.

Corporate Council for the Arts also entersthe picture when it comes to officialrecognition of grants from the Buildingfor the Arts program. When we inter-viewed at the new Museum of Glass:International Center for ContemporaryArt in Tacoma we noted that their donorslist included recognition of “Building forthe Arts/Corporate Council for the Arts.”The museum had been instructed by theBuilding for the Arts program that thiswas the appropriate manner in which torecognize a grant from the Building forthe Arts program. What is striking is thatthe grant is entirely state money; noCorporate Council for the Arts money isinvolved. Why then should a state pro-gram insist on this form of recognition?

Corporate Council for the Arts was anearly advocate of the Building for theArts program and its continuing involve-ment may well have helped to keep theprogram alive and funded through succes-sive governors and legislatures. Publicprograms surely require advocates, andgood programs inevitably attract ardentadvocates. Yet, it would seem here thatCorporate Council for the Arts is beingpositioned in a manner that is misleadingand confusing. Indeed, the recipients ofBuilding for the Arts grants, themselves,were puzzled as to why they had beeninstructed to use this attribution.

Corporate Council for the Arts does notfund capital projects as part of its own

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37 Schools may, at their option,assess student mastery ofarts subject matter duringeither the 10th or 11th aca-demic year.

38 OSPI employs two assistantsuperintendents, one for cur-riculum and instruction andone for assessment. AnnRenéJoseph, program supervisorfor the arts, reports to theassistant supervisor for cur-riculum and instruction andat the time of our interviewshad held that position forjust over a year.

39 OSPI’s arts programsupervisor oversees thedevelopment of “frame-work” standards and assess-ments for these four artsdisciplines. The frameworksformat expresses grade-by-grade expectations for theEssential Academic LearningRequirements, e.g.: the stu-dent understands and appliesarts knowledge and skills; thestudent demonstrates think-ing skills using artisticprocesses; the student com-municates through the arts;and the student makes con-nections within and acrossthe arts to other disciplines,life, cultures, and work.

However, the extent to which this state-ment represents present everyday reality issubject to a fair degree of lively discus-sion. OSPI’s Arts Program SupervisorAnnRené Joseph pointed to what sheviews as substantive examples of progressover the past five to ten years: the require-ment that, beginning with the 2004 fresh-man class, all public high school studentswill have to complete a full year of artsinstruction to graduate; and the fact thatassessments of student mastery of essen-tial academic learning requirements, nowbeing developed for grades 5, 8, and 10,are expected to be mandatory by approxi-mately 2010.37 She also reported thatSuperintendent of Public InstructionTerry Bergeson could have eliminated thearts program supervisor position whenher predecessor retired in August 2001.Instead, she appointed Ms. Joseph to thepost and issued the above statement.

Ms. Joseph and her colleague MickeyLahmann, assistant superintendent forcurriculum and instruction,38 pointed tothe Legislature’s inclusion of the artsamong the “Essential Academic LearningRequirements” (HB 1207 EducationReform, 1993) that Washington’s publicschools are expected to assure that stu-dents fulfill. (The other requirementsinclude more predictable and traditionalcomponents of the essential curriculum:English/language arts, mathematics, sci-ence, social studies, and health/fitness.) It is important to note here that, althoughincluded in earlier drafts, the humanitieswere not included among the final array;foreign languages also failed to make thefinal cut.

With “essential” subjects defined, the nextcritical task has been the development ofstandards for each of these subject areas.Standards at each grade level, specifyingwhat students should know and be able todo, are now in place for every essentialsubject, including the arts. Arts standardsare currently in place for dance, music,theater, and visual arts.39 The next step inthe process will be the development ofassessments by which the extent to whichstudents are or are not developing these

get too far ahead of the ability of organi-zations to support the ongoing program-ming that those new or renovated facilitiescan afford? Or should different agenciesoversee the two sides of the coin, keepingthe different intents of the two sources offunding clear? What does seem clear isthat the particular formula that Washingtonhas hit upon, whether by intent or bychance, is an innovative approach withinteresting and unique characteristics.

The Arts in EducationThe place of the arts in education as acomponent of state policy has beenassured by two different agencies, theWashington State Arts Commission,whose Arts in Education program hasbeen discussed above, and the Office ofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction,which oversees K-12 education in theState of Washington.

The Office of the Superintendentof Public InstructionThe expression of OSPI’s commitment tothe critical role of the arts in the educa-tional experiences of students in the pub-lic schools of Washington could not bemore explicit:

The arts are an essential part of public education.From dance and music to theatre and the visualarts, the arts give children a unique means ofexpression, capturing their passions and emotions,and allowing them to explore new ideas, subjectmatter, and culture. They bring us joy in everyaspect of our lives. Arts education not onlyenhances students’ understanding of the worldaround them, but it also broadens their perspectiveon traditional academics. The arts give us the cre-ativity to express ourselves, while challenging ourintellect. The arts integrate life and learning for allstudents and are integral in the development ofthe whole person. The arts communicate andspeak to us in ways that teach literacy andenhance our lives. We must continue to find aplace for arts programs and partnerships not onlyfor what it teaches students about art, but forwhat it teaches us all about the world we live in.

Dr. Terry Bergeson, State Superintendent of Public Instruction

November 2001

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education support, Ms. Joseph suggestedthat no solid basis exists for comparingany one state to any other in this regard,since per capita wealth, geographic disper-sion, population density, and other socio-economic and demographic factors definethe character of each jurisdiction to sucha significant degree. She neverthelessreported that Washington is one of onlysixteen states in the country currentlymandating student assessment in themastery of arts subject matter and is onlyone of five states actively developingassessment protocols. Moreover, shestated, each of Washington’s 296 schooldistricts specifically assigns the artscoordinator/arts curriculum function tosomeone in district administration. Who thisperson is and the extent to which thatrole has priority in the working life ofthat school district administrator are pro-foundly influenced by such factors as thenumber of students, schools, and class-room teachers in any given district, theexpectations of parents and surroundingcommunities at large, and the availabilityof resources. “But someone is alwaysthere,” Ms. Joseph said. “Someone inevery district has the assignment. Theremay not be as much [going on] as wewould like. But someone has the responsi-bility for carrying out the mandate.”

Currently, expenditures for public K-12education capture roughly one-third ofWashington’s general fund budget, but thefact that the superintendent of publicinstruction is a popularly elected officialleaves both the governor and the Legisla-ture with little power to influence publiceducation policy directly. Furthermore,the State Board of Education, the mainfunction of which is to establish highschool graduation requirements, is aneleven-member body elected to four-yearterms by local school boards, with oneprivate school association representative,two students, and only one memberappointed by the governor. In 1999, per-haps to some degree in response to thissituation, the Legislature created anAcademic Achievement and AccountabilityCommission (the “A+ Commission”) withnine members appointed by the governor.

skills and gaining the knowledge outlinedin the standards may be ascertained. Assess-ments were in place for reading/languagearts and mathematics at the time of ourinterviews, and assessments for the sci-ences were being piloted. Assessments forsocial studies, health/fitness, and the artswere being developed. In 2001 the Legis-lature adopted an arts assessment timelinethat included voluntary arts assessmentsin 2005-2006 and required assessmentsphased in through 2008-2010. The assess-ment design process is reportedly on orahead of schedule. By May 2003, twelvedraft items on the assessment instrumentsin all four arts disciplines for all threegrade levels had been field tested inthirty-one school districts and had beenscored and subsequently revised on thebasis of early results. But additional fund-ing from the Legislature will be requiredto finish the job.

Making any sort of objective assessmentregarding the extent to which all thisreflects real progress in making the artsan intrinsic component of public schoolstudents’ academic experience is some-what difficult, and depends to a significantdegree on which benchmarks get selectedfor the purpose of analysis. One critic ofWashington’s arts education policy esti-mated that of 296 school districts, no morethan twelve (4 percent) have arts directors.This compares to a nationwide average of38 percent of school districts in 1994.Within the western region of the UnitedStates, 31 percent of districts employedarts coordinators or curriculum specialistsin that year. And 36 percent of secondaryschools nationwide and 35 percent withinthe western region employed arts curricu-lum specialists.40 The system’s criticsreport that most Washington publicschool systems lack music or art special-ists at the elementary and middle schoollevels. Nationwide 92 percent of publicelementary schools were served by musicspecialists in 1994, and 72 percent of ele-mentary schools were served by visualarts specialists.

In responding to these comments regard-ing Washington’s relative degree of arts

40 National Center for ArtsEducation Statistics, 1994Arts Education Survey.

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41 Considerable evidence fromother states suggests that net-working and collaborationare key to successful Arts inEducation programs. See,Dawn M. Ellis and CraigDreeszen, For the GreaterGood: A Framework forAdvancing State Arts EducationPartnerships (Washington,D.C.: National Assembly ofState Arts Agencies, 2003).

a major metropolitan area. But we have the man-date expressed in Title V of the National PublicEducation Act. Arts are a required core subjectarea in the legislation. That offers us a major areaof opportunity in all our conversations with districtsuperintendents.

Other Actors Policy development in the area of artseducation is promoted by arts serviceorganizations including the WashingtonAlliance for Arts Education and the Wash-ington State Arts Alliance, as well as byvarious professional associations such asthe Washington Music Educators Associa-tion, the Washington Art EducationAssociation, the Washington Alliance forTheater Educators, the Dance EducatorsAssociation of Washington, and VerySpecial Arts.41 In 1989 six of these organ-izations convened their conferencessimultaneously for the first time, estab-lishing an annual combined arts educationconference entitled “ArtsTime.” Theynow meet every two years under the name“ArtsTime All the Time.” This collabora-tion appears to have been good for artsadvocacy and arts policy development.One interviewee commented, “Arts advo-cacy is huge. A very vocal group practicedin advocacy and promotion…they knowhow to communicate, and they are able to garner tremendous support from par-ents.” By way of contrast she describedadvocates for world languages, or socialstudies, or the humanities as unpracticedand poorly organized. “The strength ofthe advocacy groups makes a difference—the most vocal and influential get atten-tion.” She said that heritage advocates arealso active, but that “the action in preser-vation and local history education tendsto be at the local level.”

The Alliance for Arts Education, an artseducation advocacy group, was createdwith start-up funding provided by theKennedy Center Alliance for Arts Educa-tion Network. According to individualsaffiliated with the alliance, it was an effec-tive advocate until the Kennedy Centerimposed a requirement that the alliancehire a paid director. The board reportedly

The commission’s charge is to overseeaccountability throughout the entire K-12educational system. Furthermore, in 2000the governor and the Legislature created a19-member Professional Educator StandardsBoard, to be appointed by the governor,which would oversee basic skills and sub-ject matter assessments to be required ofall new teachers for certification.

Over 70 percent of total school districteducation funding is provided by thestate. Local property taxes make up thedifference. Local school district leviesmust be put to the voters every year ortwo. Since levies require a majority voteand are therefore packaged to appeal tothe voters, they reportedly have rarelyspecified the arts.

We encountered both optimism and frus-tration during our interviews as regardspublic arts education in the State ofWashington. Both points of view appearto have merit. The current economiccrisis and its inevitable impact on staterevenues may well retard progress towardsmaking the arts a truly basic componentof the Washington public school curricu-lum. While arts education is now includedamong basic subjects with state standards,it is still the local district that must makefinal decisions concerning resource alloca-tion. One of the people we interviewedpointed out that educational reform hasresulted in at least one unintended conse-quence: districts now tend to focus onthose subjects that are to be assessed (currently English/language arts, math,and science) at the expense of subjectsthat are not currently being assessed. As aresult, some districts that once had qualityarts programs are actually cutting back,since arts education assessments will notbe in place until after 2008, if then.

The gloomy funding climate tends toexacerbate this trend. Said Ms. Joseph:

[Arts education] is mandated, required, impor-tant, and vulnerable. A lot depends on fundingand on leadership in any given district. But wecontinue to ask the districts to tell us how theypropose to fulfill the requirements of law andpolicy. How this actually happens in a tiny ruralschool district is going to be a lot different than in

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make sure [WSAC] resources augment,rather than substitute for, what [thedistricts] do themselves.”

The fact that Washington is one of onlyfour states with a percent for art programthat includes school construction is seenby some as also contributing to the goalsof arts in education. Under the Art inPublic Places program, 1/2 of 1 percent of capital appropriations for school con-struction is dedicated to the purchase ofnewly commissioned or existing artworkto be displayed in the school.

Other Offices andPrograms in the Arts PortfolioSeveral other organizations with morelimited scope in either the span of theiractivities or the subject matter of thework in which they are engaged con-tribute to the arts portfolio within the cul-tural policy of the State of Washington.

Washington State Film OfficeOffice of Trade and EconomicDevelopmentThe Washington State Film Office(WSFO) operates as a program divisionwithin the Office of Trade and EconomicDevelopment. It was established in 1972,but its current scope of activity report-edly dates from 1993 as part of a largereffort to target market sectors (e.g., recy-cling, food processing, tourism, etc.) inorder to diversify Washington’s economyand make it more productive. This office’sspecific mandate is to “promote, market,and encourage growth in the productionof films and videos, as well as televisioncommercials within the state.”

Director Suzy Kellet estimated that overthe last ten years the state’s investment inthe film office has returned over $100 foreach dollar of state funding invested.She said that in 2001, production spend-ing brought in over $50 million to thestate and that out-of-state producers spentover $377 million in Washington Stateduring the last ten years. A typical major

became less active as a consequence, andthe organization is said to have since lostits grassroots focus. Former OSPI ArtsSpecialist Gina May has recently taken onthe presidency of the alliance. She seesher immediate tasks as evaluating thepotential of the alliance and determiningwhat role the organization can and shouldplay in the future.

In the meantime, the Washington StateArts Alliance appears to have filled thisvoid to a significant degree. Under theleadership of Alliance Director GretchenJohnston and with lobbying support, thealliance has now included arts educationwithin its broader arts advocacy mission.

As has already been mentioned, theWashington State Arts Commission alsoplays a significant and visible role withrespect to support for arts education inthe public schools of Washington State.Its Artists in Residence Program, ArtsCurriculum Grants, and Arts EducationCommunity Consortium Grants, as wellas its support for Centrum’s school-basededucation initiatives, have been describedin some detail earlier in this chapter. Ofparticular relevance to the current discus-sion is the fact that Arts CurriculumGrants are specifically designed to helpcommunities build arts education programsthat respond to the Essential AcademicLearning Requirements in the arts cur-rently being promulgated by OSPI. Thecommission awarded $585,139 to twenty-eight consortia across the state for thispurpose during the 2002-2003 schoolyear. The commission is also a fundingpartner with OSPI in supportingCentrum—$101,000 and $175,000 per year, respectively. And the fact thatCentrum’s total annual budget is in the$1.8 million range makes it a significantplayer in its own right.

AnnRené Joseph acknowledged the temp-tation that WSAC’s arts education pro-grams place in the path of school districtsthat are struggling to balance schoolbudgets in hard times; it is all too tempt-ing to let WSAC’s resources stand in forwhat would otherwise fall to them. “Butwe work with all the districts to try to

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural PolicyWashington State Parks and RecreationCommission, the State Patrol, the ArmyCorps of Engineers, the Association ofCounties, and other agencies that must beconsulted when location filming occurs—such as the Department of Ecology(when cars are to be driven off bridges,for example). It also works very closelywith the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Film &Music and the Seattle Film Festival.

The film office’s program array includesthe following:

The Washington State Screenplay Competition:This competition provides prizes towinners out of 100-200 applicants($1,500 first place, $500 each for tworunners up, plus software, goods andservices from sponsors, and anannouncement in Variety and HollywoodReporter). The purpose of the competi-tion is to discover and encouragescreenwriting talent outside of theHollywood system. Every winner inthe first five years has gone to con-tract, and two scripts have beenoptioned.

Locations Files: The office maintains aresearch bank of images and informa-tion about possible locations for filmcompanies looking for a particularkind of place in which to film.

Film Fundamentals Workshops: Theseworkshops are 2- to 3-hour meetingsthat are provided to rural communi-ties; they bring together city managers,police, hotels, local businesses, etc. tohelp them prepare for productions, onthe one hand, and to market their areaas a film location, on the other.

State Arts InstitutionsState cultural institutions are an importantcomponent of cultural policy in manystates. In Washington, for example, theWashington State History Museum is animportant component of state humanitiespolicy (Chapter IV) as well as of stateheritage policy (Chapter V); the NorthwestMuseum of Arts and Culture (Chapter V)spans all three areas of state cultural policy.Within the arts portfolio, however, there

television movie filmed in 2000 spentalmost $18 million on location, accordingto an expenditure breakdown provided bythe office. Yet, the state’s support for itsfilm office is among the lowest in theUnited States and throughout the world.Initially earmarked for extinction by thegovernor’s office in the fall of 2001,WSFO managed to survive with its$371,000 budget intact. At that point thestaff complement consisted of DirectorKellet and two project coordinators, plusthirty-five unfunded film liaisons scatteredacross the state within organizations suchas local chambers of commerce andvisitors’ bureaus that interact with the film office.

Ms. Kellet reported that getting filmsmade in Washington is more difficult thanin most other settings because many ofWashington’s regulatory policies that areaimed at preserving the state’s quality oflife are quite strict and others are anti-quated. She cited as examples the fact thathelicopters are prohibited from beingbrought low in certain areas in the interestof protecting the habitats of nestingeagles and the fact that film companiesmay not construct sets within 200 feet of the shore because of regulationsintended to prevent debris from washinginto the ocean.

The film office’s activities fall into fivedomains:

It markets Washington as a primelocation for filming;

It provides 24-hour response time to filming requests (“one-stopshopping”);

It provides location scouting through-out the entire state;

It offers film makers information con-cerning the tax incentives for whichthey are eligible (see Chapter VIII); and

It acts as a liaison with other state gov-ernment agencies whose cooperationis often essential for filming.

WSFO works with the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation, the

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somewhat arbitrary.) The Simpson Centeris treated separately in the humanitieschapter of this report.

The Burke Museum of Natural Historyand Culture

The website of the Burke Museum ofNatural History and Culture describes itspurposes as follows:

The Museum exists to encourage understanding of,and appreciation for, the natural and cultural his-tory of Washington, the Pacific Northwest, andthe Pacific Rim. The Museum preserves the natu-ral and cultural record by developing and main-taining comprehensive, comparative collections andby conducting and encouraging research. Engagingexhibits, public programs, and publications edu-cate and inspire the diverse and multicultural com-munity that the museum serves, promoting acommitment to a better stewardship of naturaland cultural heritage.

Members of the Young Naturalists Societyfounded the museum in 1885 and erecteda museum building on the campus of theUniversity of Washington. In 1899, theLegislature designated the museum as theWashington State Museum. The Burkeacquired its current name and building in1962 through a bequest from the estate ofJudge Thomas Burke, who was an advo-cate of promoting understanding of thecultures of the Pacific Rim.

Originally, the museum sought to collecteverything and anything having to do withPacific Rim cultures, reflecting JudgeBurke’s interest in trade. Within that man-date, the Burke sought to build collections,document them, make them accessible,and provide educational services. Earlyon, however, legislation was passed thatnarrowed its mission by requiringhistorically significant materials to becollected by the State History Museum.The Burke’s once singular mandate tocurate and celebrate Native American his-tory is now shared to a significant degreeby the Northwest Museum of Art andCulture in Spokane, which is operated on behalf of the state by the Eastern Washington State Historical Society, andthe Washington State History Museum inTacoma, which is operated by the Wash-ington State Historical Society. Both

are no stand-alone arts institutions, thoughsome have been moving in that direction.In the Washington case these institutionstend to be located within the state univer-sity system rather than being freestanding(as a state performing arts center or astate art museum might be in otherstates). Washington has quite a few suchinstitutions, including: the Burke Museumof Natural History and Culture, theHenry Art Gallery, the Simpson Centerfor the Humanities, and Meany Hall forthe Performing Arts, all at the Universityof Washington; the Museum of Arts atWashington State University; the Ever-green Gallery and the Longhouse Educa-tion and Cultural Center at The EvergreenState College; and the Eastern Washing-ton University Gallery of Art and theEWU Digital Gallery. Taken togetherthese institutions might be considered tobe “state arts institutions” in much thesame way that the Washington StateHistory Museum is a state history museumor the Northwest Museum of Arts andCulture is a state art and history museum.In the current study, we are interested inthese institutions primarily because oftheir contribution to the cultural life ofthe state outside of whatever role theyplay in the curriculum and teaching oftheir respective host institutions.

For logistical reasons we have chosen todiscuss only a few of these institutions. Inthe section that follows we consider thosethat are part of the University of Washing-ton and the Longhouse Education andCultural Center at The Evergreen StateCollege. (Longhouse is also mentioned inChapter VII, in which the relationshipsbetween the state’s Native American tribesand state cultural policy are furtherexplored.)

The College of Arts and Sciences at theUniversity of Washington is the adminis-trative unit responsible for the SimpsonCenter for the Humanities, the Henry ArtGallery, the Burke Museum, and MeanyHall for the Performing Arts. (The BurkeMuseum might also have been discussedin Chapter V with respect to heritagepolicy; the decision to discuss it here is

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policythem to be shared with tribal groups. Itseducational programming has beendirected at both adults and children, con-veying the cultural and natural historycontained in its collections and the cura-torial staff ’s expertise. Nevertheless,MacDonald reported that the museumhas had difficulty persuading legislatorsthat it serves the entire state. This is exac-erbated by the fact that the museum suf-fers from space constraints that greatlylimit its capacity to fulfill its educationalmission. Five times more students want touse the facility than can be accommo-dated with the available dates and space,he says.

Today, roughly 40 percent of the costs ofbuilding and curating the museum’s col-lection are underwritten by state fundingadministered by the University ofWashington. The balance is supported bygifts, revenue, and interest on its endow-ment. The university also provides in-kindassistance: faculty, shared facilities, accessto its libraries, and free legal assistance.External funding, including visitor admis-sions, supports the museum’s public pro-grams. Thus, outreach has, in some sense,been privatized rather than being pickedup as a component of state cultural policy.

The Burke’s main activity is the collection,preservation, interpretation, and display ofzoological, geological, cultural, andanthropological materials. The aim is toreach researchers and the general publicalike. (In one controversial case—the stor-age of Kennewick Man, the remains of aman estimated to be some 9,000 yearsold—the museum has also provided thecourts with a neutral curator, keeping theremains secure until the court determinesits ultimate disposition in the face of con-flicting demands from Native Americantribes and scientists.)

A wide range of exhibitions has beencreated by the museum—for example,“The Chinese Cultural Revolution,”“Pacific Voices,” and “Kennewick Man.”They are often developed with input fromadvisory boards from the communitiesbeing represented. In the late 1980s themuseum established advisory boards to

currently enjoy more significant fundingthan does the Burke Museum, even thoughthe Burke’s Native American collection ismore extensive. The Burke also facesincreased competition from the SeattleArt Museum, which has begun to collectand exhibit ethnographic art. Even as themarket for its own collections has grown,the Burke’s “market share” of museumvisitors has fallen despite the fact that theuniversity (i.e., the Legislature) subsidizesa portion of public admissions.

Director George MacDonald reportedthat responding to these challenges hasbeen made more difficult by the museum’sstructural subordination within theUniversity of Washington system. Themuseum has always been administered bythe University of Washington; its directorreports to university administration. Whileuniversity affiliation gives the museumaccess to faculty who lend its programseducational credibility, the museum stafffeels that the museum is “low on the UWtotem pole” as regards university fundingand fundraising. In an effort to addressthis, the museum solicited a governancestudy from a group of professors andcommunity leaders led by Karl Hutterer.The “Hutterer Report” called for privatiz-ing the museum and moving it off-campus. Although the curatorial staff ’srefusal to leave the university resulted inthe proposal being rejected, the museumdid reorganize as a 501(c)(3) non-profitorganization in 2002. This has enabled themuseum to seek foundation support onits own more easily and allows it to avoidsome of the bureaucratic requirementsassociated with being inside the statesystem, such as the requirement that allprinting jobs be done by the state printer.

The museum is conscious of its obligation,as a de facto state institution, to provideservice throughout the state. According tothe museum’s director, the museum is try-ing to “get across the mountains”—toreach the population east of the Cascades—and to make the museum’s collectionsmore accessible to Native Americans. Forexample, the Burke was the first museumto put its collections on disk to enable

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which evening tour buses bring visitorsfrom downtown to neighborhood culturalinstitutions such as this one. The Burkealso collaborates with Native Americangroups and cultural institutions in pursuitof federal grant support to enable thepresentation of materials on NativeAmerican history and culture. It supportsthe work of other University of Washing-ton cultural organizations such as theSimpson Center for the Humanities,which has put together symposia usingthe Burke’s curators as presenters.Although it participates in the HeritageCaucus during sessions of the Legislature,it reports no ongoing interactions witheither the Washington State ArtsCommission or Humanities Washington.

The Henry Arts GalleryThe Henry Arts Gallery is also a hybrid—it is both a university subsidiary and a501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Foundedin 1927 with a gift of 170 paintings plus$100,000 for the building, “The Henry”was the first public art museum inWashington. Although its collection wasthen regarded as relatively conservative,until the 1970s it remained the onlymuseum in the state specializing in con-temporary art. Until the 1960s, it hadbeen a unit of the University ofWashington’s School of the Arts, whosehead served as the museum’s director. Atthe time of the 1962 World’s Fair inSeattle a cultural elite interested in sup-porting contemporary art emerged, andthe Henry was finally assigned an inde-pendent director. At around this sametime, a group of “friends” was formedwho arranged for the museum to beincorporated as a 501(c)(3), making theHenry the only university entity otherthan the medical school to take advantageof independent nonprofit status until therecent decision of the Burke to move inthis direction.

By 1986 the museum employed six toeight staffers, all but one of whom werestate employees, and it derived 75 percentof its operating budget (about $350,000)from state funding. The current budget is$3 million, 82 percent of which is gleaned

give greater input to curators. The first ofthese was made up of Native Americanswho helped design “A Time of Gather-ing,” a breakthrough exhibit that includedtribal members who participated in theexhibition itself. Traveling exhibitions arealso brought to the museum from otherlocations.

The museum is now planning for a majorexpansion and is hiring consultants tohelp review its policies. One major questionis whether the museum should broaden itsfocus to include other cultures not cur-rently represented (such as Europeans).

The Burke’s programs include educationalactivities on the museum premises target-ing school-age children and families:

“Days”: During these special days—e.g., “Dinosaur Day,” “Artifact andSpecimen Identification Day,” and“Bug Day”—museum volunteers dis-play and talk about fossils, do dinosaurface-painting, and teach how to dofossil rubbing.

Traveling Study Collections: Portableboxes of scientific specimens and mul-ticultural artifacts are designed by themuseum for display and use at schools.The program is targeted at school chil-dren—particularly those in schools notdirectly accessible to the museum—and is intended to supplement thestudy of various topics in cultural andnatural history. Each collection includesbackground information and a descrip-tion of the artifacts or specimensincluded. Some collections includeadditional books or audiovisual resources.Collections are available on PacificNorthwest cultures, multiculturalstudies (non-local cultures), archaeol-ogy, earth sciences, and life sciences.

The Burke Museum’s primary externalrelationships are with other museums. Itparticipates in museum consortia in devel-oping and maintaining virtual collectionsand databases and has mounted jointexhibitions with the Seattle InternationalFilm Festival and the Pacific ScienceCenter (IMAX). The Convention Bureauhas sponsored a cooperative program in

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policyfeels that the work it exhibits requiressome life experience in order to be under-stood, and because high school studentsand college students are traditionally neg-lected by arts funders.

The Henry works with the SimpsonCenter for the Humanities on joint pro-gramming and receives some fundingfrom Humanities Washington, theWashington State Arts Commission, thepublic library system, Seattle-based artsorganizations, and even the University of California at Berkeley. The major chal-lenge facing the museum at present isbuilding the endowment to providegreater financial stability over time.

Meany Hall for the Performing Arts

Meany Hall is the performing arts facilityof the University of Washington Collegeof Arts and Sciences. The facility wasbuilt in 1974 and substantially renovatedin the late 1980s. Since July 1, 2001Meany Hall has functioned as two sepa-rate organizations, both of them withinthe administrative framework of the uni-versity: Facilities and Operations (F & O)and World Series. F & O is responsiblefor the operation and maintenance of thefacility, while World Series sponsors itsown extensive and diverse performing artsseries. At this point Matthew Krashan,previous director of the Meany, becamethe director of World Series, and RitaCalabro, a professional arts administrator,was brought in to direct F & O. Thischange reflected a desire to make themanagement of Meany Hall more busi-nesslike, but perhaps most significantly,the organizational split enabled a refine-ment of internal accounting procedures,so that the World Series is now formallycharged for its usage of the facility andother related support services. Thisarrangement reflects the goal of eliminat-ing or at least making transparent thecross-subsidies intrinsic to Meany Hall’soperations.

Meany Hall has always seen its primarymission as serving the academic units ofthe university—primarily dance, drama,and music. Its second priority has been to

from non-university sources (primarilyendowment income and gifts). The galleryreceives less than $50,000 from grants,and the university’s contribution remainsflat. Today the Henry employs fifty-fiveFTEs, all but six of whom are employednot by the state but by the nonprofitHenry Gallery Association. Nevertheless,the state has remained a major source ofassistance and support. The Henry com-pleted a $24 million renovation andexpansion in 1997 with the help of an $8 million allocation from the state’scapital funds and a $5 million gift fromPaul Allen.

The Henry’s mission is to provide an edu-cational resource for university studentsand to present contemporary art to thepublic, a mission which increasinglyinvolves funding the creation of new art.One of the most interesting features ofthe Henry is a program in which, at a costof $10,000-$50,000 per year, two to fourworks are commissioned from artists inresidence, some of whom actually createtheir work in public in the gallery.

The Henry pursues its educational objec-tives by operating a study center thatenables classes to examine contemporaryartworks closely, and by putting on specialpromotions to attract the university com-munity. Typically, about half the atten-dance is university-related. But gallerydirector Richard Andrews seemed muchmore excited about his institution’s com-mitment to broader public participation.The Henry runs a film series, hosts TownHall meetings (with support from theAnimating Democracy Initiative of theAmericans for the Arts Institute forCommunity Development), organizescooperative public programming topromote learning and dialogue in diversecommunities, and conducts school pro-grams. Most of these programs leveragethe academic resources available at theuniversity. For example, for the Henry’s“Gene(sis)” exhibition, scientists andartists were recruited to speak to eachother, and the university helped supplythe technology. The Henry targets peopleof high school age or older because it

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Island Tribe. The Longhouse Educationand Cultural Center was founded by aNative American member of the faculty,herself a member of the Squaxin IslandTribe, who sought to establish a facilitythat would function as a bridge betweenthe college and the native communities,serve as a welcoming place for NativeAmerican students, and house the col-lege’s Native American Studies Program.It was strategically located on a sitebetween the reservation and the college.

With initial support from nearby tribesand a cluster of small start-up grants, thefounders approached the Legislature toobtain an appropriation for classroomspace. A Native American architect washired, and he designed a cultural centerinspired by a tribal longhouse. The BurkeMuseum contributed indigenous materialsand architectural elements for its con-struction. The Quinault Tribe gave cedar.Woven cedar mats and welcome figurines,funded through a combination of studentfees and the state’s Art in Public Placesprogram, were commissioned fromNative American artists.

The Longhouse Education and CulturalCenter, built at a cost of $2.2 million,opened in 1995. The Northwest AreaFoundation initially funded the publicservice component of its programs with a grant to the South Puget IntertribalPlanning Agency to oversee a “NationalEconomic Development Arts Program”as its primary initiative.

The center’s mission is to promoteeducation in the arts and culture, culturalpreservation, and arts-centered economicdevelopment for Native American artistsand tribes in the northwest. The centercontinues to collaborate with the BurkeMuseum, with the State Capital Museumand with other smaller museums in theregion. Director Tina Kuckkahn, whoassumed her position in 1996, has beenable to obtain program funding from theNational Endowment for the Arts, theWashington State Arts Commission, andthe tribes themselves. The commitment ofstate money to Longhouse, however, hasbeen complicated because it flows

serve the broader community. This com-munity obligation is fulfilled throughWorld Series events and rentals to com-munity groups. World Series events haveincluded piano recitals, dance, an interna-tional chamber series, and educationaloutreach featuring an artist-in-residenceprogram for schools in the Seattle area.The hall is not a commercial facility andstrives to avoid direct competition withthe several nonprofit and for-profit facili-ties in Seattle.

The hall has had difficulty over time keep-ing up with its capital maintenance andrenovation due to limited state funding.Generally, it has relied primarily on statefunds for capital purposes rather than ondonated support from the community atlarge. External fundraising is made moredifficult by the built-in disincentive fordonors to support a public facility that isa line item in the university’s operatingbudget.

The F & O annual budget is approxi-mately $900,000, while the annual WorldSeries budget is in the $1 million range.Roughly $300,000 of F & O’s incomeeach year is provided via fund transfersfrom World Series for its use of the facility.Hall usage breaks down roughly as follows:45 percent of occupancy is by academicunits, 30 percent by community rentals,and 25 percent by World Series eventsand programs. Conflicting pressures toserve the academic units while also payingfor the center’s operations through WorldSeries events, as a favored tenant, havemeant that community rentals have beenconstrained, even though these rentalshelp underwrite the overall cost of run-ning the facility as much as do WorldSeries events.

The Longhouse Education and Cultural Center

The Evergreen State College is a state-supported comprehensive institution,founded in 1967. Its 1,000-acre residentialcampus is located outside Olympia. It isco-educational, with 3,900 undergraduatestudents of whom 87 percent are full-time. Significantly, the campus sits onreservation land belonging to the Squaxin

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Chapter III: The Arts and State Cultural Policymented in large part to rationalize whatwould otherwise have been a highlypolitical process of seeking capital grantsdirectly from the Legislature, it provides amodel for what is possible. Should thisprogram have been situated within WSACrather than in the Office of CommunityDevelopment? Those who would arguefor greater policy coordination might havepreferred greater centralization, but thosewho see room for flexibility in arts policy(and cultural policy more generally) tendto support the fact that different initia-tives with different goals and objectivescan be productively situated in differentplaces within a state’s bureaucracy. Eitherway, this program has become an ingen-ious way to provide capital funding to thestate’s arts organizations and, at the sametime, a solution to the threat that porkbarrel politics pose to policy-baseddecision making.

But arts policy does not end with thesetwo programs. In any state, arts in educa-tion is an important element in arts policy,and this is no less true in Washington.Indeed, because of the greater degree ofcurriculum centralization and control byWashington’s independently electedsuperintendent of public instruction, thepotential exists for a serious statewidecommitment to the arts in education. Thisis reflected in the fact that all public highschool students will have to complete afull year of arts instruction to graduate,and the fact that assessments of studentmastery of essential academic learningrequirements—including the arts—arenow being developed for grades 5, 8,and 10.

WSAC, unwilling to leave all of the policyinitiatives in this area up to the Office ofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction,maintains its own Arts in Educationprogram, which is increasingly movingtoward a model of funding consortiarather than freestanding programs withlittle link to the communities in whichthey take place. There is clearly room foran alternative view of what Arts inEducation should entail, but the tempta-tion always exists for either OSPI or

through The Evergreen State College andbecause it is unclear as to whether thisfunding should respond to arts and cul-tural policy imperatives or Native Americanpolicy imperatives—in which case somewould choose to see it more as a multi-tribal institution than as a state institu-tion—or both.

Observations andConclusionsThe arts policy portfolio of the State ofWashington goes well beyond the programsof the Washington State Arts Commission.While WSAC continues to have a sym-bolic importance, signaling that thesematters “are an appropriate matter ofconcern to the government of the Stateof Washington,” it is rather constrained inits ability to pursue meaningful arts policy.To be sure, this is largely due to budgetaryconstraints, but it is also due to the rolethat WSAC must play in implementingand operating policies that are conceivedelsewhere. One of its major programs,Art in Public Places, is budgeted off ofthe state’s capital budget and administeredaccording to specific rules and policies.It is responsible for maintenance of theresulting State Art Collection but withoutthe resources to fulfill that role responsi-bly. Its Awards Program is constrained bythe necessity of providing grants to theinfluential major institutions of the state;by its own practice much of its grantsbudget has been “ring fenced” andreserved to preferred clients. Interestingly,it is when the commission undertakesprograms of its own that the sparks ofcreative public policy are most evident;this is most clearly seen in WSAC’s com-mitment to Centrum and to its Folk ArtsProgram, which, to be sure, rely more onnon-state sources of funding than onemight have expected. Its new initiative inarts participation relies entirely on exter-nal foundation funding.

Atypically among states, Washington hasimplemented a program of capital supportfor arts and cultural organizations (as well as heritage organizations), and eventhough Building for the Arts was imple-

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sity’s administrations. A number of themhave now created nonprofit 501(c)(3)affiliates or have taken the larger step ofbecoming nonprofit institutions them-selves. They have not completely privatizedas they still rely heavily on state budgetarysupport and they still reside in state build-ings on state property. At the moment itis probably more appropriate to conceiveof these institutions as organizationalhybrids, part public and part private, try-ing to balance the advantages and disad-vantages of each organizational form.Not surprisingly, these changes, whichhave been made for budgetary andlogistical reasons, also have importantcultural policy implications.

Our inquiry has shown that cultural policyat the state level goes well beyond artspolicy. In the chapters that follow weexplore other themes in state cultural pol-icy as they are evidenced in the State ofWashington, but the theme of arts policyrecurs throughout these later chapters,demonstrating how intertwined it is withother forms of cultural expression andhow key it is to state cultural policy morebroadly construed.

WSAC to let the other agency take up the bulk of the responsibility. In such asituation, quite a bit can fall into thebureaucratic gaps between the two.

Increasingly, the for-profit culturalindustries have come under the umbrellaof cultural policy. In Washington this hasbeen limited, for the most part, to atten-tion to the filmmaking industry. Likemany states, Washington provides a seriesof incentives to film and video produc-tion companies and endeavors to simplifythe permitting and licensing processthrough a central state office.

Finally, the state has fostered a set ofstate cultural institutions, even thoughthey have not usually been conceptualizedas such. These institutions, mostly locatedon various state university campuses (theexceptions being the Washington StateHistory Museum and the NorthwestMuseum of Arts and Culture) contributein important ways to the cultural life ofthe state. In recent years, most of theseinstitutions have, however, been reevaluat-ing their relationships to the state,relationships that have typically beenmediated through their respective univer-

The Humanities and State Cultural PolicyLawrence Rothfield and David Karraker

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commissions to programs embeddedwithin agencies to university-basedcenters, we should be able to bring intofocus the implicit humanities policy ofthe state.

Humanities WashingtonAs its original name implies, the Washing-ton Commission for the Humanities(WCH) was the designated state-levelentity charged with fostering the humanities,defined in its mission statement as “thestories, ideas, and writings that help usmake sense of our lives and enhance ourability to think creatively and criticallyabout the world.” The public programsoffered under its aegis were to be designedto “interpret culture and provide a forumfor civic dialogue.”

Humanities so conceived would, onemight suppose, be of particular interest tostate government; after all, civic dialogueand critical thinking about the world arecrucial to deliberative democracies. Yetthe Washington Commission for theHumanities, recently renamed HumanitiesWashington, is supported by the state inname only. It receives no direct fundingfrom the Legislature.

This strange feature is an artifact ofhistory: like other state humanities com-missions, Washington’s was founded in1973, at a time when Congress was urgingboth the NEH and the NEA to establishstate affiliates. In every state but one, artsagencies were created as agencies of thestate government,1 but the humanitieswere already receiving institutional sup-port from state governments throughstate universities and colleges, and thesingle existing state humanities councilthat had been created under Governor

If direct state support for the arts is rela-tively meager, direct independent state-level support for publicly orientedhumanities programs is almost non-exis-tent. The reason for this is not, as somemight argue, that Americans are anti-intellectual. The public is not antagonisticto the work that scholars and intellectualsdo, merely indifferent. Apathy is fosteredby the nesting of much humanities workwithin institutions—the university, thelibrary, and the museum—that subordi-nate the interpretive functions of thehumanities to other ends. Those otherpurposes (scholarship, education, provid-ing access to information, representingheritage) are recognized as public con-cerns, leading states—and Washington isno exception—to promulgate educationpolicies, information policies, and heritagepolicies that apply to and affect thehumanities. In mapping state culturalpolicy it is tempting, therefore, to simplydissolve the humanities into these otherpolicy domains, especially given theabsence of statements of legislative intent or even legislative attention to thehumanities per se.

But as the presence of an agency like theNational Endowment for the Humanitiesshows at the federal level, the work of thehumanities serves public purposes distinctfrom those of educating, informing, orrepresenting the past. If there is no state-level equivalent of the National Endow-ment for the Humanities in Washington,there is nonetheless an assortment ofstate-sponsored (or at the very least,state-identified) entities that promotepublic engagement with the humanities.By analyzing the missions, organizationalstructure, and policy mechanisms of theseentities, which range from independent

1 In two states, arts councilsalready existed: the oldest,the Utah Arts Council, hadits origins in the Utah ArtsInstitute founded in 1899;the more influential one,the New York State ArtsCouncil, created underGovernor Nelson Rocke-feller, became the model forthe other state arts councilsand the National Endowmentfor the Arts itself. In the1970s, with NEA’s encour-agement (and with therequirement of a financialmatch from the state), statearts councils were created inall of the other states, withall but one becoming anagency of state government.Vermont is the sole state inwhich the state arts council is a private, nonprofit organi-zation. By contrast, all ofthe state humanities councilsare private, nonprofitorganizations.

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of view. We had people who just wantedto do the humanities and others whowanted to do public policy and bring inhumanists as token. But gradually NEHloosened up. We wound up involving a lotof very interesting people.”

What led NEH to loosen up were thedrastic cutbacks of federal funding in the1980s. In the wake of these cuts, NEHbegan to encourage state humanitiescouncils to approach state legislatures forfunding. Until only a few years ago, how-ever, the board of WCH opposed thisbecause it feared the state might chooseto reduce the commission to an inconse-quential sub-entity within a major stateagency.2 Recent efforts to convince statelegislators to provide some modest fund-ing have not succeeded—this despite thefact that many of the legislators withwhom we spoke thought that WCH hadactually been receiving state funding.

Now named Humanities Washington, thestate humanities commission continues tobe funded primarily through grant appli-cations to NEH, with reauthorizationsevery five years. NEH provides annualdirect unrestricted grants in the $600,000range. The quest for other, non-govern-mental funding streams for general oper-ating support has been long and ratherdismal. It first looked for funding help tothe scholars and organizations that hadformerly benefited from its support, but it got little from them, so it established a staff position in public relations andencouraged the formation of two support organizations, the Friends of theHumanities (1983) and the WashingtonEndowment for the Humanities (1989).At some point in this period the com-mission moved to Seattle with the hopeof attracting more donations. Though the“Friends” recruited a large constituencyof supporters, they failed to reach theirfundraising goals, and in 1995 theymerged with the Washington Commissionfor the Humanities. The WashingtonEndowment for the Humanities, initiallyfunded with $300,000 from WCH’sreserve fund (with no restrictions placedon its use, however), raised funds for only

Rockefeller in New York State was noteager to become so closely tied to the fed-eral government. To avoid creating a com-petition for state funding between stateuniversities and state humanities agencieswhile maintaining the relative autonomyof the state humanities councils from thefederal government, NEH opted not topromote the creation of state humanitiesagencies but rather to encourage states toestablish volunteer citizens’ councils,incorporated as 501(c)(3) nonprofitorganizations, that could be funded bygrant applications to the endowmentitself. Washington was one of the first tenstates to establish a humanities commis-sion of this form, spurred by Dave Barri,provost of The Evergreen State College,where the organization’s headquarters waslocated for fifteen years before it movedto its present Seattle location.

The Washington Commission for theHumanities began as an exclusively grant-making operation, with two staff mem-bers disbursing up to $800,000 annually to scholars and organizations. The majorshift in the organization has been itstransformation, from a steward distributingNEH funds to scholars, into an organiza-tion centrally concerned not just withgrant making for public programs butwith operating its own public programsand actively seeking funding for them.The link between fundraising and self-administered programming with moredirect public punch is not accidental.Until the early 1980s, the commission did not need to appeal to state-level con-stituencies for support. Karen Munro,spouse of recently retired Secretary ofState Ralph Munro, worked for WCH forabout five years during its early days. Sherecalled: “We became complacent at thestart because we had so much NEHmoney. We should have laid the ground-work years ago for state funding, but wedidn’t do it.” But it would have been diffi-cult to lay such groundwork, given therequirements imposed by the NEH at that time. “When we started,” Munroexplained, “we could only do projects onthe humanities and public policy—theycouldn’t express any one particular point

2 Most recently, the statelibrary has been placed underthe control of the secretaryof state’s office. Earlier theState Capital Museum hadbeen merged into theWashington State HistoricalSociety and legislation intro-duced that would havemoved the state historicpreservation program underits aegis as well, so it was byno means a paranoid fantasyto imagine the WashingtonCommission for theHumanities being folded intoa large state office. What theimplications of that wouldhave been are less clear.

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3 This includes funding from avariety of programs thatwere part of the formerKing County Office ofCultural Resources: the KingCounty Cultural ResourcesFund (itself supplied by thehotel-motel tax), the KingCounty Arts Commission,and the King CountyLandmarks and HeritageCommission.

Policy ObjectivesThe commission’s board members, whodo not vote on specific programs but setpolicy objectives by approving the com-mission’s moves into different areas, guideprogramming. While the mission state-ment mirrors those of other state human-ities commissions around the country, theboard’s policy objectives are more specifi-cally determined by the peculiarities ofWashington as a state. What are theseobjectives?

The primary aim of Humanities Wash-ington—or at least the one about whichour interviewees had the most to say—is to promote a sense of shared identityamong the citizens of the state. Jack Faris, vice president for university rela-tions at the University of Washington andchairman of the board of HumanitiesWashington, emphasized that because ofWashington’s east/west divide and weakstate government, Washingtonians havelittle sense of identity as compared toTexans or New Yorkers. In his view, thereis a liberal readiness to denigrate ruralinhabitants and vice versa, especially withregard to environmental issues. There isalso a more profound problem of politi-cal culture in the state. Washingtonianshave become alienated from governmentand community, with a strong anti-taxdistrust reflected in the passage of the taxinhibiting/cutting Initiatives 601 and 695,and, not coincidentally, with no traditionof state investment in research in thehumanities. Extremist phobias on bothright and left make it very difficult to sellthe idea of the value of humanitiesresearch. The bumpiness of the state’stransition from fishing, logging, and aero-space to a knowledge-based economy hasaggravated this distrust. Yet Washington-ians share a profound, albeit vague,attachment to this part of the world, andit is that sense of attachment that statecultural agencies, and especially HumanitiesWashington, seek to foster. As Faris putit, the goal is “to make one Washington.”To do this means deliberately usinghumanities organizations and programs toovercome the regional divide. Because

two years, and in 1998 it merged withWCH as well. The endowment is cur-rently valued at $600,000, of which 92percent is set aside as a reserve fund.

To pursue private support more effectively,Humanities Washington has launched amajor donors’ club and has undertaken aCampaign for the Humanities, aimed at“making the humanities a householdword.” It is also building a coalition topublicize humanities opportunities. (Otherplayers include the Seattle Public Library’sCenter for the Book, the Simpson Centerfor the Humanities, the Washington StateHistorical Society, and the BumbershootFestival—Seattle’s arts festival.) In 2001,the board of trustees established a specialfund, the Delma Tayer endowment fund,to hold monies in trust to ensure continu-ation of humanities programming despitefluctuations in federal appropriations.

Because the funding available for generaloperating support is relatively small,Humanities Washington depends on dedi-cated forms of payment to underwriteparticular programs. Some programs chargefees to participants, generating approxi-mately $100,000 per annum in fee-basedrevenues. But it also relies on restrictedfunding from governmental sourcesincluding NEH, the Cultural Develop-ment Authority of King County,3 theUniversity of Washington’s ScandinavianStudies Program, and even the ConsulateGeneral of Sweden. Non-governmentalsources—foundations, corporations, andindividuals—contribute approximately$400,000 yearly in support of its pro-gramming efforts.

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At least in our interviews, this was thecase. In describing the commission’sobjectives, Margaret Ann Bollmeier, itspresident and CEO, linked each of itsthree objectives to a discrete means(though not a specific medium):

To help communities become moreconnected and capable, it works withorganizations that reach people whodo not normally go to libraries andtherefore lack access to the humanities.

To get more people to participate inthe political life of the state, it pro-vides programming using the humani-ties to create dialogues between groupsin conflict. (For example, it has runprograms on the environment in thetimber communities bringing togetherloggers and environmentalists.)

To enrich individual lives, it workstogether with social service organiza-tions helping disadvantaged familiesand non-traditional students.

The second consequence of the absenceof specific policy objectives is that deci-sions about program priorities are made,in practice, with the expressed interests ofhumanities providers and consumersfirmly in mind. The people and organiza-tions that might be predisposed to makeuse of the commission’s programs andservices play an active role in framing and choosing programs and services thatfurther their own policy objectives. AsMargaret Ann Bollmeier explained,“Much of what we do is the result of arequest or a series of requests from indi-viduals and institutions who seek us out.[For example,] we worked with twentyorganizations in Seattle on the nature anddimensions of social change.” This is, inand of itself, not a bad thing, and indeedmight generate valuable programming,but it does call into question the relevanceof the commission’s own policy vision.4

these organizations must often locatethemselves in a major city in order tosurvive, funding tends to be Seattle-centric. But Humanities Washingtonhopes to create a sense of shared experi-ence across the state.

It is worth noting here that the obstaclesto a sense of shared civic identity so oftencited by cultural theorists—differences ofrace, ethnicity, class, and gender—werehardly mentioned by those we inter-viewed, and would appear to play littlepart in the framing of this policy objec-tive. Our interviewees did not talk aboutovercoming racism, homophobia, sexism,or the split between rich and poor. Buteach of these issues has an urban/rural aswell as an east/west dimension inWashington, and the programs supportedby the commission do address many ofthem directly, albeit within the overallcontext of making one Washington.

Along with promoting a sense of Washing-ton identity, Humanities Washington alsoseeks to enable individuals to live fullerlives and to help communities becomestronger, more connected and morecapable. These three objectives—creatingcivic identity, enriching individual lives,and empowering communities—are loftygoals, but also necessarily rather hazy, notimmediately translatable into a robust orpointed set of programs and outcomes.The commission’s objectives leave unde-fined the media—storytelling? academichistorical monographs? documentaryfilms? book clubs? talk shows? newspaperreviews of new books, exhibitions, orfilms? library acquisitions?— on which itsprograms should focus as it seeks to pro-mote the “stories, ideas, and writings”referred to in its mission statement. Nordoes it stipulate in advance whether it ismost interested in enhancing the supply,the distribution, or the demand for thesestories, ideas, and writings.

The generality of the commission’s policyobjectives has two consequences. First,the policy directions the commission actu-ally takes, and the means by which it pur-sues its goals, are defined not by thetrustees but by the director and her staff.

4 It has not been uncommonamong government culturalagencies in the United Statesto project a reactive ratherthan a proactive policy pro-file. This has often made itdifficult to defend theseagencies’ activities on policy-related grounds.

35 years old living in households withincome no higher than 150 percent ofthe poverty line. The ethnic mix is one-third black, one-third Latino, and one-third white. The course provides abridge from the students’ present cir-cumstances to four-year college andfurther humanistic studies by educat-ing not in the narrow set of employ-able skills but in conceptual skills andsophistication. The expectation is thatrigorous exposure to materials andideas from these various domains willexert transformational effects uponthose selected to participate. Tuition,books, bus fare, and childcare are pro-vided free of charge, and six transfer-able credits from Bard College areawarded if the course is completed ata high level of achievement. Thirtypeople have graduated from the pro-gram so far. An alumni organization isbeing formed, and the program plansto try to help graduates make the nextstep by encouraging college admissionsofficers to talk to them, and by creating(in response to a student suggestion)continuing book clubs.

Smithsonian Traveling Exhibits: Thisprogram is a partnership with theSmithsonian Traveling Exhibit Series.The focus is on providing small andrural museums traveling exhibitions.Humanities Washington pays a fee toaccess materials and exhibits. It selectsmuseums (six in the last round) from alarger cohort of applicant organiza-tions. Six months before the exhibitopens in the host community the com-mission hosts a workshop, to whichSmithsonian staff come to present theexhibit to the sponsor and helpdevelop ways to make the programlocally relevant. The Smithsonian staffreturns a week immediately prior tothe opening of each exhibition toinstall the exhibit. A commission staffmember provides ongoing support tothe local sponsor throughout thepreparatory process.

Because the goods provided throughthese programs—literacy, education, and

ProgramsAside from its Media Center, HumanitiesWashington runs very few direct serviceprograms, instead choosing to partnerwith other organizations. Some of theseorganizations, such as the WashingtonState Historical Society, local libraries, orBard College, are directly interested in thehumanities, but the commission alsoworks with a surprising number of social-service-oriented groups: Rotary Clubs, theJunior League, Head Start/Even Start.Such partnerships might include workingwith community-based organizations totest and tailor programming ideas orresponding to their ideas for programming.

The ideas that actually translate into newprograms, however, come most often notfrom below but from elsewhere andabove, replicating programs fostered bynational entities and underwritten by non-governmental philanthropies. Theseinclude:

Motheread/Fatheread: A statewide familyreading and literacy program that usesquality children’s literature to improveadult literacy generally and to encour-age parents to read to their children.Materials are obtained from the found-ing national Motheread/Fathereadorganization, a private non-profitentity. The commission collaborateswith other organizations such as HeadStart/Even Start welfare-to-workprograms—those already working withparents—to identify high-risk families(particularly those receiving TemporaryAssistance for Needy Families), andwith elementary schools to maximizeparent participation.

The Bard College Clemente Course in theHumanities: Developed by essayist-novelist Earl Shorris, this programoffers opportunities to non-traditionalstudents—generally those from lowincome or otherwise disadvantagedcircumstances—to read and study lit-erature, philosophy, history, and art.The program, hosted by El Centro dela Raza, a Chicano/Latino civil rightsorganization, targets individuals 17 to 89

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money is going,” Bollmeier pointed out,and the range of Inquiring Mind subjectmatter is so broad and develops so fre-quently in response to breaking events,that it is difficult to articulate the out-comes the program seeks to achieve.Those who have faith in the less-easilyassessed value of civic dialogue—publiclibraries and junior colleges, in particular—ultimately are the best advocates andfinancial supporters for these programs.

None of the above-mentioned programsis directed at what might be called the“supply” side of the humanities. HumanitiesWashington does not provide any fundingfor scholarly research or grants to individ-ual humanists to help support the publica-tion of books, leaving these tasks to theuniversities, NEH, and the marketplace.The only direct financial assistance givento individual humanists is to those hiredon a contract basis to give talks or runcourses. Instead, the commission targetsgrants to organizations, offering, forexample, “quick grants” of up to $500 on a year-round basis to small or ruralorganizations for planning or programimplementation and awarding projectgrants through a twice-yearly competitivereview process for larger projects. Eventhe Washington Humanities Award, pre-sented annually to an individual (andorganization) for outstanding achievementin the humanities, is organizationallyfocused: the award of $1,000 goes to sup-port public humanities programming atan organization of the winner’s choice.

While Humanities Washington does notplay any direct role in supporting better ormore literary art criticism, philosophy, orhistory, there is one area of the humani-ties in which it has chosen to encourageproduction: the new media, includingdocumentary film, video, and the Internet.The commission supports documentaryprojects through direct grants (a total of$10,000 per annum) to groups such asschools, museums, libraries, communitycultural groups, local governments, andarts clubs. But the commission alsosupports the documentary-creating com-munity in Washington more directly by

access to heritage—are relatively stable,well defined, and utilitarian, and the pro-grams themselves are already vetted andapproved by national organizations, theyare attractive to funders.

It has proven more difficult for HumanitiesWashington to raise money for programsthat aim to promote civic dialogue, suchas Inquiring Mind. The primary purpose ofInquiring Mind is to provide publicly acces-sible opportunities for lifelong learning,and to explore the questions integral tothe humanities—Where have we been?Why did we go there? Where are wegoing? For this program, speakers onvarious topics in the humanities arerecruited and assigned to various locallibraries, historical societies, senior cen-ters, and museums, which must contributea co-payment (not for financial reasons,but to give these local organizations anincentive to treat the program seriouslyand to recruit audiences). The true pro-gram cost to the commission is $500 perevent. Presentations help vitalize commu-nity gathering places by providing a freepublic program that can engage the entirefamily, and by offering the chance to pub-licly explore issues that have divided manycommunities, such as growth manage-ment and community development. Thetarget audience of Inquiring Mind is ruralcommunities (agricultural, manufacturing,timber, and government). At the time ofour interviews, Humanities Washingtonwas recruiting speakers associated in thepublic mind with the September 11thtragedy—experts on Arab culture, Islam,and comparative religion. Said Bollmeier,“We mount programs in large part as aresponse to events as they occur, like9/11. We also did a series of programs intimbering/logging communities on envi-ronmental issues.”

Despite the timeliness of these sorts ofevents, which reach the broadest audiencesof any of the commission’s programs,they are, paradoxically, less attractive toprivate givers than pre-packaged, social-service-oriented programs. This is for rea-sons not of ideology but of pragmaticutility. “Funders like to know where their

King County Cultural Resources Fund(which is supplied by the hotel-motel tax).The program’s ongoing costs (including$3,000 per faculty quarter taught) aredefrayed by the fees paid by participants($425 per week for equipment use; $400for workshops). The Media Center hasalso received funding from the King CountyArts Commission and the King CountyLandmarks and Heritage Commission(both now restructured into the newCultural Development Authority of KingCounty), the University of WashingtonScandinavian Studies Program, and theConsulate General of Sweden.

What is missing from this otherwiseimpressively variegated list of local,county, and even international partnersfor the Media Center as well as for thecommission’s programs as a whole, arestate-level agencies with whom one mightexpect some collaboration. AlthoughHumanities Washington has workedsuccessfully from time to time with theWashington State Historical Society—theyhave even funded each others’ programson occasion—it is reluctant to becomeinvolved in too many joint undertakings,which, it fears, could lead to calls to con-solidate the two agencies. Interagencycollaboration is discouraged, as well, bythe fear that one agency may poach theother’s funding. It is striking that it workswith neither the Washington State ArtsCommission nor the Washington StateHistorical Society to lobby for joint fund-ing. The only successful instance of inter-agency collaboration reported by ourinterviewees in this realm was one inwhich Humanities Washington filled aniche at the behest of a sister agency: theOffice of the Superintendent of PublicInstruction hired the Motheread/Fatheread program to provide literacytraining focusing on using stories to pro-mote family (rather than child) literacy.

owning and operating the Media Center,a video production center providing a sitewith equipment, training, and technicalassistance at an affordable price. Modeledon a program started in Virginia in theearly 1990s, the center rents its equipmentat $425/week (with one free week), andruns workshops on the use of the equip-ment and on interviewing techniques.Social service organizations help findapplicants for the program, for whichthere is a very short waiting list. The pro-gram claims to be content-neutral, andthe range of themes is wide: one docu-mentary, produced by the SouthwestSeattle Historical Society, used their oralhistories archive; another dealt with thehistories of Japanese internment veterans;a third with “deadbeat” fathers. Futureplans for the center include going regionalby pooling money with Oregon to createa single $10,000 grant to encourage excel-lence, building a new facility, developingan employment database of those involvedin film production, and even moving into sales and representation, possibly in coordination with one of the state’sfilm festivals.

Although Media Center Director LyallBush described the center’s purpose incultural-industry terms—ultimately, hesaid, the aim is to help make Washingtona hotbed of documentary production—the Media Center’s publicity materialsconnect this objective with the commis-sion’s overall distributive mission.Strengthening the capacity of documentary-makers helps “to broaden and deepenpublic awareness of humanities issuesthrough newer methods of inquiry, suchas film, video, and the Internet,” Bushsaid. The public awareness side of thecenter’s work is accomplished through its documentary film festivals, which havehad an ethnic focus (Irish, Northwest,and, in the most recent biennial, Scandi-navian) and have been sited downtownand on Capitol Hill.

The Media Center’s funding streams are asdistinctive as its profile within HumanitiesWashington. Startup funding was pro-vided by the Allen Foundation and the 91

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art, values, and personal experiences, aprerogative of the humanities. For thatreason, some of the Washington StateHistorical Society’s activities are analyzedhere and some are analyzed in Chapter Vas part of state heritage policy. Foralthough WSHS devotes much of itsbudget to operating the Washington StateHistory Museum, and the museum’s her-itage function is primary, its 1999 AnnualReport emphasizes that it “collects, pre-serves, and interprets [emphasis added]”the state’s heritage, and the society takesthis interpretative function very seriously.

The Washington State Historical Society isan interesting hybrid, combining aspectsof a state agency—it operates the state’shistory museum and a number of relatedprograms on behalf of the state—withaspects of a private nonprofit organiza-tion—it is also incorporated as a private501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Both astate agency and a nonprofit organization,it is positioned to take advantage of theduality of that status by wielding theresources and influence imparted by eachside of its organization.

The historical society is a hybrid inanother sense as well: it bridges the cul-tural policy field between heritage policyand humanities policy, incorporating ele-ments of both. The mission statement ofthe historical society reflects this bridge:

The...Society is a nonprofit membership organiza-tion operating throughout the state, designated instatute as a trustee agency of state government.The Society collects preserves and interprets mate-rials and information that exemplify the historyand culture of Washington within the context ofthe American West and the nation as a whole.The Society provides educational and researchopportunities to individuals, families, scholars,teachers and school students, plus leadership and technical assistance to other heritageorganizations.5

The fact that the historical society has thestatus of a “trustee agency of state gov-ernment” means that its powers andduties (as well as the powers and duties ofits sister trustee agency, the EasternWashington State Historical Society) aredefined by state statute:

ImpactWhat impact has the programming ofHumanities Washington had on the state’scultural life? Has it been effective inenriching individual lives, empoweringcommunities, promoting civic awareness?The evidence, as it must be with respectto such amorphous yet highly-valuedobjectives, is difficult to come by—all themore so given the ratio of programs tobudget size and the need to spend scarcedollars delivering programs to hungry anddeserving constituencies. As MargaretAnn Bollmeier somewhat ruefully admit-ted, “The content of our programs isexcellent. But we don’t have the resourcesto fully respond to demand. We can’t fullyanalyze the impact of our programs orhire outside consultants to evaluate andassess program effectiveness.”

In the absence of benchmarks or third-party program evaluations, the success ofHumanities Washington can be measuredonly by the backlog of demand for mostor all of its programs, and by anecdotalevidence. The “Barn Again” travelingexhibit, a Smithsonian project brought toWashington by the commission, forinstance, generated moving testimonialsfrom small town residents attesting to itssuccess in revitalizing communities thathad been on the verge of extinction.Similarly, a community conversation seriesbringing together an ad hoc group ofattendees in Spokane spawned a listservthat continues to hum along. And theMedia Center reports individual successesof a more concrete kind: a film focusingon Irish issues was picked up by the 911Media Arts Center, while another onScandinavian subjects was optioned to theNordic Heritage Museum.

The Washington StateHistorical SocietyWithin the framework of this report, theefforts by the state to collect, preserve,and restore its heritage are treated as dis-tinct from the state’s efforts to interpretit. The task of interpreting Washington’sheritage is, like the task of interpreting its

5 Washington State HistoricalSociety, 1999 Annual Report.

discussion of WSHS in Chapter V underthe rubric of heritage policy) relies onpublished materials, particularly thesociety’s 2001 Annual Report, for thedescriptions of program activities.

The terms in which those we intervieweddefined WSHS’s mission show the society’sfundamental affinity with the humanities.Like Humanities Washington, which seesitself representing what Jack Faris called“the stories of us,” WSHS seeks to providecitizens with what Executive DirectorDave Nicandri called “meaningful story-telling”: “There’s a sense of historicalconsciousness and awareness in this state.The idea is to place the experiences ofindividuals in the State of Washington inan historical context.” Moreover, bothorganizations claim, in Nicandri’s words,to “focus on the entire range of experienceof the State of Washington...to tell storiesabout the whole state.” Where the twoorganizations differ is in what counts forthem as the experiences most worth inter-preting. Humanities Washington dealswith experiences that are essentially per-sonal, often mediated through the arts,while WSHS deals with experiences thatare first and foremost historical. It spe-cializes in “big blockbuster documentarystorytelling” that promotes what DavidLamb, past President of WSHS’s Boardof Trustees, called “historical pride.”Where Humanities Washington speaks ofgenerating “critical thinking about theworld” and “promoting civic dialogue,”WSHS is, Lamb said, “in the Washingtonpatriotism business.”

It was precisely to promote such pride inthe accomplishments of Washingtoniansthat the society was founded in 1891. Itwas a moment in the state’s history whena major influx of new residents was under-way, and the pioneer generation that pre-ceded them wanted, in Nicandri’s words,“to memorialize their own experience.”The society was located in Tacoma in thatyear because it was founded during a briefspan of time during which Tacoma’s pop-ulation exceeded Seattle’s.

Until just a few years ago the society’soffices and exhibition space were located

To collect, catalog, preserve, and interpretobjects, manuscripts, sites, photographs, andother materials illustrative of the cultural,artistic, and natural history of th[e] state;

To operate state museums and assist andencourage cultural and historical studies andmuseum interpretive efforts throughout the state, including those sponsored by localhistorical organizations, and city, county, and state agencies;

To engage in cultural, artistic, and educationalactivities, including classes, exhibits, seminars,workshops, and conferences if these activities arerelated to the basic purpose of the society; [and]

To plan for and conduct celebrations ofsignificant events in the history of the state ofWashington and to give assistance to and coordi-nate with state agencies, local governments, andlocal historical organizations in planning andconducting celebrations.

All objects, sites, manuscripts, photographs, and allproperty, including real property, now held or here-after acquired by the state historical societies shallbe held by the societies in trust for the use and bene-fit of the people of Washington state.


“Trusteeship,” as used here, is a complicatedarrangement, indicating that although thesociety is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, it is also treated as anagency of government in that it receivesdirect biennial appropriations from theLegislature. In return, it operates theWashington State History Museum andcollects, preserves, and maintains theimportant historic artifacts of the state.Because of its hybrid nature, it also mustraise a substantial portion of its operatingbudget from private sources, includingmuseum admissions. (Trustee status wasconferred on the society in 1909 at thetime the Legislature established this cate-gory of organization.) Even though morethan 70 percent of the society’s operatingbudget is state-funded, it has an indepen-dent board of directors. Yet, all societyemployees are employees of the State ofWashington.

We did not have access to the directors or managers of the society’s operatingdivisions during our field visits, so muchof the discussion below (and the later 93

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state’s heritage on the radar of politicians,and no organization was better positionedto benefit from this attention than WSHS.As Lamb pointed out, “If you are goingfor public money there’s an immediatelink between historical pride and whysomeone might run for the legislature.”

WSHS urged the Tacoma preservationiststo expand their campaign’s aims toencompass both the redevelopment ofthe station and the construction of a sep-arate but immediately adjacent state-of-the-art museum. Advocating for such agrand expansion was no easy task, raisingas it did the risk of antagonizing otherheritage (and other cultural) groups. AsLamb pointed out, “We were new playersand we were emerging from the group ofsmaller heritage organizations. We putourselves forward but we needed toassure all the others that a rising tidewould lift all boats.” Ultimately, Nicandriand Lamb succeeded in convincingpreservation advocates to work togetherwith them. Said Nicandri: “[The preserva-tion advocates] were amazingly successful.They talked to the Congressman, whoultimately arranged for it to become afederal courthouse.”

FinancingNone of this would have been possiblewere it not for the society’s hybrid status,which enables the society to raise moneyfrom both public and private sources, amajor advantage compared to most stateagencies.6 The society’s other structuraladvantage, especially compared to human-ities organizations such as HumanitiesWashington and the Simpson Center forthe Humanities at the University ofWashington, is its possession of materialphysical assets that need to be exhibited.Consequently, it is easier to raise moneyfor physical manifestations of the society’swork—buildings or exhibits—than for itsother programs.

Commenting on the readiness of theLegislature to appropriate capital fundsfor development of the present facility,one interviewee observed that public capi-tal development projects in Washington

in a small building approximately two milesnorth of its present location, encompass-ing a total of 45,000 square feet. DavidLamb, who joined the board of directorsin 1984, described the organization inthose days as “a pretty moribund institu-tion,” a conclusion that Nicandri reportedwas supported by a legislative study con-ducted during the same period. Withintwelve years, WSHS would be movinginto a $40.8 million building (with 70 per-cent of these capital funds coming frompublic sources). The society’s buildingrepresents an astonishing commitment ofstate resources to a cultural agency—acommitment all the more astonishingwhen compared, for instance, to the com-plete absence of state investment inHumanities Washington. How was such anaudacious objective accomplished?

WSHS’s achievement was the result ofthe serendipitous confluence of a numberof factors. First, when Nicandri andLamb began working at the society, “theeconomics for the state as a whole werevery positive,” said Lamb. Even so, Lambcontinued, “It was unimaginable in thosedays that the present facility could ever bebuilt. I was a young trustee and Nicandriwas new, and we lobbied the Legislaturehard for support for the history program.”The trigger for the development of thecurrent facility, which opened in 1996—animmense edifice with several floors ofinteractive multi-media exhibits and pro-grams—was a move begun by Tacomapreservation advocates in 1985-86 to res-cue and restore a railway station immedi-ately to the north. A range of proposalsfor its reuse were mounted, includingshared occupancy by the museum with thefederal courts. As David Lamb noted,

All the local and state level political actors andfactors were favorable at that point. A lot ofwealthy and influential people in Tacoma wantedto raise the community’s self image above itsgrubby paper mill smelly image. We had the beau-tiful old train station the preservationists were outto save. The movement to put the museum andthen the courthouse in there really got us going.

At the same time, the state’s centennialcelebration was being planned, putting the

6 Although state agencies can,in theory, solicit donationsthat are tax deductible underthe federal income tax laws,donors are reluctant to makesuch donations fearing thatthe legislature will find theserevenues too tempting, sub-stituting them for allocationsthat they would otherwisehave had to make and usingthe “freed up” money forother, unrelated purposes.

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$2,873,000 for fiscal year 2002 (including$90,000 dedicated to Lewis and Clarkbicentennial activities) and, after havingbeen originally set in the biennial budgetat $3,129,000 for fiscal year 2003, it wasdecreased to $3,035,000 (including$285,000 dedicated to the Lewis andClark bicentennial). Both of these appro-priations heralded the beginning of evengreater cuts to come as the state budgetsituation worsened.

The Washington State Historical Societyhas a full-time staff of just fewer thanforty people, with an additional twenty-five to thirty-five part-time people andapproximately 150 volunteers.

The Washington State History Museum isundoubtedly the society’s flagship, and itsactivities—as well as those of its sistermuseum, the Washington State CapitalMuseum—are arguably more engaged inheritage than in the humanities. Thus, thesociety’s Museum Services division is dis-cussed in Chapter V, in which we explorethe relationship of WSHS to state heritagepolicy. Our focus in this chapter is on thesociety’s Outreach Services division, theoperating division that most centrallyengages in the discussion-based program-ming that is the lifeblood of the humani-ties; this division is discussed a bit later.But we turn first to Institutional Advance-ment, the division in which the society’sfundraising functions are handled.

tend not to be immediately affected bythe sorts of constraints increasingly asso-ciated with general fund appropriationsfor operations. The process of conceptu-alizing, planning, and contracting a build-ing project is lengthy and such projectsgenerate a great deal of political momen-tum as they move forward; unlike pro-grams, they are very difficult to bring to ahalt. Moreover, the fact that the state’sbonding authority provides the basis forfinancing capital projects enables costs tobe stretched out over a period of years,and the fact that construction materialsare not exempt from the state’s retail salesand use tax means that much of the costwill be recouped by the state in any eventin the form of increased tax revenues.

Appropriations from the state’s generalfund are the largest source of support for the historical society’s operationalbudget (Table IV.1). State appropriationstypically provide between 70 percent and75 percent of total operating income;earned income is typically around 20 per-cent of total operating income; and finan-cial contributions (as distinguished fromcontributions of objects for the collection)provide less than 5 percent of total oper-ating income. Even so, it is important toremember that all exhibits are supportedin their entirety through grants, gifts, andawards from institutional and individualdonors.

Complete comparable figures for fiscalyear 2002 were not available, but the stateappropriation for the Washington StateHistorical Society was eventually set at

Table IV.1: Washington State Historical Society—ReceiptsOperating Accounts: FY 1999, FY 2000, FY 2001

Fiscal Year 1999 Fiscal Year 2000 Fiscal Year 2001Source Amount Percent Amount Percent Amount Percent

State Appropriation $2,810,582 73.6% $2,708,936 69.8% $3,073,022 74.5%Federal Service Agreement $0 0% $89,202 2.3% $113,839 2.8%Other Earned Incomea $829,710 21.7% $902,458 23.2% $845,789 20.5%Contributions $178,463 4.7% $182,857 4.7% $94,358 2.3%

Total Operating Income $3,818,755 100.0% $3,883,453 100.0% $4,127,008 100.0%

Notes: Percentage columns may not add to 100.0% because of rounding errors.aOther Earned Income includes admissions, membership dues, business income, conference income, and other sources of earned

income except income under a federal service agreement.Source: Washington State Historical Society, 2001 Annual Report (Tacoma, WA: Washington State Historical Society, 2001), 3.

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major exhibit, “This Land is Your Land:The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie.”Among the state’s cultural policy agencies,the Washington State Historical Society isthe one that is most proactive in buildingsuch partnerships and engaging fully incollaborative efforts. Undoubtedly, this isboth encouraged and facilitated by its sta-tus as a hybrid, trustee organization,which makes it a more credible bridgeacross the public-private divide.

Outreach ServicesBoth of the society’s museums and allthree of its divisions are, of course, involvedin its humanities programming. MuseumServices, which is discussed further inChapter V, has, for example, supplemented aSmithsonian traveling exhibit on WoodyGuthrie by producing its own show aboutthe author of the quintessential laborunion song, “Solidarity Forever,” and themuseum’s History Lab Learning Centeroffers students a hands-on experience ofhow historical inquiry is carried out. Indeed,both museums house a wide variety ofhumanities-based activities, but the keydivision in humanities programming is the Outreach Services division.

For years, WSHS has provided servicesthroughout the state to a wide range ofindividuals and organizations interested in history. Services have been provided to laypeople interested in local history, toheritage advocates, to local historical soci-eties and museums, to teachers and schoolsystems, and to professional researchers ina wide variety of disciplines. In 2001 thestaff structure was modified to create anenlarged Outreach Services division,which now includes the Education Depart-ment, the Heritage Resource Center, theCenter for Columbia River History, andthe Washington State Capital Museum.

The Education Department providesschool tour programs to an estimated30,000 schoolchildren per year in additionto providing services and in-service train-ing to teachers throughout the state. As aresult, it is well known among Washingtonhistory teachers of all grade levels. Throughthe Education Department the society

Institutional AdvancementThe Institutional Advancement division isresponsible for developing income streamson the private side including earnedincome from memberships, admissions,facility rentals, and catering, as well asincome from all forms of fundraising.An important element in this mix is themuseum building itself, particularly, theGreat Hall of Washington History, whichis rented out for a wide variety of eventsand promotions. The museum’s privilegedposition as a state facility has led to a bitof controversy over the relationshipbetween property tax exemptions and theuse of nonprofit facilities for privateevents, a controversy that only grew asother new, nonprofit museums weredeveloped in Tacoma and have gone intodirect competition with the historicalsociety with facility rentals. (This issue isdiscussed in detail in Chapter VIII.)

Institutional Advancement is also respon-sible for the full range of visitor servicesprovided in the society’s two museums—the Washington State History Museumand the State Capital Museum (discussedbelow). The number of members of thehistorical society has recently been in thevicinity of 3,500. The 2001 Annual Reportreports the following visitor volumes:112,172 (fiscal year 1999), 121,394 (2000),and 102,867 (2001).

Because new programs and new exhibitsare not funded out of general operatingsupport but are only funded as con-tributed income makes them possible,Institutional Advancement plays a key roleas the central actor in the fundraising andgrant-seeking effort.

This division also brokers a wide varietyof community partnerships, in which themuseum seeks to leverage its programs bydeveloping programs and initiatives withothers. Examples include a joint promo-tion with the Tacoma Sabercats icehockey team and a set of collaborationswith the Northwest Folklife Festival, theExperience Music Project, and theUniversity of Washington, Tacoma, all ofwhich developed programs around the

HRC’s most important humanities eventsare its Pacific Northwest History Con-ference, targeted at an academic/researchaudience, and its much larger annualHeritage Conference, which bringstogether representatives from many disci-plines, professions, and organizations toexplore and discuss current issues and toexchange innovative programming ideas.The 2001 conference was a joint effortbetween Washington and Oregon, whichpulled together a wide variety of organi-zational sponsors including the OregonHeritage Commission, the WashingtonTrust for Historic Preservation, the OregonState Historic Preservation Office, theWashington State Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation, the TourismDevelopment division of the WashingtonState Tourism Office (Department ofCommunity, Trade and EconomicDevelopment), the Oregon MuseumAssociation, the Washington MuseumAssociation, Humanities Washington, theOregon Humanities Council, the OregonHistorical Society, the Washington StateHistorical Society, the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation/HeritageCorridors Program, and the Pacific North-west Regional Office of the National ParkService. This effort is one of the clearestexamples we found in Washington of across-agency and cross-field—heritageand humanities—cultural policy initiative.It is interesting to note that this effortflowed out of the work of a hybrid pri-vate/public agency. It is also interesting tonote that the initiative in question is con-tent-neutral; it makes no deliberate effortto shape or direct the field in a particularway from a single viewpoint.

In these ways, the work of the HeritageResource Center is similar in intent to thework of the Community Arts DevelopmentProgram of the Washington State ArtsCommission (discussed in Chapter III),but it appears that the program of techni-cal assistance to local organizations ismuch better developed in the heritagesector than in the arts sector. The choiceto implement policy through technicalassistance rather than through grants isnoteworthy. It may well be that a mainline

participates in the annual WashingtonState Council for the Social Studies Con-ference and the National History DayConference, which give the society and itsmuseums and programs considerableimpact and visibility. It is worth notinghere the contrast with Humanities Wash-ington and the Simpson Center, neither ofwhich has robust links to English teachersor much impact on schoolchildren.

Like Humanities Washington, the society’sOutreach Services division provides sup-port through its Heritage Resource Center(HRC) for local organizations throughoutthe state, but unlike Humanities Washington,the society’s support is primarily in theform of technical assistance rather thanas grant aid. Established as part of the1989 celebration of the centennial ofWashington’s statehood, the HRC wasoriginally named the Centennial ResourceCenter and had strong support from theWashington Centennial Commission,which wanted to provide assistance toheritage efforts throughout the state.Since that time, the technical assistanceinitiative created to prepare smaller muse-ums and heritage organizations for thestatehood commemoration has evolvedinto a permanent program of theWashington State Historical Society.

HRC offers technical assistance work-shops, conferences, consulting services,and collaborative programs, and publishesthe Heritage Bulletin, a quarterly newsletter.HRC staff have worked with almost all of the nearly 460 museums and heritageorganizations in the state. Their work-shops are intended to promote a level ofprofessionalism among community heritageadvocates. Through these workshops,HRC staff and consultants help the staffand volunteers of these local institutionsand organizations develop their skills. HRCstaff and consultants routinely visit thestate’s many community heritage organiza-tions to provide consulting advice on awide range of subjects, from organiza-tional and funding concerns to programand exhibit design. They provide anassessment service to help these localorganizations diagnose their needs. 97

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the bi-state Columbia River Basin. Thathistory is not uncontroversial, for, as thecenter’s mission statement notes,

Although humans have lived along the river formore than 10,000 years, modern engineering inthe 19th and 20th centuries has dramaticallyaltered the Columbia. Some scientists believe thattoday the river is environmentally threatened andthat drastic action should be taken to reverse thechanges made to the Columbia during the last150 years.

CCRH is dedicated to examining the“hidden histories” of the basin and tohelping people think about the historicalrecord from different perspectivesthrough creative public history productsand direct engagement with ColumbiaRiver Basin communities. It is worthnoting here that the center’s modestlyfunded efforts to get at hidden andsometimes difficult historical issues—for instance, an oral history project onAfrican Americans in World War IIVancouver—sets it apart from the bulk ofthe WSHS’s large-scale heritage-orientedprograms such as the upcoming Lewisand Clark bicentennial (discussed inChapter V), which have more of a patri-otic and celebratory focus; the relativepredominance of academic humanists inthis particular program may explain itsdistinct tone.

Two other aspects of the operations ofWSHS deserve mention: their publica-tions and awards programs.

PublicationsThe historical society publishes a widerange of books on Northwest history aswell as on the history of the society itself.Members receive Columbia Magazine, ahighly regarded quarterly journal thatincludes forty-eight pages of articles,photographs, illustrations, and “viewpointpieces” by noted historians. An “Educa-tion Update” newsletter and special proj-ect packets are produced for teachers. AWashington History Poster Map thatidentifies many of Washington’s historiclocations is available for students.

cultural agency (e.g., WSAC) is undermore political pressure to distribute itsresources through grants than to use themin programmatic initiatives such as techni-cal assistance than is a trustee agency thatbridges the governmental and nonprofitsectors. Or it may be that the program-matic tradition is simply different withrespect to the heritage than with respectto the arts and humanities.

Finally, on behalf of the state, the HeritageResource Center administers the CapitalProjects Fund for Washington’s Heritage,which is discussed separately in Chapter V.

The component of Outreach Servicesthat draws most directly and most effi-ciently on the academic humanities is itsCenter for Columbia River History(CCRH), a consortium of WSHS,Washington State University Vancouver,and Portland State University. The con-sortium was founded in 1990 to combinescholarly capacity from the two collabo-rating universities with the curatorial andadministrative resources of the WashingtonState Historical Society. The center has noindependent corporate status, operatinginstead through a memorandum ofunderstanding that defines the respectiveroles and obligations of each of the part-ners. WSHS provides financial supportfor a full-time program manager while thetwo university partners underwrite a part-time executive director (Portland StateUniversity) and a project historian (WSUVancouver). The center is not itself adestination point. Instead, it periodicallyorganizes exhibitions at the Clark CountyMuseum and at other locations in its region(southwestern Washington and greaterPortland, Oregon). CCRH also conductsinterdisciplinary research projects, pub-lishes material in text and electronic for-mat, sponsors seminars for teachers andfree public programs, and develops curric-ula. It collaborates with a range of histori-cal and cultural institutions, offering itsprograms to schools, libraries, historicalsocieties, and public groups throughoutthe Columbia River Basin.

As its name and consortium partners indi-cate, the center’s focus is the history of

7 The secretary of state’s OralHistory Program records andtranscribes the recollectionsof legislators, state officials,and citizens who have beeninvolved with the state’spolitical history.

preservation. They measure brand aware-ness rather than awareness of culturaldifference or history; entertainment valuerather than intellectual, personal, or patri-otic value; the excellence of the overallexperience rather than the civic empower-ment or sense of pride the experiencemight have provided. What the society isassessing is not outcomes but outputs,and it is doing so for entirely justifiablestrategic reasons: whatever the impact ofparticipation, levels of public participa-tion and satisfaction help determine levelsof funding.

Other Offices andPrograms in theHumanities Portfolio

Office of the Secretary of State:State LibraryOn the face of it the state library, housedadministratively—along with the statearchives and a small Oral HistoryProgram7—in the Office of the Secretaryof State, would appear to have no connec-tion with humanities policy. The librarydevotes much of its resources to servingthe needs not of the public but of theLegislature; it devotes considerable budg-etary resources to responding to requestsfor information and documents fromlegislative staffers (and to overseeing theRegional Book Depository). And the wayin which it understands itself as servingthe public is not particularly based in thehumanities: its mission statementdescribes the library as “a leader in infor-mation policy” whose responsibility it is“to provide ready and equitable publicaccess to information.”

Notwithstanding this rather gray andcontent-neutral self-description, thelibrary, along with the archives and theOral History Program, bear special respon-sibility for information that is culturallyrelevant: historical documents, records,newspapers, and recollections. Moreover,these state agencies do more than simplystore these written materials and makethem accessible; they also run public

AwardsThe Washington State Historical Societypresents a number of annual awards torecognize individuals and heritage effortsthroughout the state. From the standpointof state cultural policy, the most notableare the Governor’s Awards for TeachingHistory in Washington State. Each yearone such award is presented to a teacherfrom an accredited K-12 school andanother is given to a non-profit organiza-tion honoring effectiveness and excellencein teaching Northwest history.

ImpactA further discussion of the impact of theWashington State Historical Society onheritage policy is reserved for Chapter V,but with regard to its impact in the domainof the humanities a few observations canbe made here.

Compared with its counterparts, the his-torical society has in place a much morerobust self-assessment regime, includingboth visitor response and broader publicsurveys. It produces periodic reportsassessing its multi-year performance infundraising, operating fund development,energy utilization efficiency, and customersatisfaction. School groups visiting theHistory Lab are asked to fill out and sub-mit ratings of their experiences. Morebroadly, public surveys measure brandawareness, visitor satisfaction, value forthe admissions dollar, entertainmentvalue, educational impact, exhibit quality,cleanliness of the facility, and employeecourtesy. Rankings on compilations ofsurvey responses are very respectable—for example, 68 percent of visitor respon-dents in 2001 rated the overall experienceexcellent as regards value in relation tothe admission fee. Seventy-three percentof respondents in that year ranked theeducational experience excellent, andthese levels have held for the past severalyears.

These surveys, however, do not assesshow effective the society is in promotingthe goals of the humanities, or for thatmatter the deeper goals of heritage 99

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to information on the Internet through itswebsite.

The authorizing legislation for the libraryhas gone through a number of revisionsover the years. Until 2002 the libraryfunctioned as an independent agencygoverned by a state library commissionappointed by the governor, with the pro-viso that its membership consist of onecertified librarian, one member of thegeneral public, one representative fromthe executive branch, one library trustee,and one educator with expertise in libraryand information technology policy. (Thislast position, by the way, marked a depar-ture from the status quo ante, in which theeducator was statutorily defined as thesuperintendent of public instruction.) Thecommission set general policy and strate-gic direction, appointed the state librarian,recommended budgets to the governor,accepted and allocated grants, contractedwith public libraries for service to the dis-abled, and established content-relatedstandards for formatting and indexingstate information. The commission alsoappointed an advisory council to repre-sent the library community, whose inter-est, as spelled out in the WashingtonAdministrative Code (WAC) §304.12.047,was understood to be that of helping thelibrary “to promote access to library serv-ice and information resources for all peo-ple in Washington.”

It is worth noting here that no provisionwas made to require the presence of ahistorian or author on the commission orthe council, perhaps indicating the rela-tively minor importance of humanistic asopposed to informational policy issues inthe library. The real struggle would seemto have been over the degree of inde-pendence of the library from oversight byeither the Office of the Superintendent ofPublic Instruction or some other stateagency. The most important moment ofthe state library’s history was probably thefall and winter of 2001-02, when thestate’s budget crisis led the governor tothreaten to close it. Ultimately the librarywas spared, but it was merged into the

programs that encourage the public toengage in historical research and to readWashington authors. And, as overseer ofthe state’s library system, the state libraryin particular plays a vital role supportingwhat are, for the humanities, the equiva-lent of what local historical societies orperforming arts centers are for the her-itage and arts sectors: local libraries andthe myriad book-reading activities theypromote.

History and Mission

The state library is older than the stateitself, established by the Organic Act ofthe Territory of Washington in March1853. This act stipulated that a library was“to be kept at the seat of government”and provided for $5,000 to be spent onbooks for a territorial library. The bookspurchased—mostly law textbooks, sciencebooks, and novels—together with docu-ments and published archives solicitedfrom the executives of each state andterritory of the United States and from anumber of learned societies, formed thecore of the collection until Washingtonbecame a state in 1889.

In 1907 legal materials (including itemsfrom the original territorial collection)were moved to the state law library. In1905 it became a clearinghouse for oldmagazines and collected issues indexed in Poole’s and the Reader’s Guide fromlibraries in the state. In 1933 the Legisla-tive Information Service was made avail-able at the library to help Washingtonlawmakers prepare legislation. In carryingout its mission to preserve the state’s writ-ten record, the Washington State Librarybegan the Washington Author Collectionin 1940 and in 1952 began to microfilmearly state newspapers. Currently theWashington State Library offers interli-brary loans, full-text databases, and onlinesearch capabilities to state employees; pro-vides consulting, administrative, and otherservices to aid the planning and develop-ment of libraries in the State of Washington;serves as a Regional Federal DepositoryLibrary and Washington State Publica-tions Depository; and provides a gateway

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anities and State Cultural PolicyState Hospital and Eastern State Hospital,a “Baby Read” program at the statelibrary at the Washington CorrectionsCenter for Women, and the CulturalDiversity Initiative described below. Forthe most part, it has been the generalpublic, not demographic groups, that hasbeen the focus of programming efforts.

Services for the general public providedby the state library, the state archives, andthe Oral History Program fall into twomajor areas:

Self-administered programs. Theseprograms include a WashingtonHistory website and newspaper collec-tion; online genealogical and historicrecords search capabilities; a TerritorialCommission that asks communities,historic organizations, tribal groupsand others “to reflect on the era anddevelop ways to commemorate Washing-ton’s past, present and future”; booksignings and displays; a collection ofhistoric photographs; and hostingevents produced by HumanitiesWashington, such as “Arts of theRaven Coast.”

Support of local library servicestatewide. The state library acts as a“library development agency” provid-ing grants, technical expertise, andconsultation and research assistance to2,100 public and nonprofit libraries(including academic libraries, schoollibraries, tribal libraries, and otherspecialized libraries).

Though the programs listed above clearlyhave a cultural and humanities bent, thelibrary’s second area of service, as a “locallibraries development agency,” is probablythe most relevant to cultural policy, sinceit affects the public more broadly (includ-ing tribal, special, public, and academiclibraries—especially small ones). Much ofwhat the library provides to local librariesis technical assistance, but some of itsgrants programs have a public culturalemphasis. These include:

Early Learning Initiative. This programprovides funding for 31 libraries (public and tribal) to purchase a core

Office of the Secretary of State as of July2002, curbing its autonomy.

That autonomy was managerial ratherthan substantive, for the library’s missionwas narrowly defined by statute, albeitframed in grand language: “In a free andopen society the mission of libraries is tobe aware of individuals’ need for knowl-edge and personal growth and to respondto those needs by providing access to thewisdom, experience and imagination ofmankind” (WAC §304.12.125). The keyword here is not “wisdom” or “experi-ence” or “imagination” but “access,” andwhat “access” means is spelled out withgreat specificity in the statute’s criteria:90 percent of requests must be met forspecific titles, or for works by a particularauthor, or for materials on a specificsubject, or for information. Moreover,whether or not they request books,90 percent of the people in a library’sservice area must be aware of what theirlibrary has to offer, and “the percentageof use by each demographic group asdefined in the Library Services andConstruction Act regulations is the same,+/- fifteen percent.”

ProgramsThe statutory language leaves undefinedwhat functions public access should serveor what policies and programs the libraryshould pursue to achieve such access. Anduntil it was threatened with closure, thelibrary did not feel compelled to developpolicy statements that would offer ratio-nales or justify the public programs it wasrunning. In the aftermath of the mergingof the library into the secretary of state’soffice, the library’s efforts are difficult todistinguish from those of the state archivesand other state services to which thelibrary’s website links. It is clear, however,that the library and its sister agencies havenot devoted major programmingresources to meet access goals by seekingout underserved demographic groups in atargeted way, with the exceptions of theWashington Talking Book & Braille Library(administered by the Seattle Public Library),the Washington State Library branchesserving mentally ill citizens at Western

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Serving Culturally Diverse Populations.Also funded by federal LSTA funds($325,000 in the latest reported year),the Diversity Initiative assists librariesin developing effective programs toserve diverse ethnic populations.Grant programs, limited to $50,000per project with local matching fund-ing preferred, emphasize effectiveneeds assessment, building communitypartnerships, and developing outreachprograms. This is one of the fewprograms that is explicitly presented asfulfilling a policy objective: “The diver-sity of the population of the state ofWashington demonstrates that there isa need for the multi-ethnic program-ming to be funded by this Initiativegrant cycle.”8

Despite the direct local public benefit oflibrary development (exercised throughthe State Library Administrative Agency),Washington is one of only three statesthat provides no state funding for librarydevelopment. The funding for the SLAAstaff and activities, $3 million per year,comes entirely from the federal government.

One other point deserves mention withregard to the state library’s impact onhumanities policy through its relationshipto local libraries. The single most power-ful humanities program ever developed inWashington—inside or outside oflibraries—is the reading program createdby the Washington Center for the Book in1998. Initially called, “If All of SeattleRead the Same Book,” the program was atremendous success, spawning “OneBook” programs across the United Statesand Canada. Washington’s Center for theBook is one of fifty state affiliates of theLibrary of Congress’ Center for theBook. Unlike a number of other stateaffiliates, however, Washington’s is notlocated in the state library but rather inthe Seattle Public Library, and it receivesalmost no state-level support.

collection of books and materials foruse with children up to five years old,as well as for training on improvingbrain development skills in that agegroup. Five libraries received grants todevelop programs—in collaborationwith local community agencies—forchildren up to five years old. The mostrecent grants cycle for demonstrationprojects is budgeted at $420,000. Oneof the products of this initiative, whichis funded with federal money underthe Library Service and TechnologyAct (LSTA) through the Institute ofMuseum and Library Services (IMLS),is Read to Your Baby, a booklet availablefrom the state library in Russian,Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, as wellas English and Spanish.

Connectivity. This program also providesfederal assistance, in this case to publiclibraries to connect to the Internet,through grants to purchase computerhardware and for the installation ofequipment and training of library staff.These grants are also subject to theLibrary Services and Technology Act,which requires participating libraries tocertify to the Washington State Librarythat the applicant is in compliancewith the federal Children’s InternetProtection Act (CIPA). The statelibrary has not taken a position on thisrequirement, which is a major censor-ship issue. Applicants are simplyreferred to the IMLS document,Complying with the Children’s InternetProtection Act, as well as to the AmericanLibrary Association’s CIPA Litigationpage. (As of this writing, CIPA hasjust been ruled constitutional by theU.S. Supreme Court.)

Information Literacy. This program isdesigned to help library staff teachstudents and the public effective analy-sis and use of electronic information;it is coupled with a public serviceannouncement campaign. About 500librarians have received training.

8 http://www.statelib.wa.gov/libraries/projects/diversMain.aspx

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anities and State Cultural PolicyThe driving force behind this shift was notideological or moral, as one might expect,but straightforwardly material, at least inWashington State, according to MichaelHalleran, the University of Washington’sdivisional dean of Arts and Sciences.The University of Washington only gets15 percent of its budget from the Legisla-ture, the lowest level of public supportfor higher education in the country. “Theopening to the public is not a matter ofaltruism,” Halleran told us, “but a realisticresponse to the need to raise funds as thestate retreats from its commitment tohigher education.” To develop public sup-port for increased university funding,presidents of state universities, includingthe University of Washington, are increas-ingly asking the humanities to provide apublic face for the university. The primaryuniversity organization to be enlisted forthis purpose has been a relative newcomeron the academic scene: the humanitiesinstitute or center.

As originally conceived and encouragedby the Carnegie Foundation in the mid-1980s, humanities centers had no suchdirect public orientation. Rather, theywere imagined—and many still primarilyfunction—as research incubators aimed atpromoting interdisciplinary exchange. TheWalter Chapin Simpson Center for theHumanities at the University of Washington,established in 1987, followed this modeluntil 1997, when a university task forcerecommended broadening the center’smission, a broadening evident in the mis-sion statement on the center’s website:

The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for theHumanities is dedicated to fostering creative andinterdisciplinary research and teaching in thehumanities, and to stimulating exchange anddebate on related intellectual, cultural and educa-tional issues, both on and off the Seattle campus.Its broader goal is to knit the academic and thecivic communities through a shared fostering ofeducation and culture.

In urging that the Simpson Center aggres-sively develop its public programming, thetask force noted that pursuing this policywould give the center—and, by extension,the humanities at the University of

In SummaryAs the overseer of publicly controlledvenues, the state library might beexpected to assume a leadership role inhumanities policy equivalent to that ofthe Washington State Historical Society inheritage policy. Indeed, local libraries arethe humanities equivalent of the muse-ums, local historical societies, and historicsites administered and advised under stateheritage policy. Yet, far from leading theway, the state library has found itselfthreatened with closure and been sub-sumed within the secretary of state’soffice. The reasons for this are primarilystructural. The library’s divided mandateto serve the informational needs of legis-lators as well as the library-going publicmakes it more difficult for the statelibrarian to focus on policy initiativesaimed at library development. And thestate’s failure to provide any fundingwhatsoever for library development,despite strong signs at the local level thatWashingtonians are avid readers, meansthat federal funding drives the statelibrary’s public humanities policy (as isalso the case for Humanities Washington).

Simpson Center for theHumanities, University of WashingtonFor reasons discussed in the introductionto this volume, we have chosen not toinclude academic humanities units in stateuniversities (departments of English, forinstance) under the umbrella of stateagencies that serve the public interest inthe humanities. University-based humani-ties disciplines produce scholarship andliberally educated graduates, but neither of these impacts the public through directpublic policy. Indeed, until relatively recently,universities—even publicly-funded univer-sities—were at best indifferent to theirimpact on the public, at worst hostile tothe notion of public engagement. Sincethe 1980s, however, the ivory-tower visionof the humanities has been to someextent displaced by a more engagé view ofthe role of the academic humanities inpublic life.

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providing the center with funds from anewly created Initiatives Fund (a tax on allunits that gets reallocated competitively,enabling interdisciplinary centers to emerge);this allocation helped to leverage a $5 mil-lion endowment. At that point the operatingbudget went from $40,000 to $750,000per year, and programming has rampedup accordingly.

Policy ObjectivesAt the Simpson Center’s inaugural forum,Diana Behler, then acting director of thecenter, clarified its policy objectives, givenits new public reach. Behler emphasized“the university’s role in the public sphere,”a role which, she suggested, went beyondthe traditional conception we have seenelsewhere in this chapter of the humani-ties as contributing to “the idea of theeducated citizen, and the aesthetic educa-tion of a community through sharedlearning.” In a formulation that the center’sexternal reviewers, writing three yearslater, cited approvingly, Behler argued thatthe arts and humanities should also play arole in shaping public policy. Hammeringhome Behler’s point, the reviewers declaredthat, properly conceived, humanities proj-ects of this sort produce a “public good.”9

Most academic humanists would probablyfind it difficult to accept the notion thattheir work is policy-relevant or that itmight constitute a public good. Languageof this sort reflects the degree to whichthe Simpson Center envisions itself asconverting academic research into whatthe center’s current director calls “publicscholarship.” This means more than sim-ply serving as a bridge between the disci-plinary humanities and the public sphere.As the center’s latest policy initiativerecognizes, it means transforming thedisciplinary humanities themselves so asto make them more responsive to publicneeds and interests. In the interest ofpublic programming, the center is nowattempting to establish a certificate pro-gram in public scholarship to ensure thatgraduate students attending the Universityof Washington graduate with expertise inboth their own discipline and in writing to and for a broad public.

Washington—a profile unlike that of anyother such university center in the coun-try. As its present Director KathleenWoodward noted, “The distinction herereally is the public scholarship. Successwill mean that we can be known as a cam-pus where public scholarship is an impor-tant value; our graduate students can leavewith the expertise, and we can attract afaculty with a strong interest in engage-ment.” While this is surely an overstate-ment—other humanities centers were alsobeginning to move in this direction—theSimpson Center has undoubtedly been aleader in taking the academic humanitiespublic. Woodward is recognized as one ofthe most enthusiastic proponents of pub-lic humanities programs in the country(she serves on the advisory board ofImagining America, the national consor-tium of university-based arts-and-humani-ties groups pursuing civic purposes), andshe has vigorously pursued the missionlaid out in the task force report.

For the Simpson Center, the university’sbacking for a public focus translates intoincreased campus visibility, more respect,and higher morale for the humanities.This has encouraged the sense that thehumanities are at least on the radar screenof the university, as the center is men-tioned in presidential speeches and hasbeen invited to give a presentation to theboard of the university’s foundation. Theshift in mission also, of course, translatesinto increasing pressure to devote budget-ary resources to public programmingrather than humanistic research. Thecenter has tried to keep the relative pro-portion of public-oriented and research-oriented allocations in balance, but thereis a hope that as funding increases, thepercentage (if not the absolute amount of resources) devoted to public programswill decline.

It is not clear whether the center hassucceeded in buttressing public supportfor the University of Washington. Butwith regard to raising funds for its ownefforts, the Simpson Center’s public turnhas been extraordinarily successful. Theuniversity gave its stamp of approval by

9 http://www.washington.edu/uif/uif1/humancenter.pdf

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anities and State Cultural Policyheld to discuss the possibility of establish-ing a Regional Humanities Center, a failedClinton administration initiative.

Programs

We list here only those programs thathave a public aspect, leaving out the veryrich array of programs the SimpsonCenter provides that serve the universitycommunity exclusively.

Seattle Humanities Forums. As mentionedabove, the Simpson Center organizesforums in cooperation with variousarts and cultural organizations inSeattle. As the center’s websitedescribes, the goal of these forums is“to share humanistic learning broadly,to extend the teaching mission of theuniversity outside the campus to thecommunity and the polis as a whole,and to urge on scholars a renewedsense of civic responsibility and partic-ipation in the public sphere.” Topicsrange from the timely—“EmergingViews on 9/11: A PhilosophicalForum”—to belletristic—“AConversation with A.S. Byatt.”

Internships. With support from theWoodrow Wilson National FellowshipFoundation, the center places twograduate students currently enrolled inUniversity of Washington humanitiesprograms in paid positions with artsand cultural organizations, businesses,and government agencies.

Teachers as Scholars. The center runs aprofessional development program forK-12 teachers that provides content-based seminars led by university fac-ulty. The Teachers as Scholars programis sponsored jointly by the SimpsonCenter for the Humanities and SeattleArts & Lectures.

The Wednesday University. The centeroffers courses open to anyone, withclasses held at the Henry Art Galleryon the University of Washingtoncampus, for a course fee of $70. Thisprogram is also supported by SeattleArts & Lectures.

To reach that public, the task force reportcalled for the Simpson Center to cooper-ate with institutions and groups whoshare the aim of stimulating interest inthe humanities throughout the state—including public schools as well asHumanities Washington. The first stepwas to establish a Humanities Forum inSeattle, with a longer-term objective ofhelping establish similar programs else-where in the state. It is not clear whetherthe statewide goal has been achieved, butin Seattle the forum initiative has been aresounding success, with events plannedtogether with Humanities Washington, theSeattle Art Museum, the Richard HugoHouse, and the Museum of Glass:International Center for ContemporaryArt in Tacoma, among others. The centercontinues to collaborate with HumanitiesWashington on the Clemente courses.

In other areas, the center has been lesscollaborative, for reasons that remainunclear. The center chose to do part ofits public work directly with the publicschools (because, as one intervieweenoted, the one area of education that thestate government has supported isimproving K-12 results on standardizedtesting; it is a sign of the state’s disregardfor the humanities, the interviewee added,that the state’s educational standards donot include any humanities requirement).It has worked effectively with high schools,developing a Teachers as Scholars Program.Yet this was accomplished without anycontact with the Office of the Superinten-dent of Public Instruction. The center hashad no dealings with the WashingtonState Arts Commission. And neither thetask force report nor the center’s subse-quent activities have involved the twoother state-level agencies with a publichumanities focus, the Washington StateHistorical Society and the state library.The task force spoke of community cen-ters, churches, and museums as sites ofpublic humanities programming, but didnot mention local historical societies orlibraries. The only time that AssistantDirector Margit Dimenti recalled evenmeeting anyone from the WashingtonState Historical Society was at a meeting

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Burke Museum) or in downtown Seattle,rather than in community centers orchurches throughout the state as envi-sioned in the center’s mission statement.Nonetheless, there is a strong base onwhich to build.

Observations andConclusionsThe most striking feature of humanitiespolicy at the state level is how little inter-est the state has in it, and how paltry arethe state resources devoted to humanitiesprogramming. Indeed, with the partialexception of the Simpson Center and theWashington State Historical Society (bothof which are, in different ways, hybridinstitutions), public programs in thehumanities are almost entirely products offederal—or, in the case of the WashingtonCenter for the Book’s “One Book” initia-tive, local—action and subsidy. (TheCenter for the Book is itself a creation of the federal government!)

Another striking feature of the humani-ties policy landscape is the limited and adhoc nature of collaboration amongst enti-ties whose policy objectives are similar.State-level humanities agencies display animpressive, albeit uneven, degree of inter-action with local, county, national, andeven international partners on individualprograms. In a few instances, such as theCenter for Columbia River History(CCRH) and the Heritage Conference,more permanent consortia have beenestablished between arms of state human-ities/heritage agencies and entities in theeducational sector. But it is the absence oflinkages, both to potential collaborators inother sectors (most strikingly, given theeducational tenor of the humanities, theOffice of the Superintendent of PublicInstruction) and to other agencies withinthe cultural sector (such as the WashingtonState Arts Commission) that stands out.Most surprising, even agencies with ashared public humanities focus have notdeveloped consistent, effective linkages toone another.

The Bard College Clemente Course. Thisprogram has already been describedabove in the discussion of the activi-ties of Humanities Washington.

Public Humanities Projects. The centerfunds a wide range of faculty-designedprojects that “combine research, teach-ing, and public events to share human-istic learning broadly, extend theteaching mission of the university out-side the campus to the community andthe polis as a whole, and urge onscholars a renewed sense of civicresponsibility and participation in thepublic sphere.” Recent projects includea public lecture series linked to anexhibit at the Burke Museum ofNatural History; a combination ofnew theatre, dance, or music perform-ances with lectures and colloquia; apanel linked to an exhibit at the HenryArt Gallery; and Texts and Teachers, acurriculum development program inwhich University of Washington litera-ture professors and local teachers plancourses that they then teach in tandem.

In SummaryThe Simpson Center for the Humanitieshas been successful in raising its own pro-file and consequently its funding level,and it has developed quite rapidly a robustarray of programs. By 2001, the latest yearfor which figures were readily available,200 teachers from eleven school districtshad participated in the Teachers asScholars Program, the WednesdayUniversity’s first five courses had reached2,300 people, and the Seattle Forum hadattracted 1,000. These are small figureswhen compared to the state’s total popu-lation, to be sure, but the humanities is alabor-intensive activity and these are veryrespectable figures indeed. On the otherhand, with the exception of the BardClemente course and the effort to workwith high school teachers, the center’spublic programming has not yet foundways to reach publics beyond those thatalready are interested and invested in thehumanities. Most of its public program-ming occurs in venues either on the uni-versity campus (the Henry Art Gallery, the

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Chapter IV: The Hum

anities and State Cultural PolicyYet each of these entities would havemuch to gain from developing hybridprograms that would draw on each other’sassets. Humanities Washington has pro-gramming savvy, links to non-academichumanists such as writers and documen-tary film-makers, and strong community-level connections; the Simpson Center hasa stable of academic humanists who canbring their innovations and expertise tobear on issues in the public arena; theWashington State Historical Society andthe state library possess materials thatdemand interpretation by humanists andoffer venues for the readings, discussions,and debates that constitute the publichumanities. The most effective agency inthis regard has been the Washington StateHistorical Society.

The barriers to joint efforts are no doubtpartly structural—heritage programs thatfocus on the built environment may relyon federal matching funds that define thescope of their activities as not includingthe humanities, for instance—and partlyconceptual—K-12 education or docu-mentary production may be seen as out-side the box of the humanities, librariesmay not be considered possible or appro-priate venues for talks by academics, orheritage sites and occasions may not berecognized as opportunities for discussingvalues. It may well be the case, however,that what is keeping policy actors fromacting together is something as simple asa failure to come together to think jointlyabout what they are trying to do to pro-mote the humanities, and how to do thatbetter by tapping one another’s resources.

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The Heritage and State Cultural PolicyDavid Karraker and J. Mark Schuster

Chapter V

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through the activities of local historicalsocieties and museums.

This chapter is structured around theseven most important and most visiblestate-level actors engaged in heritage andhistoric preservation policy. The chapteropens with a discussion of the one actorclearly organized as a state office within astate agency: the Office of Archeology andHistoric Preservation (OAHP). OAHP’smission statement envisions it as an“advocate for the preservation ofWashington’s irreplaceable historic andcultural resources—significant buildings,structures, sites, objects and districts—asassets for the future. Through educationand information sharing, OAHP providesleadership for the protection of ourshared heritage.” This is followed by adescription of a program in a stateagency: the Heritage Corridors Programof the Washington State Department ofTransportation (WSDOT)1 These twostate programs are discussed in tandembecause (1) both focus on the built envi-ronment; (2) both are administrativelylocated within public agencies whosepurposes and functions are not immedi-ately linked to or associated with what iscommonly understood as “culture” or“the heritage”; and (3) the resources andpolicies of both are closely tied—and owe their existence and character in large part—to federal preservation lawand policy.

We turn next to a very influential organi-zation within state cultural policy, but anorganization that because of its specialtrustee status straddles the boundarybetween state agency and private organi-zation: the Washington State HistoricalSociety. Seen from one perspective, theWashington State Historical Society is

The legislature hereby finds that the promotion,enhancement, perpetuation, and use of structures,sites, districts, buildings, and objects of historic,archaeological, architectural, and cultural signifi-cance is desirable in the interest of the publicpride and general welfare of the people of thestate; and the legislature further finds that the eco-nomic, cultural, and aesthetic standing of the statecan be maintained and enhanced by protecting theheritage of the state and by preventing the destruc-tion or defacement of these assets; therefore, it ishereby declared by the legislature to be the publicpolicy and in the public interest of the state todesignate, preserve, protect, enhance, and perpetu-ate those structures, sites, districts, buildings, andobjects which reflect outstanding elements of thestate’s historic, archaeological, architectural, or cul-tural heritage, for the inspiration and enrichmentof the citizens of the state.


This statement of legislative intent, signedinto law in 1983, is as explicit an expres-sion of a state’s commitment to heritageactivity as anyone could hope for. Indeed,this statement seems to reflect the factthat state support for heritage work appearsto enjoy broader public approval thandoes state support for the arts, which isperceived, at least in some quarters, as theprovenance of cultural elites whose inter-ests and concerns are less immediatelytied to the well being of the general pop-ulation. So it is not surprising that themechanisms of heritage policy are differ-ent in character from those for arts policyor that they are differently organized andconfigured. Nevertheless, heritage policyin Washington, like state cultural policyoverall, is promulgated through a diffusearray of entities and actors. Indeed, a gooddeal of heritage work taking place inWashington occurs almost entirely outsidethe framework of formal state policy

1 With respect to the structureof this report, the HeritageCorridors Program mightalso have fallen easily intoChapter VI, “The Land-Based Agencies and StateCultural Policy.” We havechosen to discuss it herebecause of these parallelswith OAHP.

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The Office of Archaeologyand Historic PreservationThe Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation (OAHP) is the state-leveloffice most directly and immediatelyresponsible for preservation and conser-vation of the built environment. OAHP is currently located within the LocalGovernment Division of the Office ofCommunity Development, which is, in turn,part of the Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development. OAHPis the state’s primary agency with knowl-edge and expertise in historic preserva-tion, though increasingly there is anappreciation of the fact that many stateagencies own important heritage propertiesthat are related to their own operations.

OAHP was established in 1967 followingthe 1966 passage of the National HistoricPreservation Act (NHPA). NHPA estab-lished a national historic preservation pro-gram that was designed as a partnershipbetween the federal government and thestates. The act provided for the creationof state historic preservation programsand the designation of a state historicpreservation officer (SHPO) by the gover-nor of each state. If approved by thesecretary of the interior, a state historicpreservation program would receive amatching grant (required to be matchedby state money) from the federal govern-ment to support activities laid out in thefederal legislation. Thus, emerging federalpolicy became the trigger for state action.OAHP was Washington’s response to thisoffer, and its work continues to be closelytied to federal programs, federal policies,and federal funding; thus, much of itswork is shaped by the parameters of theserelationships to the federal government.

The Legislature established OAHP as partof an effort to deal with both history andhistoric preservation:

The legislature finds that those articles and prop-erties which illustrate the history of the state ofWashington should be maintained and preservedfor the use and benefit of the people of the state.It is the purpose of this chapter to designate thetwo state historical societies as trustees of the statefor these purposes, and to establish:

entirely a creature of state policy, yet it isalso a private nonprofit organization. Itsunique legal status was established by theLegislature early in its history, and, whileprivate contributions play an importantpart in financing its activities, it relies forthe lion’s share of its operating budget onbiennial legislative appropriations.

As has already been made clear in ChapterIV, the Washington State HistoricalSociety is an actor in both humanitiespolicy and heritage policy. In this chapterwe focus, for the most part, on its latterrole. In addition to its own heritage activi-ties, WSHS administers a capital grantsprogram, the Capital Projects Fund forWashington’s Heritage, on behalf of thestate. This rather unusual arrangement,which is similar in conception if not iden-tical in implementation to the Building for the Arts Program (considered inChapter III), is discussed next. Thissection is followed by a discussion ofthe Washington State Historical Society’ssister trustee agency: the Eastern Washing-ton State Historical Society (The NorthwestMuseum of Arts and Culture). Thisorganization straddles all three of theareas of state cultural policy—the arts, thehumanities, and heritage—and because ofthe broad range of its activities its inclu-sion in the current chapter is, to somedegree, arbitrary.

One other state-level organization is alsodiscussed here: Humanities Washington.Although its major contributions to cul-tural policy are in the domain of humani-ties policy—it is discussed in that contextin Chapter IV—its programs also havemeaning in the heritage realm.

The final state-level component of her-itage policy that we discuss in this chapteris the Heritage Caucus, an informal gath-ering of legislators, agency representatives,and representatives of a wide variety ofinterested groups and organizations, all ofwhom are engaged in the heritage andcultural life of the state. In the last sec-tion of this chapter, we take a quick lookat several examples of heritage policy atthe local level in order to better under-stand the impact of state-level policy.

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Chapter V: The Heritage and State Cultural Policy

2 The Heritage Council wascreated by the Legislature to bring together the variousheritage agencies and estab-lish cooperation, communica-tion, and efficiency. It hadneither a clear mandate norany authority and died in theearly 1990s after languishingfor a few years.

3 Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation,Historic Preservation Working for Washington: The StateHistoric Preservation Plan 2000, 1985, 4.

historic preservation community”3 takingaccount of likely demographic, economic,and social trends.

Five goals are identified in Washington’smost recent historic preservation plan:

To support and strengthen local his-toric preservation efforts;

To enhance historic preservation edu-cation and outreach efforts;

To form new partnerships to expandthe historic preservation community;

To incorporate cultural resource pro-tection as part of land use planningprocesses; and

To stimulate economic developmentand revitalization through historicpreservation

For each of these goals, a set of objec-tives is spelled out with identified tasks, aproposed timeline, and a list of potentialparticipants. The latter is quite ambitious,suggesting that dozens of other agencies,organizations, institutions, and informalentities are to be engaged in the imple-mentation of the plan. The plan ties his-toric preservation to issues of quality oflife, and emphasizes education and com-munication as an important part ofOAHP’s work. The focus on “protectionof our shared heritage” seems to expressan intent to move beyond the elements of the built environment that are typicallythe focus of any historic preservationagency.

While the plan is essentially optimistic, asall plans should be, it is aware of a num-ber of threats to the heritage resources of the state. It points out—and rightfullyso—that since historic properties areland-based resources, they are owned andmanaged by a large number of differentproperty owners. Neither OAHP norother federal, state, or local regulatoryagencies have substantial control overhow these properties are protected ormanaged. In Washington, where attentionto private property rights is especiallyimportant as a political theme, this createsthe potential for conflict rather than

A comprehensive and consistent statewide policypertaining to archaeology, history, historic preser-vation, and other historical matters;

Statewide coordination of historical programs;and

A coordinated budget for all state historicalagencies.


Roughly speaking, these three pointscorrespond to OAHP, the state historicalsocieties, and a now defunct “HeritageCouncil.” 2 The roles and responsibilitiesof OAHP are set out in three chapters ofTitle 27 of the Revised Code of Washington:State historical societies—Historic preser-vation (Chapter 34), Indian graves andrecords (Chapter 44), and Archaeologicalsites and resources (Chapter 53).

While OAHP serves as an advocate forthe preservation of Washington’s historicand cultural resources, it also maintainsthe Washington Heritage Register, managesnominations from Washington to theNational Register of Historic Places,establishes programs of matching grantsfor preservation projects, issues permitsfor the excavation of archaeological siteson both private and public lands, andspends funds when necessary (and whenavailable) to assist the tribes of Washing-ton in removing prehistoric human remainsfor scientific examination and reburial ifthe human remains have been unearthedinadvertently or through vandalism.

OAHP works with the State AdvisoryCouncil on Historic Preservation (whichfunctions in ways similar to the commissionof the Washington State Arts Commission).The council votes on nominations to thestate and federal registers and advises onheritage policy. Recently the council hasbecome more active in giving policy advice.

Historic Preservation PlanningOne of the main stipulations for thereceipt of federal historic preservationmoney is the requirement that a state his-toric preservation plan must be developedevery five years. This plan is intended to“set forth a direction for the state’s

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office of the governor, and in 1986 it wasmoved to the Department of CommunityDevelopment, where it was originallyunder the director but was later relocatedto become a unit under the assistantdirector for growth management. In 1994the Department of Community Develop-ment and the Department of Trade andEconomic Development were mergedinto the Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development, butin 2000 DCTED was internally split onceagain with OAHP ending up in the LocalGovernment Division of the Office ofCommunity Development.

This changing placement of the office has been problematic for OAHP as it hasoften been unclear what the chain ofcommand was. OAHP would prefer tointeract directly with the Executive PolicyOffice in the governor’s office, but OCDwould like OAHP to relate to the gover-nor’s office only by going through a directline of authority. The perception of thestaff of OAHP is that the upper levels ofOCD and DCTED are not particularlycommitted to the work of OAHP, com-promising their ability to carry out policy.

These organizational changes occurred as part of a broader debate on reorgani-zation.6 Part of this debate focused onconsolidation and coordination amongstate agencies in the realms of the artsand heritage. In 1982, for example, one of the options considered as part of theLegislative Budget Committee’s sunsetaudits of the then three state historicalsocieties was a proposal for OAHP tooperate the state historical societies underan agreement in which it would serve asthe parent agency. In 1983 the Legislaturecreated the Washington State HeritageCouncil and charged it to adopt astatewide heritage plan, to monitor imple-mentation of the plans of the state his-torical agencies, and to review andcomment upon the budget requests ofthese agencies based on the plan. As itturned out, the council focused more onthe problems and needs of the state’snonprofits than on the reform of state

cooperation. Thus, much of the work ofhistoric preservation is in encouraging andaiding the stewardship of private owners.

This work is happening in a politicalcontext within which many voters holdstrong anti-government, anti-regulatory,pro-property rights opinions, and it isclear that citizen referenda for tax capinitiatives have had an important influenceon limiting the resources available to dothis sort of work.

Growth pressure endangers historicresources, particularly in a political climatethat is wary of land use regulations. Theplan identifies, in particular, major con-cerns at the fringe of rapidly growingmetropolitan areas, along major highwaycorridors, and along all shorelines. Forexample, when the King County HistoricPreservation Office updated its inventoryrecords in the early 1990s, it discoveredthat up to 40 percent of the historicresources surveyed in 1979 had been lost.4OAHP is particularly cognizant of theimportance of local implementation ofthe Growth Management Act. (In thisregard, OAHP’s location within theDepartment of Community, Trade andEconomic Development may be advanta-geous, allowing it more latitude to influ-ence growth management issues includinghousing and tourism, as well as othereconomic issues than it would have if itwere located elsewhere in the state’sbureaucracy.)

Finally, vandalism, on the one hand, and a simple lack of awareness or recognitionof the presence and value of culturalresources, on the other, are both seen asfurther threats.

Administrative Location andPolicy Function of the AgencyBeyond the regular stream of state his-toric preservation plans, another topic hasengendered considerable debate over theyears: the appropriate location of OAHPwithin state government.5 Initially OAHPwas located within the State ParksDepartment. In 1976 it was moved tobecome a “small cabinet agency” in the

4 Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation,Historic Preservation Working forWashington: The State HistoricPreservation Plan 2000,1985, 43.

5 This summary is based onTask Force on the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, Recommendationsof the Task Force on the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, December 23,2000.

6 Task Force on the Office ofArchaeology and HistoricPreservation, Recommendationsof the Task Force on the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, December 23,2000, 11-14.

7 Task Force on the Office ofArchaeology and HistoricPreservation, Recommendationsof the Task Force on the Officeof Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, December 23,2000.

8 The committee looked at anumber of other states withcomparable populations,areas, and resources andasked where their historicpreservation offices werelocated in the state bureau-cracy. Some were in depart-ments of natural resources,some were in parks depart-ments, in some they wereconsidered part of themuseum sector, and in oth-ers they were under theSecretary of State.

9 Considerable discussion wasdevoted in its report to thequestion of how much over-head OAHP was beingcharged on its budget bystate government.

Placing OAHP in the WashingtonState Historical Society;

Restoring OAHP to its former statusas a stand-alone agency; and

Placing OAHP within the WashingtonState Parks and RecreationCommission.

Eventually bills were introduced to moveOAHP to the secretary of state’s office orthe Washington State Historical Society,but both died in committee.

The post of state historic preservationofficer (SHPO), required by the federalDepartment of the Interior, has alsomoved about, and not always in conjunc-tion with OAHP. Originally the SHPOwas the director of state parks. In 1975,however, the Seattle historic preservationofficer was named the SHPO, even asOAHP remained within state parks. WhenOAHP became a small cabinet agency in1976, the office of SHPO was also trans-ferred. After OAHP was moved to theDepartment of Community Development(and its successor agencies) in 1986, theSHPO was located within that depart-ment but over time reported to a varietyof different individuals within the overallagency structure. In 1996 after the thenSHPO resigned, the post was left vacantfor budgetary reasons, and two otheremployees shared the responsibilities. Thepost of SHPO was reinstated in 1999when a new director was hired to headOAHP.

The most recent report to examine thesequestions was presented to GovernorLocke at the end of 2000.7 While ostensi-bly convened to engage once again thequestion of location within state govern-ment,8 the Task Force on the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservationturned its attention more to issues ofstaffing and funding.9 It accepted the statusquo in organizational structure anddecided to stake a claim on a series ofother issues. Its recommendations andtheir disposition were the following:

OAHP should stay in the Office ofCommunity Development, but the

heritage agencies, and it was disbanded in 1990.

In 1990-91 the Office of FinancialManagement discussed possible consoli-dation of state cultural agencies. In 1993the Citizen’s Arts, Heritage and HistoricPreservation Task Force again called forinter-agency communication and coopera-tion. In 1997 legislation to create a newDepartment of Cultural Resources died incommittee. Finally, in the context of asenate discussion of the creation of a“State Resources Department,” SenatorBob McCaslin, chair of the senate’s Govern-ment Operations Committee, initiated astudy of the delivery of historic preserva-tion services. This study concluded thatOAHP was limited in its ability to reachand serve the public as the result of:

Insufficient funding;

Insufficient staff to meet constituents’demands for their services;

Lack of outreach due to these fundingand staffing issues;

Inefficiency in the delivery of servicesdue to the lack of funding;

Its placement within a large govern-ment bureaucracy, diverting scarcestaff time to intra-agency meetingsand competition for funds from adisadvantaged position within theagency; and

Insufficient publicity for OAHPbecause it was “buried” in a largeagency.

Though not coming up with a single rec-ommendation concerning the location ofOAHP, the report discussed the pros andcons of six different relocation options:

Leaving OAHP in the Department ofCommunity, Trade and EconomicDevelopment;

Placing OAHP in the Office of theSecretary of State;

Placing OAHP in the Office of theLieutenant Governor; 113


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10 While the Historic Preserva-tion Fund is authorized at$150 million, it has neverbeen appropriated at thatamount. Appropriations havebeen anywhere between $35million and $70 million. Themoney that is not appropri-ated goes into the federalgovernment’s general fund.

11 One quirk of receiving fed-eral money is that OAHP isrequired to obligate 75 per-cent of it by contract duringthe first year of each two-year award. (“The feds don’twant any money back.”) ButOAHP has found this diffi-cult to do. It has receivedtwo waivers, but the secondone specified that this wouldnot be allowed a third time.

is somewhat unpredictable, causing budg-eting problems for the state’s match. Forsome eight years the federal amount hadbeen relatively constant. In fiscal year2001, at the end of this period, the fed-eral amount was $520,000, but it jumpedto $908,000 in fiscal year 2002, and hasfallen back to $751,000 in fiscal year2003.11 This volatility, while welcomedwhen the federal contribution is going up, makes it difficult to plan for and toarrange the match that is expected fromthe state.

States are expected to match the federalallocation in the ratio of $40 state:$60federal. In some states this ratio gets aslow as 20:80; in Washington the state justbarely meets the 40 percent requirement.When the federal share increases, OAHPgoes to the Legislature for an increasedallocation to make the expected match. Ifmore cash is not forthcoming, it thenturns to a “soft match” to meet the fed-eral requirement. To do this it utilizesmatches from local government. OAHPcan use the local match that is providedto any grants it makes as part of its matchto the federal government because itscontract with its local grantees stipulatesthat OAHP has first claim on the localmatch for its purposes if this shouldbecome necessary. This soft match is thenadded into whatever hard match can justi-fiably be claimed.

Recently the matching requirement hasbeen further complicated by the budgetcrisis in Washington. When the statebudget was in relatively good shape, it waspossible for the state’s agencies to take allthe federal money they could get theirhands on and match it, but the state hasnow prohibited its agencies from seekingout and accepting new federal dollars thathave a matching requirement. As a result,the state is no longer taking up the carrotof new federal programs structuredaround a match. Whether this attitude willeventually jeopardize existing matchingrelationships between the state and federalgovernments remains to be seen.

OAHP figures for fiscal year 2002, a yearwith relatively generous federal funding,

SHPO should report directly to thedirector of OCD. [OAHP remained inOCD but without increased clarity asto appropriate lines of authority andreporting.]

OAHP should have a strong andindependent board appointed by thegovernor. [New nominations weremade to the State Advisory Council on Historic Preservation with the goalof broadening its work from a focuson nomination review to a broaderemphasis on policy discussion.]

The physical location of OAHPshould set an example as to the adap-tive reuse of historic properties. [OAHPmoved to a 1930s office building inspring 2001 with some measure ofincreased visibility.]

OAHP should be staffed adequately toserve the entire state. [Little progresswas made in this area.]

OAHP should seek power from theLegislature to assess civil penaltieswith respect to violations of archaeo-logical sites. [Legislation was passed inearly 2002.]

Financing Agency Operations: The Federal/State RelationshipWhen Congress passed the 1966 NationalHistoric Preservation Act, it created aprogram of matching grants to the states.To provide a regular source of revenuefor these grants, the law established theHistoric Preservation Fund in the U.S.Treasury with proceeds derived from thefederal leasing of offshore oil drillingsites.10 These funds are distributed annu-ally on a matching basis to state historicpreservation offices. Washington appliesfor and has received federal preservationgrants every year since the program hasbeen in existence.

In recent years the biennial operatingbudget of OAHP has hovered around$2,000,000 with approximately $500,000per annum from the federal HistoricPreservation Fund and $500,000 perannum from the state. The federal portion

to the Department of the Interior. TheNational Register currently includes slightlyfewer than 1,300 listings from the State ofWashington; about forty are being addedeach year. (Note that a number of theselistings are districts, which may includemany individual buildings not separatelylisted.) Nominations that are not approvedtypically have incomplete paperwork, whichcan be rectified at a later date, or are ofbuildings or sites whose physical integrityhas been highly compromised, in whichcase the nomination will never succeed.

OAHP oversees nominations to both thestate and federal registers. Generally theWashington Heritage Register is a lowerlevel of recognition. It is designed, in thewords of one staff member, for “JohnnyHomeowner.” It has lower requirementsfor entry. One can apply to be listed onone register or the other or both; ifplaced on the federal register, a site isthen automatically reviewed for the stateregister, and listing is more or less auto-matic. In the case of the state register, theadvisory council has the final vote. Thestate register might include sites thatwould not necessarily get onto the federalregister—350 properties are listed only onthe Washington Heritage Register; five orsix are added each year (in addition to anyproperties that also qualify for the nationalregister). With respect to the state register,no rules regulating the nomination processhave been passed in 25 years, so OAHPhas developed the procedures. All of theWashington sites that are listed on eitherthe national or the state register aredocumented in Historic Places in Wash-ington, an online searchable database ofhistoric sites.

show over half of the office’s budgetcoming from the federal government(Table V.1). Federal influence turns out tobe an important factor in the range ofactivities that OAHP can undertake and inthe procedures that it is expected to follow.

ProgramsThe Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation administers six programs:listing on the National Register of HistoricPlaces and the Washington HeritageRegister; Environmental Project Review;the Certified Local Government Program;the Archaeology Program; the Inventoryof Cultural Resources; and PreservationWorks for Washington.

National Register of Historic Places/Washington Heritage Register

Perhaps the most visible program of theOffice of Archaeology and Historic Preser-vation is its administration of the processby which historic and cultural resourcesare nominated to the state and nationalhistoric registers: the Washington HeritageRegister and the National Register ofHistoric Places. These registers provideformal recognition for the historic andcultural resources in the state and mayserve as the triggers for other governmentaction with respect to historic buildings,structures, historic and archeological sites,cultural landscapes, or traditional culturalproperties.

The work of OAHP with respect to thesetwo registers is (1) to provide technicalassistance to individuals, organizations, orlower levels of government who are pre-paring nominations and (2) to then ascer-tain whether the nominated propertymeets the criteria of eligibility.

Anyone can nominate a property to belisted. The application consists of twoparts: an architectural description of theproperty and a discussion of its significance.If a property is deemed eligible, OAHPforwards the nomination to the StateAdvisory Council on Historic Preservationfor its approval. Nominations that havebeen approved for the National Registerof Historic Places will then be forwarded 115


Table V.1: Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation— Income Sources, Fiscal Year 2002Income Source Amount Percent

State General Fund $658,198 42.2%Federal General Fund $870,064 55.8%Private/Local $32,310 2.1%Total $1,560,572 100.1%Source: Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.

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The process of listing a property on aheritage register is not only importantbecause of its signaling role; it is alsoimportant because it may trigger otherinterventions. An income-producing(commercial) property that is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places cantake advantage of the federal investmenttax credit for historic preservation in oneof two forms:

A 20 percent tax credit for the certified rehabilitation of certified his-toric structures; or

A 10 percent tax credit for the rehabil-itation of non-historic, non-residentialbuildings built before 1936.

OAHP staff determine whether a propertythat is proposing to take advantage of the20 percent tax credit is eligible for theNational Register and whether the pro-posed rehabilitation meets the secretary ofthe interior’s Standards for Rehabilitationand Guidelines for Rehabilitating HistoricBuildings. To qualify, a rehabilitation proj-ect for a building on the National Registermust be “substantial”—defined as a reha-bilitation in which the amount spent onqualified project work is equal to, or greaterthan, the adjusted basis (value) of thebuilding itself. OAHP functions as theagent of the federal government in pro-viding initial certification. OAHP receivesapproximately fifteen such applicationsper year. The National Park Service isresponsible for final review and approval.

OAHP is quite aware of the fact thatmany nominations come from developerswho are interested solely in qualifying forthe federal tax credit, and that developershave an additional advantage with respectto listing because they employ consultantswho prepare their nominations. Neverthe-less, OAHP staff would like to devotemore of their time to promoting the fed-eral tax credit program. Developers seethe nomination process as arduous (whichit is), but the staff feel that they can behelpful. They do not get as many applica-tions as they would like; the western stateshave fewer properties on the NationalRegister because they have had less of a

An important part of the Americanapproach to listing at the federal level isthat the owner can object to being listed.(In a historic district, whether or not own-ers object is determined by majority rule.If more than half of the owners object,the property will not be listed.) However,even if the owner objects to listing, therebystopping a property from being listed, adetermination is made as to whether aproperty is eligible (i.e. meets the criteriafor listing). This is because federal incen-tives are offered to properties that are eli-gible to be on the list, not properties thatare actually listed. Owners can object tobeing listed on the state register as well.

It is tempting to treat the effectiveness of a program such as this one in terms ofthe number of properties that are success-fully nominated to one list or the other.Yet, the staff feel constrained in that theyspend virtually all of their time reacting tonominations that come in over the transom.OAHP is unable to be proactive in assess-ing the importance of historic propertiesand in encouraging nominations to bebrought forth for targeted properties. Ifthe office had more resources it wouldlike to offer more workshops to raise thepublic’s awareness of the register and ofthe process of listing properties. Theywould also like to get the public moreinterested in significant buildings built inthe 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.

Among the properties that the staff feelsshould be on the list are properties ownedby state agencies themselves. Generally,the state does not nominate its own build-ings (though the Capitol campus is in aregistered historic district). OAHP estimatesthat the Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission alone owns anestimated 900 historic buildings.

In short, the staff of this program feelscaught in satisfying the requirements ofa mandate passed down from the federalgovernment; that job, narrowly defined, isbeing done well, but a lot more would bepossible with some additional resources.This program is reactive rather thanproactive in pursuing the policies that it is asked (and expected) to pursue.

process, each agency undertaking actionsin Washington must consult with OAHPto assure that cultural resources are identi-fied and to obtain the formal opinion ofthe office on each site’s significance andthe impact of its proposed action uponthe site. Various staff members of OAHPmay get involved in a Section 106 reviewdepending on the skills required (registereligibility, planning impacts, designimpacts, or archaeological impacts).OAHP performs a similar role under theState Environmental Protection Act.

As is customary in American preservationlaw, Section 106 review encourages preser-vation through providing information tothe public during the review process. Section106 cannot mandate preservation; it is notregulatory, but it does ensure that preser-vation values are factored into federalagency planning and decisions in a moreformal manner. The result is that federalagencies must assume responsibility forthe consequences of their actions and bepublicly accountable for their decisions.

The workload under environmentalproject review is tremendous; each yearOAHP reviews more than 2,500 federal,state and local government projects fortheir effects on the cultural resources ofthe state.

The burden for a Section 106 reviewbegins with the federal agency that isinvolved in the project under considera-tion. The federal agency is required to:

Determine if Section 106 applies to agiven project and, if so, initiate thereview;

Gather information to decide whichproperties in the project area are listedon, or are eligible for, the NationalRegister of Historic Places;

Determine how these historic proper-ties might be affected;

Explore alternatives to avoid or reduceharm to historic properties; and

Reach an agreement with the state his-toric preservation officer or the tribe(and the advisory council in some cases)

preservation ethic, but they are now expe-riencing more and more developmentpressure.

The State of Washington, on the otherhand, offers its own tax incentive for therehabilitation of any property (not justcommercial properties) listed on the stateor national registers. This incentive pro-vides for special (lower) valuation forproperty tax purposes. If the cost ofrehabilitation of a listed building is equalto at least 25 percent of the existing valu-ation of the building—in other words, ifthe rehabilitation expenses are quite sub-stantial—the added value to the propertydue to the rehabilitation is exempt fromproperty tax assessment for up to tenyears. Thus, the taxable base is frozen atthe lower, pre-rehabilitation value for thatperiod of time. In exchange for this taxconcession, if the property is not visiblefrom the public right of way, the ownerhas to make the historic aspects of theproperty accessible to public view one day per year.

Environmental Project Review

Various environmental laws—mostimportantly the National Historic Preser-vation Act at the national level and theState Environmental Policy Act, the Shore-lines Management Act, and the GrowthManagement Act at the state level—haveimplemented procedural requirements sothat consideration must be given to pro-tecting significant historic, archaeological,and traditional cultural sites from damageor loss during development. Generallythis is required as part of a public envi-ronmental review process. OAHP partici-pates in a wide variety of environmentalproject reviews, working with agencies,tribes, private citizens, and developers toidentify and develop protection strategiesto assure that Washington’s culturalheritage is not lost.

Most important in this regard, perhaps, isSection 106 of the National HistoricPreservation Act, which requires that allfederal agencies consider the impact oncultural resources in all licensing, permitting,and funding decisions. As part of that 117


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in Canada. The goal is to keep all of themoperating within the guidelines and time-lines of appropriate agency environmentalreview.

Certified Local Government ProgramThe Certified Local Government Programis another program that is the direct result of federal legislation. The NationalHistoric Preservation Act provides for aprocess of certifying local governmentsand their historic preservation activities.Local governments that establish ahistoric preservation program meetingfederal and state standards are eligible toapply to the state historic preservationofficer (SHPO) for certification. Certifi-cation includes review by OAHP and theNational Parks Service. A local govern-ment that receives such certification isknown as a “Certified Local Government”(CLG). This designation qualifies CLGsfor technical and financial assistance.

Certified Local Governments are requiredto maintain a historic preservation com-mission, survey local historic properties,enforce state or local preservation laws,and provide for public participation. Theyparticipate in the review of nominationsto the National Register of Historic Placesand participate in statewide preservationprograms and planning. In Washington thirty cities and towns and five countiesare Certified Local Governments atpresent.13 Many of these governments arein quite rural areas, which improves thegeographic spread of this program.

The key idea here is that certification willprovide an additional impetus to localpreservation efforts, but certification alsomakes Certified Local Governments eligi-ble for Certified Local Government grants.The 1966 National Historic PreservationAct authorized states to award 10 percentof their annual grant from the HistoricPreservation Fund in the form of grantsto Certified Local Governments. As withall funds provided to OAHP by the fed-eral government, this grant money has tobe matched by non-federal funds, and thisapplies both to the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation and its sub-grantees. Currently, OAHP matches its

on measures to deal with any adverseeffects or obtain advisory commentsfrom the council, which are then sentto the head of the federal agency.

When tribal lands or historic properties ofsignificance to federally recognized NativeAmerican tribes are involved, federalagencies are required to consult with officialsof these tribes. Some tribes have officiallydesignated tribal historic preservationofficers, who function as equivalents tothe state historic preservation officer andconduct Section 106 reviews on behalf oftheir tribes,12 while others designate repre-sentatives to consult with governmentagencies as needed.

In Washington OAHP has remained animportant participant in the Section 106consultation chain. Its comments carrysubstantive weight because its track record isgood. Neglecting to consult with OAHPis generally considered a bad idea becauseany agency will always have additionalprojects that will need approval later.

For each Section 106 review the statehistoric preservation officer returns oneof three possible findings: (1) no effect,(2) no adverse effect, or (3) adverse effect.Negative comment can present a roadblockthough it cannot stop a project. The fed-eral agency involved can still decide tofund and go ahead with a project for whichthere has been a finding of adverse effect.Nevertheless, appropriate accommoda-tions are usually made before a finding ofadverse effect is made.

An area that has created a lot of tensionin Washington under Section 106, whichone would not necessarily expect, is theweatherization of houses with federalmoney. Because federal money is involved,Section 106 kicks in, and individual home-owners are often surprised by what theyconsider federal (and state) meddling.

Resources in this program are stretchedquite thin, as there are approximately 250governmental entities in the state, all ofwhose projects might require environ-mental review. There are also twenty-ninefederally recognized tribes plus othertribes in adjoining states and tribal nations

12 This is spelled out in Section101(d)(2) contained in the1992 amendments to theNational HistoricPreservation Act.

13 Spokane City and County areconsidered together as oneCertified Local Government.

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four Certified Local Governments alwaysget grants from this program; the otherrecipients vary from year to year. At thelarger end of the range, for example, theKing County Office of Cultural Resources(now the Cultural Development Authorityof King County) has received $15,000-$25,000 on an annual basis as a CertifiedLocal Government. This money is passedthrough to cities in the county to be usedfor designation and preservation activities.

Grant recipients are checked periodically.Grants are received in October, and thereis a formal review of the grant in Julywhen a first draft of the final report isdue. OAHP looks at all products and hasconversations with project staff along theway. As is required by Washington’s con-stitution, these grants are paid as reim-bursements for expenses incurred, sothere is a guarantee that work is progressing.

Archaeology ProgramWashington is one of the few states thatrequire a permit process for archaeologi-cal digs on all lands, not just on publiclands. OAHP staff is responsible for reg-ulation and permitting of all archaeologi-cal digs with the intent of assuring thatstate and private actions will not have adetrimental effect on archaeologicalresources.

Because there is currently a strong conser-vation and preservation ethic amongarchaeologists, which leads away fromexcavation, there are very few archaeologi-cal digs at the present time. Only thosearchaeological sites that are in danger ofbeing lost through erosion, vandalism, ordevelopment are excavated. Those thatcome to OAHP’s attention usually comeas the result of requirements of the StateEnvironmental Protection Act, theShoreline Management Act, or the ForestManagement Act.

With respect to state projects that mightimpact archaeological sites, OAHP has theright to deny permits. It is up to eachagency to study if archaeological resourcesare in danger. In private development it isthe local government’s role to detectimpacts. Not surprisingly, some local

annual grant from the federal HistoricPreservation Fund through state generalfunds as well as through matches providedby pass-through grants to local govern-ments. When it makes Historic Preserva-tion Fund grants to Certified LocalGovernments, OAHP requires a match of 60:40, with the OAHP portion provid-ing a maximum of 60 percent and thelocal government portion providing aminimum of 40 percent. Generally thereis a $50,000-$100,000 grant pool available.

Because the Historic Preservation Fundgrants are made to Certified LocalGovernments rather than to individualprojects they are not used for bricks andmortar projects. They tend to be used for(1) surveys and inventories that result inthe identification of historic properties,(2) preparation of nominations that resultin the listing of properties in the NationalRegister of Historic Places and/or theWashington Heritage Register, (3) planningactivities that pave the way for the long-range preservation of historic properties,or (4) educational activities that target alarge audience providing information aboutproperties listed on the historic registersand about historic preservation in general.Through such grants, the Certified LocalGovernment Program keeps the localmachinery oiled in terms of the processof preparing and making nominations.

Historic Preservation Fund grants arecompetitively awarded. Applications arereviewed by staff and by the GrantsAdvisory Committee, an independentcommittee. This committee is made up ofat least one member of the State AdvisoryCouncil on Historic Preservation as wellas professionals in historic preservation ora closely related field.

The scale of this grant program is small,partly because the available resources areso limited and partly because the docu-mentation required for any application issubstantial. In any round OAHP is likelyto receive eight to twelve applications;seven or eight will be funded. Grants arein the range of $2,500 to $25,000, but nosingle applicant can receive more than halfof the available pool of money. Three or

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Ideally, OAHP would conduct a completesurvey of the state’s heritage resources,compiling the resulting information in thisinventory. However, budget restrictionshave made systematic surveying impossible.Instead OAHP has had to rely on what-ever information has been provided as partof the nomination process. On occasionOAHP has had some money available tosponsor survey projects that would searchout particular types of resources themati-cally.14 The difficulty of maintaining theState Inventory of Cultural Resources ismagnified by the fact that several stateagencies own historic properties pertinentto their own operations, and they also arebehind in cataloguing these resources.

OAHP currently has records on over100,000 historic, archaeological, and tradi-tional cultural properties located acrossthe state. Researchers, project proponents,property owners, planners, and others usethis collection of records as a planningand reference tool.

The inventory is now the place where anumber of issues are being played out.While demand to consult the inventorygrows, staff availability to service thisdemand has decreased. One partial solu-tion would be to computerize the dataand make them available electronically—they would become particularly useful iflinked to a Geographic InformationSystem—but this, too, has been hamperedby limited resources. What progress hasbeen made has been due to a T21 grantfrom the Federal Highway Administrationrather than through any funds made avail-able by the Legislature. As one-off grantsbecome available, staff are hired to con-tinue the work, but this happens in fitsand starts.

The inventory includes five different typesof historic properties: archaeologicalresources; historic resources (buildings,structures, sites, districts and objects con-structed since European American contactwith Native Americans); traditional cul-tural properties associated with the tribesof Washington and adjacent states andCanada; cultural/historic landscapes—anewly recognized property type, which

governments do a better job than othersat detecting these impacts.

The tribes have their own tribal archaeol-ogists and their own cultural staff.Interestingly, because they have moreexpertise than most county governmentsand often more than OAHP itself, theycan dominate technical discussions.Moreover, their values are highly articu-lated; they are effective because they havea religious, spiritual conviction about theircultural resources. The tribal staffs arealso important allies to OAHP; togetherthey often play out a good cop/bad coproutine to protect archaeological resources.

To identify and inventory their culturalresources, a number of the tribes havebeen moving to cutting edge technology,which in some cases is well ahead of whathas been available to OAHP. These tribeshave all of their archaeological sites markedand digitized on aerial photo overlays, andthey have combined digital elevation mod-els with streaming video. This has provenvery useful for emergency training andfire fighting. The best fire fighting crewsare Native American, and a crew can bebrought in and taken through theirresponse virtually, identifying routes, basecamps, and archaeological and culturalsites that need to be protected, prior togoing out into the field to fight the fire

Washington has recently created a Commit-tee on Archaeology and Oil Spill Response,which is unique to Washington. This com-mittee is responsible for quick decisionmaking concerning damage to andrestoration of archaeological resourcesdamaged by oil spills.

The Washington State Inventory of Cultural Resources

The State Inventory of Cultural Resourcesis, in theory, a collection of data on all ofthe important cultural resources of thestate. OAHP collects site data on culturalresources from throughout the state,manages the database, and makes the data available for research and planningpurposes.

14 In particular, this has beenimplemented through thedevelopment of “historiccontext documents,” whichdiscuss historic themes thatassist in the identification ofimportant resources; the the-matic link helps establish thesignificance of the property.Agriculture, transportation,and politics/government/laware three such themes thathave been explored in his-toric context documents.These documents, in turn,have led to the identificationof properties within specificsub-themes such as ruralpublic education, movie the-atres, and grain growing inEastern Washington.

vided more money so that their stateoffices can run grant programs. She citedthe example of California where a bondissue that included $285 million forpreservation has been passed. The intentis to create a trust fund and to use theinterest to fund bricks and mortar preser-vation grants.17

The State Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

The Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, while reporting to theOffice of Community Development, alsohas an advisory council that oversees itswork: the State Advisory Council onHistoric Preservation.18 The advisorycouncil, which has nine members includ-ing architects, historians, archaeologists,architectural historians, and laypeople,advises OAHP and the governor’s officeon matters of historic preservation policyand votes on nominations to the state andfederal registers.19 Until recently theadvisory council had been primarily com-posed of academicians. But an attempthas now been made to make it more“user friendly,” to strengthen its role inpolicy formulation, and to establish closerties to the governor’s office.

It has traditionally been the advisorycouncil’s job to review nominations to thestate and federal registers. In the past thecouncil tended to focus more on “howwell the forms were filled out.” Now ittries to focus more on the merits of eachcase. The staff makes a report to theadvisory council on each nomination. Thecouncil’s style is to praise in public, con-demn in private (in other words, the advi-sory council and OAHP work to makesure that nominations that actually comebefore the council will pass). In a sense,the advisory council is a rubber stamp,ratifying the result of nomination discus-sions between the staff and the nomina-tor. Yet, the council insists that there be areasoned justification for listing. It seesthe final presentation of a nomination atone of its meetings as an opportunity tohonor and give visibility to the propertybeing nominated.

recognizes landscapes that are a “physicalmanifestation of important religiousbeliefs, traditional stories or legends, aswell as traditionally recognized sources formaterials important in Native Americanculture;”15 and historic shipwrecks andsubmerged aircraft.

There has been no systematic statewidesurvey or inventory of any of theseresources. Instead, for the most part OAHPrelies on information that has comethrough the door. Even so, it has beenhard to keep up. Over 11,000 archaeologi-cal sites are registered with OAHP at themoment; each month between six andthirty more sites are discovered and filedwith the office.

Like many of the other programs ofOAHP, this program is currently unableto be proactive; systematic surveying andinventorying are simply not possible withcurrent resources.

Preservation Works for WashingtonIn most years the federal money plus thestate match is only enough to let OAHPfunction at a minimal level. Tasks withrespect to nominations, certification, andpermitting are completed, but there isvery little room to be proactive about his-toric preservation. As a result, staff arenot able to do what they are really in thisbusiness to do. Only on occasion is itpossible to do something more. In fiscalyear 2002 OAHP unexpectedly received alarge increase from the federal HistoricPreservation Fund. As a result it was ableto put $135,000 into the PreservationWorks for Washington RehabilitationGrant-in-Aid Program.16 This program,which was very popular among the staff,provided preservation grants for bricksand mortar projects. Even so, only ninegrants were made possible with this addi-tional money, and, unfortunately, the lasttime that the office had been able tomount this kind of grant program hadbeen ten or twelve years earlier.

Allyson Brooks, the state historic preserva-tion officer and director of the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,pointed out that other states have pro- 121


15 Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation:Historic Preservation Working for Washington: The StateHistoric Preservation Plan 2000, 1985, 35.

16 Concerning this decision,Jack Williams, chair of theState Advisory Council onHistoric Preservation,pointed out, “When therewas the big spike, we usedthe money mostly for gettingour record keeping in order.We only put a small amountinto grants because we didnot want to raise expecta-tions on which we could not deliver.”

17 Note that the State ofWashington does also havethe Capital Projects Fund for Washington’s Heritage(discussed later in this chap-ter), which is run through the Heritage Resource Centerunder the auspices of theWashington State HistoricalSociety. This program has abiennial budget of $4,000,000.Strictly speaking, these arenot preservation grants;rather, they support muse-ums and various informationand heritage centers.

18 Note that in WashingtonState government there arethree types of boards: advi-sory, regulatory, and policy-making. The State AdvisoryCouncil on HistoricPreservation is of the first type.

19 Note that the advisorycouncil does not get involvedin Section 106 review, whichis conducted by OAHP staffbecause it is quasi-regulatory.

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Using the existing research agencies(e.g., the Washington State Institute forPublic Policy and the MunicipalResearch and Services Center) withinthe State of Washington to help fur-ther the work of OAHP; and

Increasing resources so that staff canspend more time on the road outsideof the Puget Sound area.

The advisory council has looked at thepossibility of implementing a loan program,but its investigations of such programs inother states (e.g., Missouri and New Mexico)suggest that there is lots of political pres-sure in those states to distribute loans toresources that are of relatively low priority.Moreover, Washington’s constitutionmakes loans very difficult, as they cannotbe construed as purchases of goods orservices. The advisory council has alsolooked (longingly) at alternative sources ofdedicated revenues. The historic preserva-tion agency in Colorado, for example,receives casino gambling revenues for itsprograms.

In SummaryThe Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation is shaped, to a large degree,by its federal mandate and its federalfunding. Much of its effort is dedicated toreacting to nominations to the federal orstate historic registers. Environmentalproject review, particularly under Section106, is described by the staff as “an over-whelming force.” The agency spends sucha high percentage of its resources onthese regulatory matters that it cannot getinvolved in policy initiatives like heritagetourism or growth management. It isforced into being reactive rather thanproactive, which makes it very difficult topursue a state-specific policy.

Because of the multi-level nominationprocess for listing on the historic registers,historic preservation is the one area ofstate cultural policy in which there is con-siderable interaction between the state and lower levels of government. Thisprocess has to be collaborative for a list-ing to succeed.

When funding allows, the advisory councilmeets four times per year. It consciouslytries to “go out and meet in communitiesaround the state, have a reception, andbrag a bit.” These meetings are oftenlinked to a visit to a particular preserva-tion project. Anyone can come before thecouncil to present a nomination. (“We try to make everyone comfortable.”) Tobecome even more visible the advisorycouncil broadcasts occasional meetings onTVW, the state’s public affairs cable televi-sion station.

At the moment the advisory council isparticularly concerned with the paths ofcommunication to higher levels of author-ity that are available (or not) to OAHP.OAHP reports to the director of theOffice of Community Development, butthe advisory council is advisory both toOAHP and to the governor’s office.Moreover, the state historic preservationofficer is appointed to that post by thegovernor, which also seems to legitimizedirect communication with the governor’soffice. Most importantly, the advisorycouncil wants to get the agency “ontosomeone’s radar screen.” Recently, thedirector of the Office of CommunityDevelopment left state government.Paying a courtesy visit to OAHP and theadvisory council, his parting words were,“You will get more publicity. Be careful ofwhat you wish for.”

That caution notwithstanding, JackWilliams, chair of the advisory council,sees six priorities for OAHP:

Increasing resources so that OAHPcan represent itself and its work betterin the field;

Increasing resources to hire a plannerto work on community character andhistoric district issues;

Obtaining an increase in grant moneyfor planning of restoration as well asexecution of restoration;

Increasing resources to advise localindividuals and communities on howto tap other resources in the state;

funding formula, which, they feel, advan-tages new construction over reuse andtherefore works against the interest ofhistoric preservation. In the view ofOAHP, however, to change the fundingformula away from favoring new con-struction would take far too much stafftime and effort. Occasionally OAHP isable to tap some additional resources forpreservation through interagency agree-ments. In such an agreement, OAHP getsauthority for certain expenditures, spendsagainst that authority, and then is reim-bursed by the other agency.

One of our field interviewees focused onthe state Growth Management Act as avehicle for promoting preservation butcharacterized it as much too weak. “Theland management agencies at the state arenot following federal guidelines in thisregard.” OAHP is the logical agency tohave some influence over these policies, butits weak links to other departments, eventhose within the Office of CommunityDevelopment, make it difficult to exertmuch influence.

The impression that one gets is that theties between the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation and the Wash-ington State Historical Society (discussedbelow) are not particularly strong. It isinteresting to note, however, that at thelocal level history programs and historicpreservation programs tend to be com-bined in one local or county historicalsociety, whereas at the state level they areseparated into two specialized entities. Inaddition to maintaining local historicalmuseums that often occupy historic build-ings, local and county historical societiesdo get involved in the nomination processfor historic properties.

A number of studies on possible inter-agency collaboration have been conductedwith the idea that it would prove benefi-cial to get similarly concerned agenciestogether to coordinate their heritage pro-grams. At one point a Washington StateHeritage Council was created by theLegislature, but it was ultimately discon-tinued. Today there is a Heritage Caucus(discussed below), but it meets only when

OAHP is configured around a fixed set ofprograms, which operate surprisingly wellgiven the constraints within which theyare expected to operate, but the structurethat has evolved has made it virtuallyimpossible for the office to set out newpolicy directions or to pursue new policyinitiatives.

The staff has a long wish list: “We wouldlike to have a grant program that wouldbe not only a bricks and mortar program.We would like to have more staff for edu-cation and outreach. We would like to seemore staff to develop and implement policy.We would like to have in-house expertisein graphic design, brochures, reports,presentations, etc. We would really like tooperate a revolving loan program, butthere is a constitutional prohibition inWashington. We would like to be offeringincentives for preservation projects.”OAHP is supposed to be doing compre-hensive surveying and inventorying ofhistoric sites in Washington, but this isessentially an unfunded mandate. And,finally, OAHP would like to be able to pre-pare its own historic register nominations.

Interactions with other state agencies and with external organizations are sur-prisingly limited beyond interactions withCertified Local Governments. OAHPdoes interact with the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation throughits Heritage Corridors Program and otherprojects. In fact, the development ofOAHP databases has been funded sporad-ically by WSDOT. OAHP has paidWSDOT and the Parks and RecreationCommission for training of their employeeson cultural resource management issues.OAHP has links to the Main Street Programand the state archives. But, most impor-tantly, many state agencies—Corrections,Parks and Recreation, Veterans Affairs,Agriculture, Banking, and General Admini-stration, among others—own historicproperties. Unfortunately, in the eyes ofOAHP, some of these agencies are lessconcerned than others about the appro-priate preservation and conservation oftheir cultural resources. A particularly vex-ing issue for OAHP is the state’s school 123


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The Heritage Corridors Program,Washington StateDepartment ofTransportation As we have already seen in earlier chap-ters, state cultural policy is not only foundin those agencies or offices that are clearlycultural in their mandate. A prime exam-ple of an element of heritage policytucked away within a mainline state agencyis found in the Washington State Depart-ment of Transportation (WSDOT). Hereone finds a group responsible for theHeritage Corridors Program.

Operating at the seam between environ-mental policy and cultural policy, the mis-sion of the Heritage Corridors Program is “to preserve the unique scenic characteralong Washington’s transportation corridors,to provide travelers with a continuingopportunity to appreciate and obtaininformation regarding unique natural,cultural, and historic features, and recre-ational opportunities, that are near to, oraccessible from, transportation routes.”20

The program’s rationale is expressed asfollows:

The landscape, in the words of the cultural geog-rapher J.B. Jackson, “...is a document of theshared aspirations, ingenuity, memories, and cul-ture of its builders.”21 The landscape representsour heritage. Heritage transportation corridors canlink individuals and communities to this heritage.The desire to preserve these special “places”requires that we protect and maintain their intrin-sic resources and the experiences they provide. Toaccomplish this, there must be a coordinated effort.The Heritage Corridors Program will facilitate thesustainable management of our landscape heritagealong transportation corridors, and build the rela-tionships between individuals, groups, agencies,and governments who share this responsibility.22

ChronologyThis program, a small four-person pro-gram, is a unit of the Highways and LocalRoadways Division of the WashingtonState Department of Transportation. Itgrew out of the national movement ofthe mid-1960s to beautify interstate and

the Legislature is in session for the pur-pose of exchanging information. Many of the individuals whom we interviewedwould like to get agencies together to do“something great” with respect to theheritage. Mary Thompson, former statehistoric preservation officer and currentpresident of the Washington State Trustfor Historic Preservation stated, “Wedon’t really get together. There is no senseof community. We let the bureaucrats callthe shots.”

Allyson Brooks, the current state historicpreservation officer, also lamented thelack of external linkages: “Our great fail-ure is not pursuing linkages with nonprof-its such as environmental groups, land useand planning groups, and transportationgroups. We should be working with growthmanagement and ecology groups, but wecannot offer development bonuses. Weare always on the defensive and not onthe offensive.” To the extent that the bulkof OAHP’s work is regulatory rather thaneducational or promotional, ties withother agencies with a different primarymode of operation may always continueto be difficult to arrange.

Finally, one is left with the impressionthat much of OAHP’s work is under theradar screen. Whether this is intentionalor unintentional is difficult to tell; what isclear is that this has both advantages anddisadvantages. It is able to work quietlywithout undue scrutiny or influence, butits ultimate influence on the preservationof the historic resources of Washingtonmay be limited as a result.

Currently it is very difficult for OAHPstaff to get beyond basic day-to-day oper-ations. They are not able to think aboutthe big picture, even though that is whatthey would really like to do and what theyare trained for. Recent budget cuts willnot make this any easier.

20 Washington State Depart-ment of Transportation,Washington’s Scenic BywayDesignation Process Report,2002, 7.

21 J. B. Jackson, Discovering theVernacular Landscape (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1984).

22 Heritage Corridors Program,Washington State Depart-ment of Transportation,Defining Washington’s HeritageCorridors Program, Report tothe Legislature and theFederal Highway Admini-stration, April 1995, 3.

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23 RCW §47.39, the Scenic andRecreational Highway Act of 1967.

24 RCW §47.42, the ScenicVistas Act of 1970.

Public outreach including the provi-sion of public information, training,and customized workshops for localgroups.

The report also developed other recom-mendations intended to make WSDOT’sefforts more focused and systematic. SaidJudy Lorenzo: “I felt like I had a state-ment of purpose—my goal was to sell itinternally [within WSDOT], but we hadto sell it to the Legislature as well.”Implementation of the program was slowdue to lack of staff and funding, but in1998 the legislation for the HeritageCorridors Program was amended with thepassage of Chapter 218, Laws of 1999(SSB 5273).

The development of the program was theresult of the efforts of a few key leaders,within both WSDOT and the Legislature.The turning point within WSDOTreportedly came when the HeritageCorridors Program was added to thedepartment’s list of priority deficiencies.Lorenzo said, with little sense of irony,“We had arrived because we made it ontothe list of deficiencies — this gave usflexibility. [The list has different categoriesof deficiencies.] Our category of defi-ciency was economic development. [Thiswas important because] our program is anon-traditional function within a mobilityand safety agency. Washington was thefirst state to include byways on its defi-ciencies list.”

At the time of our interviews the HeritageCorridors Program had 4.0 FTE staff anda biennial budget of $5.5 million, of which$2.5 million was for preservation programsalong the Heritage Corridors. The operat-ing budget was $450,000 per biennium instate dollars, plus $200,000 for operationsfrom federal grants. Federal funds havebeen particularly significant in the devel-opment of large, visible projects such asthe multi-state Pacific Coast Scenic Bywayproject and Washington’s participation inthe celebration of the Lewis and Clarkbicentennial.

The process at the heart of the HeritageCorridors Program is, in a certain sense,

major state highways. The Washingtonprogram was established by the Legislaturein 1967 when twenty-seven state routeswere placed in the program.23 TheWashington Scenic Vistas Act of 197024

placed additional constraints on outdooradvertising, but the overall programreportedly lay mostly dormant from thatpoint until 1991, when Congress passedthe Intermodal Surface TransportationEfficiency Act (ISTEA) and created theNational Scenic Byway Program. ISTEArequired states to better define their rolesand responsibilities under their scenicbyways programs. The governor appointeda Highway Heritage Task Force to definea purpose and vision for Washington’sparticipation in this program that wouldrespond to the ISTEA legislation, and thistask force developed the current missionstatement of the Heritage CorridorsPrograms. By 1993, 45 percent, or nearly3,000 miles, of Washington’s state high-ways had been designated as “Scenic andRecreational.”

The Legislature set aside $1 million for theprogram during the 1991-93 biennium, andthis money was used to establish clear cul-tural linkages. Said Program Director JudyLorenzo: “That investment leveraged $20million in projects, one of which was afolk life project. There was a recognitionthat art is more than a painting.”

In 1994, at the Legislature’s request, theHeritage Corridors Program published aplanning document recommending refine-ments to the program. Defining Washington’sHeritage Corridors Program observed thatmany routes had been overlooked becausethey were not state owned. The reportcontained four major areas of recom-mended program development:

The further establishment of ScenicByways and Heritage Routes, expand-ing designation to other roadways, andestablishing specific criteria forHeritage Routes;

The creation of safety rest areas andviewpoints;

The design and construction of signageand other interpretation markers; and

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To maintain a program that is consis-tent with the goals and objectives ofthe National Scenic Byways Program;

To advocate for a locally driven bal-ance in preservation and promotion of the scenic and heritage resourcesfound on designated routes in thesystem;

To educate the traveling public byproviding a comprehensive interpretiveexperience that tells the story ofthe route;

To assist communities in developingsustainable tourism and recreation byshowcasing and enhancing each corri-dor’s natural, cultural, scenic, recre-ational, and historic resource sites;

To provide a safe and enjoyablejourney for travelers; and

To achieve consistency with theWashington Transportation Plan.

StandardsIn pursuing these goals, the HeritageCorridors Program is expected to meetcertain standards of performance:

Involvement in the Heritage CorridorsProgram should be in response to acommunity’s voluntary desire to be inthe program.

Byways should be created and man-aged to serve their communities, butshould serve travelers as well.

Communities should form a bywayadvocacy or stewardship group thatwill be responsible for developing aCorridor Management Plan.

A corridor’s story should be developedby drawing together its outstandingresources and features. A plan fortelling the story should be part of theCorridor Management Plan.

The evaluation process should be fair,consistent, scientific, and as objectiveas possible. It should be flexibleenough to apply equally to all routesand landscape types.

like the process for registering historicproperties through OAHP. The HeritageCorridors Program responds to requestsby regional groups and other advocateswho are seeking Scenic Byway designa-tion. The criteria for designation are setforth in the Federal Scenic BywayProgram and the Washington HeritageCorridors legislation. The process forreceiving Scenic Byway or Heritage Routedesignation includes a set of standardsteps: (1) an application is filed and basiceligibility is assessed, (2) a communitymeeting is held to determine the level ofsupport for designation among the partici-pating communities, (3) a scenic assess-ment of the route is undertaken, (4) aninventory of the heritage resources alongthe route is completed, (5) the proposeddesignation is reviewed by a designationpanel and a recommendation is made, and(6) the route is designated by the StateTransportation Commission. Designationmakes a route eligible for National ScenicByways funds.

Applicants and advocates are offeredtechnical assistance by the program staffthroughout the designation review process.They are assisted in developing greaterlocal awareness of resources, corridormanagement plans, identifying localresources, and creating and unifying localcultural tourism efforts. Thus, the pro-gram staff acts as a liaison, putting localproponents in touch with a variety ofother agencies and programs.

GoalsThe Heritage Corridors Program isintended to support local efforts to preservelocal character and improve economicvitality, protecting these efforts and thelocal resources they identify from the rav-ages of state transportation policy andputting them in touch with a variety ofstate and federal programs. The goals ofthe program are:

To develop a statewide network ofScenic Byways and Heritage TourRoutes, protecting a legacy of the bestexamples of Washington’s landscapesand heritage resources;

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25 Defining Washington’s HeritageCorridors Program, 56.

Scenic Highway Designation ProjectsThe Heritage Corridors Program, by itsvery nature, involves multiple agencies inthe implementation of its policy. Severalexamples make clear how the manage-ment of National Scenic Byway designa-tion creates opportunities for multi-agency cooperation in special projects:

The Mountains to Sound Greenway[Interstate 90] from Seattle to Ellensburg.In this initiative the business commu-nity, the government, and local resi-dents worked together to protect amajor piece of regional scenery andhistory. The Mountains to SoundGreenway Trust purchased land to createtrails and parks along the corridor.Trailheads and visitor centers were cre-ated; students and citizens teamed withcorporations to plant trees and restorevegetation. Interpretive signs wereerected to tell the story of the corridor.WSDOT worked with the trust tocreate a plan that combines the variousinterests along the corridor, while alsosupporting economic development andsafe and efficient transportation facili-ties. National Scenic Byway fundingprovided trailblazer logo signs, a corri-dor marketing plan, and preparation ofa master site plan for the developmentof a viewpoint.

Strait of Juan de Fuca Highway [StateRoute 112] from Port Angeles to Neah Bay.In this case public and private partnersworked together to create the Strait ofJuan de Fuca Corridor Management Plan,which emphasizes the economic devel-opment of local communities andstrives to develop travel-related ameni-ties in support of local communityand economic development goals.Designation as a National ScenicByway in 2000 triggered funding forprojects along the corridor.

North Pend Oreille Scenic Byway [StarRoute 31] from Tiger Junction to the CanadianBorder. In this project National ScenicByway designation was used to fosterrural economic redevelopment. A

And PrioritiesThe program’s current priorities are iden-tified in Defining Washington’s HeritageCorridors Program:25

Protect and enhance the visual quality ofWashington’s transportation corridors andfacilities.

Avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts oftransportation projects on heritage resources.

Assist where appropriate with preserving andenhancing heritage resources which are withintransportation corridors or are an integral partof the traveling experience along a corridor.Significant proposed transportation projectsrelating to the preservation, enhancement, orinterpretation of resources on the transportationsystem should be identified in regional trans-portation plans. In all cases, any contemplatedproject should be consistent with regional trans-portation plans.

Commit state funding to leverage funding oppor-tunities from other sources for transportationprojects which preserve, enhance, and interpretheritage resources within transportation corri-dors. Innovative funding sources, both publicand private, should be pursued. Transportationfunding should only be made available wherethere are partnerships with resources managerswho have pledged a public or private financialcommitment.

Provide directional signing and interpretive sign-ing along the transportation system. Directionalsigning on the transportation system to accesscultural, natural, and historic resources shouldbe considered only when resources are identifiedas significant in regional transportation plans,or where there are clear economic benefits.

Support the development of tourism and otherWashington industries; support those aspects of the transportation system which enhancetourism; cooperate in promoting heritageresources to aid tourism and achieve economicbenefits.

Provide appropriate access to those resourceswhich have been identified by national, tribal,state, and local resources management entities.

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second project was Washington PassOverlook, completed in partnership withthe United States Department ofAgriculture Forest Service.

The Heritage Corridors Program is alsoresponsible for signs, interpretation, andmarkers. Each designated byway has itsown unique signage, and design guidelineshave been established for Scenic Bywaysand rest areas. For example, the Lewis and Clark Expedition project has its owneighty-page design guidebook for allsignage and interpretation.

Stewardship and interpretation of uniquecultural and heritage resources also comeunder the purview of the HeritageCorridors Program. Interpretation effortsgo well beyond signage to include inter-pretive maps and a wealth of materialsproduced in cooperation with other agen-cies. The most notable of these is theNorthwest Heritage Tours program,which it has developed in collaborationwith the Folk Arts Program of theWashington State Arts Commission (dis-cussed in Chapter III). These drivingtours include a booklet and a tour tapecontaining traditional regional music andnarratives from local residents.26

Finally, since the Heritage CorridorsProgram operates in partnership withlocal communities, public outreach is amajor component of this initiative.Outreach efforts include the HeritageCorridors Advisory Committee, statewidecommunication networking, a CorridorManagement Planning Guidebook, variousoutreach publications, and a documentoutlining the process for project identifi-cation and public involvement.

Through its work in the areas describedabove, the Heritage Corridors Programplays a stewardship role by offering anunusual venue through which to care forthe unique cultural and heritage resourcesof Washington State. While its activitiesare perhaps more indirect than the workof the Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, they have much thesame influence. This program provides aninteresting example of pursuing cultural

small National Scenic Byway planninggrant leveraged $500,000 and aCorridor Management Plan for sevenhistoric/recreational interpretive sites.

Lewis and Clark Trail Highway—Washington’s Southern Border along theSnake and Columbia Rivers from Clarkstonto Long Beach and State Route 14. Inanticipation of the multi-state bicen-tennial commemoration of the Lewisand Clark expedition, an Interpretiveand Tourism Plan was funded by$90,000 in WSDOT National ScenicByways federal funds, matching statefunds, and an appropriation by theLegislature. The Washington StateHistorical Society is acting as the leadagency of a multi-agency collaborationthat has secured $615,000 in T21enhancement funds for highway mark-ers, traveler orientation and interpreta-tion. As of summer 2001, the projecthad leveraged partnerships totalingover $10 million.

As these examples suggest, each ScenicByway or Heritage Tour Route requires aCorridor Management Plan, which resultsfrom the documentation that is preparedon the existing resources. The plan pro-vides the blueprint for preservation,development, and promotion efforts.

Other Program ElementsThe Heritage Corridors Program also hasresponsibilities with respect to safety restareas and viewpoints. These interestingprojects have led to increased visibility forthe program. In 1991-93, WSDOTrequested funding for the improvement ofrest areas, which had been included on theagency’s deficiencies list. The Legislatureappropriated $2 million to build uniquerest areas. Two projects resulted. TheForest Learning Center was developed onState Route 504 near Mount Saint Helensin a partnership with Weyerhauser and theDepartment of Fish and Wildlife. Adesign competition was used to select thearchitect for this forestry interpretationcenter (and rest area). WSDOT invested$1.2 million of the $2 million cost;Weyerhauser provided the balance. The

26 The tapes and tour guidesthat are available includeCentral Washington HeritageCorridor: Leavenworth toMaryhill; Central Washington:Othello to Omak; South-eastern Washington: Richlandto Clarkston; and WesternWashington: The OlympicPeninsula Loop.

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has turned toward a wide variety of tem-porary exhibits and the materials and pro-grams associated with these collectionsand programs. Still, the division remainsattentive to the capital projects of thesociety including the completion (in 2001)of the seismic and systems renovation ofthe society’s Research Center (housed inthe original museum building), and postearthquake (February 2001) repairs to theState Capital Museum.

The mission of the Museum Servicesdivision has been articulated as “Inspiringall people to make history a part of theirlives,” a mission that clearly mixes heritagewith the humanities. From a heritage per-spective, this begins with the management,inventorying, and cataloging of the per-manent collections—the “movable heritage”objects of the State of Washington—andthe design of exhibits and programsbased on that collection, but it extends toa wide range of temporary exhibits atboth museum facilities. The division alsoprovides a wide array of ancillary materi-als and programs that interpret the historyof the state and expand the impact of thesociety’s work.

The Research Center, located withinMuseum Services, houses the artifact andarchival collections of the society andprovides services to researchers wantingto use the collections. In 2001, the HistoryLab Learning Center was completed. TheHistory Lab is a series of exhibits withheavy emphasis on modern electronicmedia and a sprinkling of traditionalmuseum exhibit technology to give a hands-on experience of how historical inquiry iscarried out. The History Lab is supple-mented by an online component and abook and CD-ROM set is envisioned.

The State Capital MuseumThe State Capital Museum is a semi-autonomous unit of the Washington StateHistorical Society. It is located in the LordMansion, a former home located immedi-ately adjacent to the campus of Washing-ton State government in Olympia. Themuseum was founded in 1941 as anindependent entity. The Lords, a locally

policy through creative attachment toother state goals and policies. When cul-tural policy can be pursued under the aus-pices of other policy actors, it may wellbenefit from the greater societal consen-sus that characterizes those policies.

The Washington StateHistorical Society Much of the activity of the WashingtonState Historical Society has already beendiscussed in Chapter IV in the context ofits role in state humanities policy. Here weturn to the role it plays in heritage policy.

The flagship heritage activity of theWashington State Historical Society is theWashington State History Museum, but itis difficult to separate this museum and its sister museum, the Washington StateCapital Museum, from the broader set ofactivities around which the society isstructured. As has already been mentionedin Chapter IV, the society has three oper-ating divisions—Museum Services,Institutional Advancement, and OutreachServices. Many of the activities of thesedivisions focus on the museums and theirprograms, and this is where the main rela-tionship with heritage policy lies. In thissection we focus on the Museum Servicesdivision, as well as on the State CapitalMuseum and the society’s role in theLewis and Clark bicentennial. The OutreachServices and Institutional Advancementdivisions have already been discussed inChapter IV, as they fit more appropriatelyunder a discussion of humanities policyor a broader discussion of the society’soperations. We discuss the society’s role inadministering the Capital Projects Fundfor Washington’s Heritage in a separatesection of this chapter.

Museum ServicesMuseum Services is responsible for thepermanent collection, temporary exhibits,and education programs—the core pro-grams that one normally associates with amuseum’s activities. Now that the newWashington State History Museum is upand running, the attention of this division

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Certain cities and towns find themselvesvery much bound up in the historicalsociety’s Lewis and Clark bicentennialplanning effort. The City of Long Beach,Washington, is a municipality with a resi-dent year-round population of roughly1,400 that lies along the coast of the PacificOcean just north of Astoria, Oregon, about15 miles from the Oregon-Washingtonborder on State Highway 103. The coastaltowns of Seaview, Ilwaco, and Chinookare close by. Separately and together, theystrive to function as tourist destinationsduring the spring and summer months.Some months ago, representatives ofWSHS visited the region to conduct aninventory of sites associated with theLewis and Clark expedition.

As it happens, the expeditionary partyencamped at the tip of the Long Beachpeninsula during November 1805, fromwhich location they conducted explo-rations of the surrounding area. OnNovember 15 Lewis and Clark met withrepresentatives of the Clatsop IndianTribe, who helped them find game andassisted them in establishing their base,where they remained until November 25.This area has now been extensively sur-veyed, and a permanent state/nationalpark is being established on the site.

The fact of the Lewis and Clark presencein the region is not news. But thesemunicipalities have lacked the resources toestablish the kinds of facilities needed toattract and sustain public interest. Withthe help of WSHS, however, Long Beachand neighboring communities have sub-mitted a number of requests for grantsupport from corporations and founda-tions already predisposed to supportingthe bicentennial celebration. Requestsfrom Long Beach to Microsoft for$125,000, to Weyerhaeuser for $50,000,and to AT&T for $35,000 were pendingat the time of our visit to the area (in July2002). An extensive “Discovery Trail” willlead the visitor along the route followedby the expedition as it entered the regionof the peninsula, established its encamp-ment, and explored the nearby area. Abicycle trail will be established and public

prominent banking family, donated thebuilding and grounds to the state in 1939.The will deeding the property to the statespecified that the property be used forcultural purposes. Director Derek Valleysaid that the mission statement from thatera emphasized the preservation andexhibition of pioneer memorabilia. Today,the major focus of the exhibits, whichoccupy two floors of the building, isupon the political and governmentalhistory of the state.

The museum functioned as a completelyseparate entity until 1989 when, as theproduct of a self-assessment by its boardof trustees, it was determined that affilia-tion with the Washington State HistoricalSociety would be in the museum’s bestinterests. Director Valley explained thatthe decision was based in large part onthe premise that “...(since) the historicalsociety had both the ear and favor of theLegislature, it seemed more sensible tobring us in under their umbrella.”

Museum exhibits focus on the politicaland cultural history of Washington. Themuseum offers interpretations of regionalNative American history, and the gardenssurrounding the Lord Mansion featurenative Northwest plants and an ethno-botanical garden. The Heritage ResourceCenter (discussed in Chapter IV) islocated in the Coach House of the LordMansion.

The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial The Society has positioned itself at theepicenter of preparations for the upcomingLewis and Clark bicentennial, to feature abroad array of events, exhibitions, cele-bratory activities, and programs dealingwith the 1803 expedition, yet anothereffort mixing humanities policy with her-itage policy. Director Nicandri reported in March 2002 that between $9 and $10million in public funds had already beencommitted with another third to come;the state’s general fund appropriation isthe smallest component within the mix of sources of support for bicentennialactivities.

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of local historical societies and museumsoperating in virtually every locale. Itsinteractions with the City of Long Beachin connection with the Lewis and Clarkbicentennial celebration have beendescribed above. The links between statecultural policy activity—including theOffice of Archeology and HistoricPreservation, the Washington StateHistorical Society, and Humanities Wash-ington—and local heritage programmingare examined further below.

Capital Projects Fund forWashington’s HeritageIn cooperation with the Office of theSecretary of State, the Eastern Washing-ton State Historical Society, and the Officeof Archaeology and Historic Preservation,the Heritage Resource Center of theWashington State Historical Society alsoadministers a capital grants fund to whichnonprofit heritage organizations, tribes,and local governments may apply on acompetitive basis. This fund is properlyunderstood as a state program that hasbeen given over to another entity for pur-poses of administration, and, thus, it is abit different from the other programs andprojects of the historical society. Since itsinception, the Legislature has been appro-priating approximately $4 million perbiennium for the Capital Projects Fundfor Washington’s Heritage, an amount thatis roughly equal to the amount appropri-ated for its sister program, Building forthe Arts.

The Capital Projects Fund for Washington’sHeritage provides capital matching grantsto various construction, restoration, andrenovation projects in the heritage field.Eligible projects include: construction orimprovement of facilities; purchase,restoration, and preservation of largeheritage objects such as historic buildings,themselves, as well as other structures,ships, locomotives, and airplanes; acquisi-tion of unimproved property for newheritage facilities; acquisition, protection,stabilization, and development of historicor archaeological sites; physical improve-ment of interior facility spaces for

sculptures will be installed. The skeletonof a whale that recently beached near thesite of the encampment—evocative of onethe explorers actually came upon duringtheir travels—has been preserved and isnow being readied for permanent display.

ImpactWithin the constellation of state-level policyactors engaged in heritage policy, theWashington State Historical Society ispositioned somewhere between HumanitiesWashington and the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation, but the taxpayingpublic knows it primarily as a museum—researching, curating, and placing on dis-play the historical record of the people ofthe State of Washington.

In our interviews it was suggested that its success ought largely and fairly to bedetermined by the levels of public partici-pation it has achieved and by the extent towhich the governor and the Legislaturevalue the program (as expressed by con-tinuing general fund appropriations). Bythis standard WSHS would appear to bedoing quite well, indeed. It also ought tobe gauged by the visibility of its pro-grams, and here, too, it is quite successful.

The society has a further role in adminis-tering the Capital Projects Fund forWashington’s Heritage (discussed below).The fact that it has been delegated thisresponsibility, despite the fact that it is nota mainline state agency, is a product ofthe aggressive campaign mounted by itsdirector and board to enhance its influ-ence and its claim on both publicly appro-priated revenues and private philanthropicsupport, something that it is uniquely ableto do because of its hybrid status as atrustee agency of the state also operatingas a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. It isnot otherwise positioned to function as agrant-making entity in the manner of theWashington State Arts Commission, andno one with whom we consulted seemedto expect it to do so.

Certainly one significant way to considerthe society’s policy and program impact isto explore its relationship with the welter

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are actually appropriated only after thesociety’s grants review committee annuallydevelops its list of recommended projectsand forwards it with proposed dollaramounts for each project to the governorand the Legislature. Yet, the societyshares—and rightfully so—in thereflected credit for the program.27

The list of recommended projects isalways sufficiently comprehensive geo-graphically as to immediately touch thelocalized interests of many legislators atthe same moment, so that appropriationsat least equal to the recommended dollaramounts are generally achieved with rela-tive ease. In the end it is the Legislature,not the society’s proposal review commit-tee, that makes the final official determi-nations. But as a function of its role as abroker between the Legislature’s fundingauthority on the one hand and the field oflocalized heritage organizations on theother the society is able to wield consider-able influence over the distribution ofpublic capital development resources.

The analogous capital program for artsorganizations, Building for the Arts, isadministered under Community Develop-ment Programs in the Local GovernmentOffice of the Washington State Office ofCommunity Development (see Chapter III).

The Eastern WashingtonState Historical Society/The Northwest Museumof Arts and CultureIf it is difficult to separate the activities ofthe Washington State Historical Societyinto the policy categories of arts, humani-ties, and heritage, it is even more difficultto separate the activities of the EasternWashington State Historical Society in thisway. Consequently, we have chosen to dis-cuss all three aspects of its work togetherin this section.

The Eastern Washington State HistoricalSociety/Northwest Museum of Arts andCulture is a hybrid trustee agency like itssister institution, the Washington StateHistorical Society. It was founded in

exhibitions, programs, and preservationactivities; construction-related design,archaeological, and engineering expenses;landscaping; and purchase of equipment.

The Heritage Resource Center provides aseries of pre-application workshops topotential applicants. Once proposals aresubmitted, an advisory committee screensand ranks them according to their merit.Operating in a manner similar to theBuilding for the Arts program, theselected applicants are then presented tothe Legislature for inclusion as line itemsin the state’s capital budget. Thus, theHeritage Resource Center’s process isadvisory to the Legislature, which makesthe final decisions and garners the politi-cal credit (and responsibility) for thesedecisions.

The society’s annual report for 2001 liststwenty-nine projects that were recom-mended to the Legislature for funding at atotal of $4,198,136. State funding for theapproved projects ranged from $8,292 to$400,000. According to this report, eachstate dollar was matched by more thanseven dollars in non-state funds. Thesociety’s participation in the projects endswith their production of the approved listthat it presents to the Legislature and thegovernor’s office. It does not administerthe funds once the projects are approved.

Its stewardship of the Capital ProjectsFund for Washington’s Heritage is perhapsthe most palpable example of WSHS’sunique capacity to project its influencestatewide, beyond the geographical con-straints implied by its physical location inwestern coastal Washington. A formersociety trustee deeply involved in winninglegislative support for the society’s initia-tives, pointed specifically to this programas an expression of the society’s ability toposition itself as the benefactor of morelocalized heritage institutions around thestate with a limited investment of its ownresources. Describing this fund as a “capital-flow-through process,” he observed thatthe several million dollars in annualheritage-specific public capital develop-ment activity never comes to the societyat all. Indeed, the funds for these projects

27 In our view, the operationof the Capital ProjectsFund for Washington’sHeritage appears to be amore transparent processthan the process associ-ated with its sister pro-gram, Building for theArts. The WashingtonState Historical Society isclearly responsible for theheritage program throughits Heritage ResourceCenter, while the Buildingfor the Arts programrelies on a rather lesstransparent combinationof the Washington StateOffice of CommunityDevelopment, theCorporate Council forthe Arts, and lobbyists.Yet, this difference mayturn out to be unimpor-tant in the grand schemeof things, as both casesare structured so that thefinal responsibility lieswith the state Legislature.

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28 The other accredited muse-ums are the Burke Museumof Natural History andCulture, the Frye ArtMuseum, the Henry ArtGallery, the Museum ofFlight, the Museum ofHistory and Industry, and the Seattle Art Museum(Seattle); the MaryhillMuseum of Art (Golden-dale); the Naval UnderseaMuseum (Keyport); theTacoma Art Museum(Tacoma); and the WhatcomMuseum of History and Art (Bellingham).

extensive collection of visual art distin-guishes it programmatically from itsTacoma-based counterpart (which focusesmore exclusively in the domains of thehumanities and heritage) and brings it intothe realm of arts policy as well.

The Northwest Museum of Arts andCulture is considered to be the major artmuseum in Eastern Washington. Themuseum undertakes between four andeight stand-alone art exhibitions each yearand presents about fifteen arts lecturesranging from cutting edge contemporaryart talks by artists in the community to arthistory lectures presented by scholars fromthe Smithsonian. Its joint art lecture serieswith Spokane Falls Community Collegeand Eastern Washington University pro-vides a public venue for art talks thatwould otherwise simply be limited to uni-versity students. Annual attendance atthese lectures is over 1,000. For the pastten years, the museum has also offered asales and rental function, which supportslocal artists by helping them sell or renttheir artworks to buyers in the region. In2002, the museum sold or rented over100 works of art through this program.

With respect to heritage policy, EWSHS/NMAC has served as a primary resourcefor approximately seventy-five historicaland preservation organizations in theeastern part of the state. Recently confer-ences have been held at the museum in con-junction with the Washington Associationof Museums in order to provide smallerhistorical organizations with informationon best practices for their operations.

EWSHS/NMAC is also directly involvedin historic preservation through theHistoric Campbell House, which is inte-grated into the society’s facility. The society is responsible for its interpretation,and an estimated 40,000 individuals bene-fit annually from this interpretive pro-gram, which has been recognized byawards from the Association for PublicHistory and has been featured in severalprofessional meetings across the country asa benchmark interpretive program.EWSHS/NMAC also provides an annualseries of workshops and lectures on

Spokane in 1916 as a private nonprofit501(c)(3) organization by a group of localeducators and civic leaders interested inhistoric preservation. It was designated asa state trustee institution in 1925 andbegan receiving legislative appropriationsduring the mid-1930s. In several essentialrespects EWSHS enjoys the same favoredrelationship to state policy authority asdoes the Washington State HistoricalSociety. Today, its mix of state and privatefunding is approximately 50/50 on a $3.1million budget.

Like the Washington State HistoricalSociety, the Eastern Washington StateHistorical Society occupies an impressivenew facility—the Northwest Museum ofArts and Culture. Indeed, according to arecent survey about 25 percent of the res-idents of Spokane County consider themuseum to be their primary culturalvenue. The collections and programs ofthe society dramatically expanded in 1990when the society absorbed a NativeAmerican museum then housed atGonzaga University as the consequenceof management and tax problems affect-ing the latter museum. A private fundrais-ing drive was launched in 1992 to providea new facility for the merged collections.The success of the fundraising effort(resulting in $10 million in new commu-nity support) enabled the society’s leader-ship to approach the Legislature in 1998for $20 million in state funds to supportconstruction of the building the societynow occupies. The fact that state fundshad underwritten a significant portion ofthe Washington State Historical Society’sfacility in Tacoma was used successfullyby EWSHS leaders in persuading theLegislature to provide financing for afacility in Spokane in the eastern part ofthe state.

The Northwest Museum of Arts andCulture is an accredited museum, one ofonly eleven in the state to be accreditedby the American Association of Museums.28

This means that it meets national stan-dards for all phases of its operationsincluding programs, exhibitions, publicservice, and operations. NMAC’s relatively

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(180,000 images) will be donated to thesociety.

Another venture providing public accessto historical materials and interpretation isthe Star Nations Project. This effort,funded by a direct federal appropriation,has set the groundwork for the develop-ment of an interactive website related tothe major Native American tribes ofEastern Washington. The goal is todevelop public access sites, tribal accesssites, and teacher curriculum sites that willallow individual users access to differentparts of the database. This project willallow tribal members to pass on culturalhistory electronically and will be used toprotect that information from the generalpublic. The society has joined formallywith the four major tribes of the region inthis project. It has also partnered with theKalispel tribe for a major technologyeffort to bring Internet services and train-ing to urban and rural tribal members inan effort to help them communicate witheach other and to use the Internet as amethod to further broader educationalgoals as well as for cultural preservation.

The society operates its Native Americanprograms with the advice and consent ofthe Spokane, Kalispel, and Coeur d’Alenetribes and the Confederated Tribes ofthe Colville Reservation. This formalagency-to-government relationship ismeant to provide links between thesociety and the tribes that will furthercultural preservation as well as foster abetter understanding between Indian andnon-Indian peoples. Interpretation andeducation are two important parts of thiseffort with the museum reaching over 1,200tribal members with formal historical/cultural programs.

Finally, the museum’s education depart-ment reaches 12,000 school childrenannually with programs, tours, and eventsthat are all coordinated with the essentiallearning elements for each grade level inthe state. The tour program helps teachersand students learn about state historicalconcepts, art history, and cultural con-cepts that relate directly to classroominstruction. The society partners with

historic preservation, as well as a walkingtour that is held each Mother’s Day week-end at various historic neighborhoods inSpokane. It is estimated that these activi-ties reach over 3,000 individuals annually.The society’s Historic PreservationCommittee is a combination of volun-teers, staff, and professionals who helpguide preservation efforts in the area inconjunction with the Spokane HistoricPreservation Department.

EWSHS/NMAC has formal agreementswith five colleges and universities in theSpokane area to cooperate on a variety ofactivities including the sharing of collec-tions, joint academic programs, and theformal education of history teachers, andregularly enters into partnerships with avariety of governmental agencies to bringhistorical programs to the people of theregion. EWSHS/NMAC is also a majorplayer in the presentation of humanitiesprograms throughout the eastern part ofthe state; its formal partnership with theSmithsonian Institution, one of only twoin the state, brings exhibitions and humani-ties scholars to the Eastern Washingtonregion.

One of the most important resourcesavailable to the public related to historicinterpretation and heritage is the museum’sextensive historical photographic collec-tions. These collections include over200,000 photographs, about 120,000 ofwhich document the life of NativeAmericans in the West. Each year, over1,400 researchers access the collections,using the photographs in a variety ofresearch and reference projects.

A related collaborative effort is underwaybetween the Spokane Public Library,EWSHS/NMAC and the Cowles Publish-ing Company (owner of Spokane’s news-paper, The Spokesman-Review). These threeorganizations will digitize their historicalphotographic collections (400,000 imagestotal) and will make them available to thepublic through the library’s public accesscatalog. Additional interpretive informa-tion will be available at the society’s web-site. As part of this effort, the CowlesPublishing Company’s collections

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humanities councils and commissions inother states in that it receives an annualallocation from the National Endowmentfor the Humanities, which it is free to useto offset operating activities according toits own priorities. Private contributionsmatch the NEH grant.

Humanities Washington operates fewdirect service programs, choosing insteadto engage in ad hoc partnerships withorganizations such as the WashingtonState Historical Society in working withcommunity-based organizations. It is withrespect to this work that the humanitiescommission’s activities have meaning in a discussion of heritage policy. Amongthe most tangible manifestations of theapproach is the Inquiring Mind program,in which speakers on various topics in thehumanities are recruited and assigned tovarious local libraries, historical societies,senior centers, and museums. HumanitiesWashington recruits speakers, assigns themout, and pays their travel expenses. A co-payment, which is viewed by HumanitiesWashington as an incentive to local organ-izations to recruit audiences, is requiredfrom participating local organizations.The true program cost to HumanitiesWashington is approximately $500 perevent. Inquiring Mind is subsidized by thecommission with foundation or corporatefunding often used to offset all or a por-tion of the $500 fee. Washington StateHistorical Society Executive DirectorDavid Nicandri has been a frequent pre-senter at Inquiring Mind programs spon-sored by local historical societies andmuseums, and his work was mentioned inour interviews as a significant example ofhis society’s efforts to collaborate withother state-level actors such as HumanitiesWashington to reach constituencies eastof the Cascades.

The grant programs made available byHumanities Washington to local organiza-tions are often used to underwrite heri-tage activity. Its Media Center has oftensupported the development of videoprojects on heritage topics, notably a filmdeveloped by the Southwest SeattleHistorical Society using their oral histories

eighteen school districts in the easternpart of the state to present this program.The society claims that the art historycomponent is now the only formal artprogram that about 3,000 lower elemen-tary grade children from very rural schoolsystems receive due to the elimination offormal art instruction in their schools.

It is not surprising to find that in the east-ern part of the State of Washington, thekey trustee agency finds itself bridging allof the areas of state cultural policy.Perhaps the links are more apparent onceone gets away from the dense and highlyspecialized cultural ecology of the westernpart of the state, but perhaps this is alsobeing driven by budgetary implicationsand political necessity. There is a palpablesense that cultural policy decisions tend tobe made in Olympia through personalcontacts and well-developed networksrather than through policy decisions madeby all stakeholders in a cooperative spirit.As Bruce Eldredge, executive director ofthe Northwest Museum of Arts andCulture, pointed out to us, “Oftentimes,when a seat at the table is offered, it isdone late and with little understanding ofthe logistics or the costs of travel fromthe east to the west.” Often they feel thatthey are on their own.

Humanities Washington This brief discussion treats the work ofHumanities Washington in terms of itsheritage activities. A comprehensivedescription of the organization and itsrole in humanities policy has already beengiven in Chapter IV. But “heritage” as itdeals with the experiences of peoples andcultures is an inextricable component ofthe humanities and cannot be cleanly orneatly distinguished from them.

It is important to note again thatHumanities Washington is a 501(c)(3)nonprofit organization. It is neither atrustee organization nor does it receivepublic funding at the state level to defraythe costs of its operations. Indeed, as amatter of policy it has chosen not to seekstate funding. However, it is similar to

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Foundation, Historic Seattle, King CountyLandmarks, the Seattle Landmarks Com-mission, the Steamer Virginia V Foundation,the Arts Alliance of Washington, theNorthwest Railway Museum, and manyothers depending on the topics underdiscussion.

The group meets weekly at 7:00 a.m. foran hour when the Legislature is in session.It reviews bills and budgets that affect theheritage and discusses strategy for gainingpassage of the appropriate bills. The caucushas become an important place to findbill sponsors, float proposals, and learnabout what other agencies and groups are doing.

Those who participate in the HeritageCaucus feel that it has been quite success-ful. They cited a wide variety of efforts asevidence of that success: the constructionof the Washington State History Museumin Tacoma ($39 million)30; the completionof the original plan for the State Capitol($4.6 million); expansion of the Cheney-Cowles Museum in Spokane ($2.1 mil-lion); renovation of historic buildings instate parks ($5 million); and the creationand funding of the Capital Projects Fundfor Washington’s Heritage, which providesapproximately $4 million annually to her-itage projects throughout the state, andthe Building for the Arts program, whichprovides another $4 million annually tocapital projects in the arts. The caucuswould claim success in obtaining budgetsupport for the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation, the WashingtonState Historical Society, the State Office ofTourism, the Heritage Corridors Programin the Washington State Department ofTransportation, the state archives, theState Oral History Project, and the Wash-ington State Arts Commission, amongothers. The caucus has been particularlyinvolved in fighting off efforts to elimi-nate the Arts Commission. Whether all ofthese results can be attributed to theHeritage Caucus alone is less clear thanthe fact that the caucus has played a rolein each of them.

The Heritage Caucus has been sustainedfor more than 10 years, and there is little

archive. Another has dealt with the histo-ries of Japanese internment veterans.

The Heritage CaucusWith no official status, the WashingtonHeritage Caucus is a loose bipartisanorganization of state legislators and otherelected officials and individuals from thestate’s heritage, cultural, and land-basedagencies as well as representatives of non-profit organizations engaged in the her-itage, arts, and culture.29 The HeritageCaucus focuses its work on the protectionof the state’s historic and cultural legacy.

Former State Representative Max Vekichand David Nicandri, executive director ofthe Washington State Historical Society,formed the Heritage Caucus in 1991.Nicandri’s original proposal was to namethe caucus the “History Caucus” todelimit its work, but RepresentativeVekich saw that while there might well bemessy disagreements about history (con-sider the recent experience of the NationalAir and Space Museum’s exhibition of theEnola Gay), legislators would have morepositive associations with the word“heritage.”

Leadership of the Heritage Caucus isshared between a member of the Houseand a member of the Senate representingdifferent parties, but the Washington StateHistorical Society continues to providestaff support. The caucus is open to anyelected official, staff person, or organiza-tion. Typically seven to ten legislators ortheir staff, the secretary of state or a des-ignated staff member, and twelve to fif-teen individuals from state agencies orinterested private organizations attend.The Washington State Arts Commission,the Washington State Historical Society,the Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission, and the Office of Archae-ology and Historic Preservation all attendregularly. A wide variety of nonprofitpartners attend caucus meetings, includingthe Washington Trust for Historic Preserva-tion, the Olympia Heritage Commission,the Squaxin Island Tribe, the SteilacoomHistorical Society, the Maritime Heritage

29 The discussion in this sectionis drawn from our field inter-views and from “HistoricPreservation,” a workingpaper written for The PewCharitable Trusts’ project,Fostering Innovations in StateCultural Policy, by ShelleyMastran, and edited by LisaBurcham and ConstanceBeaumont for the NationalTrust for HistoricPreservation.

30 As part of the legacy of thecelebration of Washington’scentennial, the StateHistorical Society proposedthe construction of a newstate history museum inTacoma. Members of theCentennial Commission,including the governor’s wife,the secretary of state (RalphMunro), the head of theHouse AppropriationsCommittee (Gary Locke,currently the governor ofWashington State), and themajority leader of the Senate,were very supportive. Theneed to organize the legisla-tive effort to fund themuseum led to the use ofthe Heritage Caucus as oneforum for the discussion andpromotion of the effort. Atthat moment in time, the keyleaders in the House andSenate were all from theTacoma area, and the gover-nor’s wife had become amember of the board of theWashington State HistoricalSociety, so there was strongpolitical support.

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tions or agencies but rather by local levelactors. In order to develop some sense ofthis relationship, we conducted interviewsat two local historical museums as well aswith the heritage staff of four localgovernments.

Our interviews at the Cowlitz CountyHistorical Museum in Kelso and at theClark County Historical Museum inVancouver illustrate how far the distancecan be between the needs and concernsof local heritage actors, on one hand, andthe intent of state policy, on the other.

The Cowlitz County HistoricalMuseum, KelsoThe Cowlitz County Historical Museumin Kelso was founded in 1949 by theCowlitz County Historical Society “...todiscover, interpret and disseminate thehistory of Cowlitz County and SouthwestWashington.” The county historicalsociety began working with county gov-ernment by mounting exhibits in thecourthouse. A museum facility was estab-lished there in 1953 to commemorate theestablishment of the territory of Wash-ington, and the organization operatedfrom that location until, at some point inthe 1970s, the county offered the Societyits current building—originally con-structed to house an auto parts facility.The museum opened in the remodeledfacility in 1979.

Institutionally, the museum is yet anotherhybrid: it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organi-zation while at the same time functioningas a quasi-county department. The countyhires the museum director and since 1975has paid that individual’s salary and hasunderwritten the costs of operating thefacility (which is county property), includ-ing purchasing computers and paying forutilities. The salaries of all other employeesand operating expenses are the responsi-bility of the county historical society.Executive Director David Freece is acounty employee; all the others areemployees of the local historical society.The complement includes a full-timeadministrative assistant, a half-time

reason to believe that it cannot be sus-tained indefinitely. But every legislativesession is different, and new legislatorsneed to be educated and invited to partici-pate, and that is an ongoing process.Supporters of the caucus cite severalingredients that seem to be important toits success: its bipartisanship, its informalatmosphere and fluid membership, thefact that it has a regular meeting time andplace during the legislative session, thoroughstaff preparation, thorough follow-up onthe issues discussed between meetings,and a flow of good capital project pro-posals to work towards. But two otherfactors seem important as well: (1) thecaucus has enjoyed the support of twohighly engaged secretaries of state, RalphMunro and Sam Reed, both of whomhave been regular attendees and avid her-itage supporters, and (2) the WashingtonState Historical Society has a particularlyclear interest in keeping the caucus strongand effective.

An Arts Caucus, modeled on the HeritageCaucus, has met two of the past five years,primarily at the urging of RepresentativeMary Skinner, who is also a commissionerof the Washington State Arts Commission.This caucus met two or three times dur-ing the legislative session and tended tohave smaller attendance than the HeritageCaucus. It appears that the Arts Caucushas now been folded back into the HeritageCaucus because the latter is seen as a bet-ter forum (partly because it is betterattended) for pursuing arts issues duringthe session. Nevertheless, in this formatarts issues may end up playing secondfiddle to heritage issues.

State Heritage Policy froma Local Point of View Washington is notable for the number oflocally founded and operated historicalsocieties and museums dedicated to thepreservation and celebration of the past.Most of these are organized at the countylevel, though there are also some impor-tant municipal offices and organizations.We wondered to what extent state policyis carried out not by state-level organiza-

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and was donated for use as a Carnegielibrary in 1908. The facility was used forthat purpose until 1963, when the spacebecame inadequate to house the librarycollection. The local historical society puttogether an association to buy the build-ing and remodel it to serve as a historicalmuseum. The museum was directed andoperated entirely by volunteers until 2001,when David Fenton was hired as its firstexecutive director.

The museum’s total annual operatingbudget is $155,000, of which approximately$26,000 is provided by Clark County as anannual appropriation. County support isthe largest single source of external fund-ing. The museum does not charge admis-sion fees and has no plans to do so forthe foreseeable future. Plans are afoot toconvert the permanent “County Store”exhibit into a museum store, but revenuefrom sales of memorabilia and souvenirsis not presently a factor on the incomeside of the budget. Most of the balanceof operating support comes from museummemberships, which range from $25 to$1,000 annually. The rest of the museum’soperating income is derived from rental ofthe facility to outside groups and fromproject grant support.

Exhibiting the historical society’s holdingsat the facility is its core program, althougha “traveling trunk” exhibition is beingreadied to take to local schools and busi-ness facilities, and a speaker’s bureau anda newsletter are also being initiated. DavidFenton described as being among thestrengths of the collection “...a great col-lection of women’s clothing...materials onNative Americans, [and] military para-phernalia such as tools, swords, guns.”Like many other local museums, themuseum has hosted David Nicandri as anInquiring Mind presenter funded throughHumanities Washington, and he has alsospoken at the local historical society’sannual banquet. David Fenton voicessome of the difficulties that local museumsand historical societies encounter whentrying to take advantage of opportunitiesoffered by state cultural policy, “Wehaven’t used traveling exhibitions from

education coordinator (a retired teacher),and a .6 FTE public programs coordinator.

The most direct interaction of theCowlitz County Museum with state cul-tural policy has been through a grantfrom the Capital Projects Fund forWashington’s Heritage administered bythe Washington State Historical Society.Said David Freece during our June 2002site visit, “We went to [state historicalsociety sponsored] pre-application grantworkshops, had a lot of good interaction,and got a lot of good feedback. They letus see examples of previously successfulapplications. When the process hit theLegislature we talked to our legislators.But the screening process was the reallyimportant part as far as we were concerned.”

This museum also has an ongoing rela-tionship with the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation, participatingfrom time to time in assessing local sitesand nominating them for historic designa-tion. It also participates fairly regularly inthe Inquiring Mind program, which recruitsexperts on the humanities and pays aportion of the costs associated with theirpresentations to county museum audi-ences and local historical societies.

Beyond these few exceptions, state cul-tural policy as conventionally construedappears not to have had much impact.The museum is not involved in theWashington State Historical Society’splans to celebrate the Lewis and Clarkbicentennial. Speaking generally on therelationship between his museum andstate-level policy actors, Director Freecesaid, “If the state went away we wouldn’tbe directly affected. The [state historicalsociety] has helped with exhibitions inprevious years, co-sponsored some log-ging poetry festivals.... We’re talking withthem about doing something along thoselines next year.”

The Clark County HistoricalMuseum, VancouverThe building that today houses the ClarkCounty Historical Museum in Vancouverwas originally built as a private residence

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very important twist to the provision ofcultural services.

The mission statement of the Office ofCultural Services captures the scope of itsactivities:

Outreach, education, and accessibility are at theheart of this program focused on growing arts,culture, and heritage programming. Working withpeople from throughout the community, the cityfosters creativity and increased public awarenessand support of the area’s cultural and historicresources through the Cultural Plan, the CulturalCommission, Heritage Education and manage-ment of the city’s cultural resources. CulturalServices manages public art, international gifts,the Cultural Grant Program and other resourcesthat facilitate heritage education and encourage the authentic cultural expression of our diversecommunity.

This office has been in existence for aboutfive years. The director of Cultural Services,Leann Johnson, indicated during our July2002 site visit that the current priority ofthe office lies in the administration ofpublic art—that is, in the review andplacement of gifts of art objects to thecity. This process is handled by a CitizensReview Panel drawing from individualsinvolved in historic preservation, repre-sentatives from the neighborhoods, andartists and arts organizations. The Officeof Cultural Services also sponsors a pub-lic Heritage Education Series of lecturesand presentations

This office has entered into an agreementwith the county to maintain its status as aCertified Local Government so that it cantake advantage of the programs of theOffice of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation at both the local and countylevels. A review process involving theOffice of Cultural Services is triggeredwhenever a property owner nominates hisor her property as a historic site. “This isreally a state function,” Ms. Johnson said,“but the city and county have assumedlocal responsibility for its administration.”The state Office of Archeology andHistoric Preservation then reviews andapproves recommendations from themunicipality before acting on state

the [Washington State] Historical Societyor anyone else because we can’t guaranteethat we can adequately protect any cul-tural property anyone might lend us....The [humanities] commission has alsobeen after us to raise our curatorialstandards.”

Efforts to improve in these respects areentirely local initiatives. In Fenton’s view,the state provides neither sufficient tech-nical assistance nor direct program sup-port nor has it done so in the past. Themuseum participated in one of the recentcapital projects pre-application workshopsbut has yet to put in a request. Theyexpect to do so for the 2005-2007 cycle.Director Fenton said, “By then we shouldbe able to show that we’ve invested inourselves.”

Another element in the local response to state heritage policy is found withinmunicipal or county agencies whoseresponsibilities include heritage and his-toric preservation. We selected threemunicipalities and one county—Vancouver,Spokane, Tacoma, and King County—that have established agencies that focusall or a good deal of their activity withinthe heritage realm. Three of these fouragencies are of additional interest in thecurrent context because they combine avariety of policy concerns into one coor-dinated office. Thus, cultural policy at thelocal level—including arts policy, humani-ties policy, heritage policy, and eventourism policy—is organized in a way thathas not been the case at the state level.Although our emphasis in the currentchapter is on heritage policy, mention willalso be made of the involvement of theseagencies in other cultural policy spheres.

The Office of Cultural Services, VancouverThe City of Vancouver Office of CulturalServices is a unit of the CommunityServices Department of the City ofVancouver. This location as part of thecity’s overall community services gives a

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director and four program administrators,including a historic preservation officer.

The division conducts a range ofprograms within the realm of arts andculture, broadly defined, which includethe following:

Community Arts Partners—contracts for cultural services to mid-sized arts and cultural organiza-tions ($2,500-$5,000);

The Tacoma Artists Initiative Program—support for original artworks gener-ated by individual artists in alldisciplines (minimum of $1,000);

The Neighborhood Arts Program—fundingfor arts projects in Tacoma’s neighbor-hoods and business districts (typically$1,000-$3,000 with a maximum of$5,000);

The Festivals Program—support tounique events (typically $1,000-$3,500with a maximum of $5,000); and

The Anchor Fund—ongoing operatingsupport provided through a biennialreview process that uses formatsestablished by Corporate Council forthe Arts/ArtsFund and the Patrons of Northwest Cultural and HistoricOrganizations ($7,000 to $15,000 per year).

Much of what the division is doing focuseson the arts and culture as an engine togenerate economic development. In thelatter regard, it interacts with the statetourism office, and with the Governor’sOffice for Protocol in hosting travelingdelegations. It receives approximately$7,500 annually from the WashingtonState Arts Commission to support itsactivities specific to the arts. As regardsheritage programming, the office receivesa small allocation from the Office ofArcheology and Historic Preservation forits historic preservation activities as aCertified Local Government. Beyondthese interactions, the impact of statepolicy on the activities of the divisionappears to be minimal.

designation or passing the property alongfor federal designation.

Beyond these fairly limited activities, statecultural policy has rather little role inshaping the activities of this office.

Culture and Tourism DivisionEconomic DevelopmentDepartment, TacomaTacoma is a city that clearly sees the artsand culture as an important part of itsfuture. Many different efforts have beenconverging to make Tacoma a culturaldestination. The renovation of two his-toric downtown theaters and the con-struction of a new theater, with the threecombined under the umbrella of theBroadway Center for the Performing Arts;the opening of the new Washington StateHistory Museum in 1996; the opening ofthe Museum of Glass: InternationalCenter for Contemporary Art in 2002; theopening of the new Tacoma Art Museumin May 2003; the opening of a newmotorcycle museum, also slated for 2003;and the proposal for the Harold E.LeMay Car Museum to be opened in 2005 are the most visible manifestationsof this emphasis.

The city has gotten behind the idea of thearts in economic development in a bigway, and this is reflected in the structureof the office that deals with cultural pol-icy. Established in 1999, the Culture andTourism Division is a component of thecity’s Economic Development Department.It incorporates three separate offices—Arts, Historic Preservation, and SisterCities. Tourism activity is shared across allthree of these offices. This organizationalstructure was adopted when the citycouncil made economic development itsfirst priority. We were told that when thisarrangement was proposed local artspeople “jumped onto the bandwagon....The city is redefining itself through thearts and culture, and the economic devel-opment approach allows them to get tothe table.” The annual operating budgetof the division is currently $1.6 millionwith a staff of five professionals—a

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The impetus for creating this local depart-ment was the 1976 bicentennial of theUnited States, which stimulated a gooddeal of preservation interest. As part ofthe activities leading up to the bicentennial,the Spokane Junior League had conductedits own survey of local properties of his-toric significance, which triggered theestablishment of the Historic Preserva-tion Department as the Certified LocalGovernment entity in 1979.

The Spokane Historic PreservationDepartment manages the process of makingnominations to the local, state, and nationalhistoric registers. The Spokane Register ofHistoric Places is the city/county catalogof locally significant properties. Applicantsprepare each nomination themselves orhire a consultant for assistance.

If a property is listed, the property ownermust sign an agreement to obtain a spe-cial review for any exterior work. Thereare over 155 properties on the SpokaneRegister of Historic Places, includingeighty-three properties within the CorbinPark Local Historic District. The Wash-ington Heritage Register is theWashington catalog of properties withstate significance. Applicants generallyprepare the nomination form, because the requirements are less stringent. Overseventy properties in Spokane are listedon the Washington register. And TheNational Register of Historic Places is thefederal government’s official register ofnationally significant properties. Over1,300 properties in Spokane County arelisted on the national register, includingeleven districts.

The Historic Preservation Departmentserves as the gatekeeper monitoringaccess to special benefits that accompanylisting. As is the case elsewhere, a varietyof state and federal incentives are avail-able to owners of historic properties inSpokane County. Spokane is proud of thefact that it has had seventeen certifiedrehabilitations over a three-year period,resulting in over twenty million dollars inconstruction costs. Many of these proj-ects have returned properties to the taxrolls; all have created jobs and generated

Historic PreservationDepartment, SpokaneThe Spokane Historic Preservation Depart-ment is a joint city/county agency, createdin 1979 as Washington’s first CertifiedLocal Government historic preservationprogram. (It is similar to the Office ofCultural Services in Vancouver in that it hastaken on both local and county responsi-bilities with respect to preservation.) Itsmission is “to identify and facilitate thepreservation of significant properties overfifty years old, thereby recycling existingstructures at a savings to the communityand enhancing our quality of life.”

The agency’s stated goals are to:

Promote the use of financial incen-tives to encourage investment inhistoric properties;

Advise city and county departmentsand agencies when their action or inac-tion may affect historic resources;

Encourage revitalization of neighbor-hoods and protection of propertyvalues within historic districts;

Document architecturally or histori-cally significant resources;

Review exterior alterations, newconstruction, and demolition to ensurecompatible change to properties onthe local register;

Provide technical assistance and educa-tion to property owners and interestedcitizens, neighborhood organizations,and other groups;

Promote tourism, foster civic pride,and enhance quality of life; and

Coordinate with the Office ofArchaeology and HistoricPreservation, the National AdvisoryCouncil on Historic Preservation, andthe National Trust for HistoricPreservation.

This agency manages the Certified LocalGovernment Program for the City andCounty of Spokane. Teresa Brum is itsdirector and sole full-time employee.

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within King County government and isadministered by its Landmarks Commission.This was necessary because an independentauthority cannot be granted regulatorypowers reserved to state or localgovernments.

The newly constituted authority retainsthe important sources of revenue thatwere previously available to the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources: ashare of the revenue generated by thecounty’s hotel-motel tax on overnightaccommodations,32 1 percent of countyexpenditures for certain constructionprojects that is dedicated to the purchaseof public art, and a small amount ofgeneral county tax revenue ($200,000 nextyear) for the maintenance of the publicart collection. Historically, the hotel-moteltax has generated approximately ten timesas much money for this agency as haveallocations from the county’s generaloperating budget, and this ratio is onlylikely to increase under the new structure.Indeed, it is this dedicated source of rev-enue that makes the switch to a publicdevelopment authority a viable idea.

Taken together, these three sources offunds cover basic operating expenses. Butthe authority will now be able to seek outother sources of funding, including pri-vate donations, which were harder tocome by when it was a public agency. Itcan, for example, own, develop, and sellproperty, a major advantage when savinghistoric properties or developing work-spaces for cultural organizations. Theauthority is able to pursue additionalincome through grants and fee-basedconsulting services.

Beyond the tasks retained by the county’sLandmarks Commission, the CulturalDevelopment Authority has both aHeritage Program and a Historic Preserva-tion Program. The Heritage Programfocuses on excellence and creativity in theidentification, preservation, and interpre-tation of the unique heritage resources ofKing County and the education of thepublic about their value. In the words ofthe new website, this is accomplished by:

revenue through taxes, payroll, and otherrelated costs.

Ms. Brum characterized the work of thedepartment in the following way: “We’repretty reactive. We don’t have the resourcesto go out looking for historic propertieson our own.... People call us, largelybecause it occurs to them that they maybe able to take advantage of tax incen-tives for fixing up their properties. Ireview the site and measure its signifi-cance against the relevant criteria. I sub-mit my recommendations to the board,and they have always supported my rec-ommendations.” But the true impact ofstate cultural policy is, once again, limited.

The King County Office of CulturalResources/The CulturalDevelopment Authority of KingCounty, Seattle and EnvironsUntil quite recently, King County organ-ized its cultural policy offices into a singleagency of county government, the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources.This office was divided into four units: aHistoric Preservation Program, a HeritageProgram, an Arts Program (the KingCounty Arts Commission) and a PublicArts Program. At the time of our initialsite visits—March 2002—the office had astaff of seventeen and an annual budgetof $9.3 million. But in early 2003 the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources wasreorganized into a public developmentauthority, the Cultural DevelopmentAuthority (CDA) of King County. Thismove toward semi-privatization31 of theagency followed severe reductions in thecounty’s budget, which slashed the Officeof Cultural Resources’ share of countydollars from $2.3 million (2001) to $1.3million (2002) and to $200,000 (2003).

This newly reconfigured organizationretains all of the activities that werepreviously under its umbrella with oneimportant exception in the heritage area.The regulation of historic resources,including the identification and monitor-ing of significant districts, sites, buildings,structures, and objects, has remained

31 The Office of CulturalResources looked intobecoming totally nonprofit,but the county would nothave been able to simply give it money if it were anonprofit. Rather, by statelaw it would have had to bidcompetitively to providecultural services to thecounty. Therefore, the semi-private, semi-public status of a public developmentauthority became the mostattractive option.

32 The story of how hotel-motel tax revenues came tobe used for cultural purposesin King County is, in itself,an interesting policy tale.King County chose to adopta state-authorized hotel-motel tax in 1967 to providerevenue to pay off bonds forthe construction of theKingdome. By the mid 1980sthe fund was producing morethan was needed. Whatwould be done with the sur-plus? At the time there was aproposal to build a new facil-ity for the Seattle ArtsMuseum, and it was sug-gested that the surplus be used for the museum.Eventually there was a com-promise: $5.3 million wouldservice the annual debt on


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the Kingdome. 75 percent of any excess would be dedi-cated to cultural programs,with 80 percent of thisamount going to the arts and20 percent to heritage; theremaining 25 percent wouldgo to youth sports, tourism,open space acquisition, andKingdome maintenance (but, in the event, all ofthis 25 percent went toKingdome maintenance).In King County, of the 75 percent that went to cul-tural programs, 70 percentwent into facilities and 30percent into programs. OnJanuary 1, 2001 the splitbetween cultural programsand other programs waschanged to 70 percent/30percent, with 40 percent ofthe 70 percent (28 percentoverall) being allocated to anendowment fund that wasbeing created to prepare forthe time when the hotel-motel tax ends. The remain-ing 60 percent was leftdiscretionary. To Jim Kelly,head of the Cultural Develop-ment Authority, thesechanges make a lot of sense;while the first ten years offunding went disproportion-ately into infrastructure,


zations; its Sustained/Operating SupportPrograms help organizations cover rou-tine expenses incurred in delivering artsor heritage programs; and its SpecialProjects Program fosters innovations inthe arts and heritage. The LandmarkRehabilitation Program is, of course, lim-ited to individuals and organizations whoare stabilizing and restoring importanthistoric properties.

As a Certified Local Government, theauthority expects to receive $15,000 to$25,000 annually in pass-through fundingfrom the Office of Archeology andHistoric Preservation for its historicpreservation program. These funds areused for designation and preservationwork, and most of the money is passedthrough to municipalities within thecounty after the authority’s administrativecosts are deducted. (As a matter of policy,the authority does not compete for sup-port from the Washington State ArtsCommission.)

The Cultural Development Authority ofKing County is built on the foundation of its predecessor, the very dynamic andeffective King County Office of CulturalResources. In many respects their pro-grams and activities outshine the programsand activities of the state-level agencies.The staff is committed and creative.When asked about their interaction withstate-level policy in the heritage andpreservation fields, they were more likelyto voice disappointment than enthusiasm.An important source of revenue for theauthority is the hotel-motel tax, but it is apoint of contention for those in preserva-tion because of limits on the percentagethat can be used for preservation asopposed to the arts. Julie Koler, the his-toric preservation officer, often finds her-self at odds with the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation, which, inher words, “has bizarre interpretations offederal law with respect to protection ofcultural resources.” She has found it diffi-cult to preserve historic bridges eventhough the King County Department ofTransportation should, by federal guide-lines, have access to federal resources

Contributing to an inclusive record ofthe diverse history and heritage ofKing County, including its threatenedand neglected geographic, ethnic, andthematic aspects;

Encouraging participation in heritageprograms and activities by individuals,organizations, and agencies throughoutKing County;

Promoting professional standards andbest practices;

Strengthening and supporting innova-tive heritage projects, organizationsand agencies that provide public benefits;

Preserving and enhancing traditionalaspects of community character; and

Transmitting cultural resources andvalues to future generations.

The Historic Preservation Program fos-ters the preservation of historic and pre-historic resources such as buildings andsites because of the important contribu-tions they make to understanding andappreciating the region’s rich heritage. Itdevelops partnerships with organizations,individuals, and governments to:

Build community appreciation for theadvantages of preserving importantphysical reminders of [the region’s]past;

Broaden community support for pre-serving those resources; and

Celebrate with [communities and their]visitors the delights of preservationprojects that bring the past to life.

In a noteworthy departure from the practicein most cultural agencies, the programs ofthe Cultural Development Authority arenot specific to a subfield of culture;rather, they cut across fields. Their loanand grant programs, for example, areopen to both arts and heritage projectsthat further the objectives of these pro-grams. For example, CDA’s CulturalEducation Program makes grants to bringthe arts and heritage to the schools; itsCultural Facilities Program makes grantsavailable to both arts and heritage organi-

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level housed under one roof as it is at thecounty level in King County. They arestrong believers in the advantages that can come from a coordinated policyeffort cutting across agencies and acrossthe arts, the humanities, and the heritage.

Observations andConclusionsIn Washington heritage policy seems toenjoy broader political and popular sup-port than either arts policy or humanitiespolicy. Two consecutive secretaries ofstate have been particularly importantsupporters of heritage initiatives. Thatthis should be so is not terribly surprising.People want to have their stories told, andthey want to understand their histories.They want to save that which has provento be of value to the population, whetherthat includes historic buildings, importantsites and natural environments, or impor-tant objects. And it has been relativelyeasy to coalesce support around majorvisible projects such as the constructionof the Washington State History Museumin Tacoma and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane.

As we have seen, a variety of state agen-cies, programs, and nonprofit organiza-tions are involved in the heritage and inhistoric preservation. But state heritagepolicy in the State of Washington cannotbe fully appreciated by focusing exclu-sively at state-level agencies. That would,in some ways, miss the point entirely. Inorder to comprehend the scope and reachof public heritage policy, one must viewstate heritage policy in relation to theactivities of the many heritage and his-toric preservation efforts operating at themunicipal or county level.

As we examined the behavior of policyactors at the state level we were immedi-ately struck by the limited degree of policyand program interaction among them. Themain actors—the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation, the HeritageCorridors Program, the Washington StateHistorical Society, the Eastern WashingtonState Historical Society, and Humanities

through WSDOT. She had similar com-plaints about the state Growth ManagementAct, which she finds ineffective withrespect to preservation possibilities andout of line with federal guidelines. Insome cases one agency does not knowwhat the other is doing. She cited cases ofprojects that should have been subject toSection 106 review that were not.

The programs of the Cultural DevelopmentAuthority are also affected at a moregeneral level by state policy. Because ofthe restrictions in the constitution of theState of Washington, the authority isobliged to “purchase public benefit”rather than making unconstrained trans-fers of state funds. To the extent that it isusing state funds, it must contract withrecipients spelling out the expected “publicbenefit.” In other words, these programsmust be structured around a contractualfee for services.

Because the implications of these restric-tions are not very clear, King Countysought a legal opinion on the issue ofpublic benefit. Could the agency givemoney to arts and heritage organizationsand projects? The answer was “Yes” pro-vided that the public got something inexchange. But there does seem to be someleeway. In the case of arts funding andcontracting, the authority stipulates that30 percent of the funded amount has togenerate public benefits such as free access,special access for elderly, the infirm, orstudents. The 30 percent benefit is actu-ally stipulated within the contract, and it istypically structured so that the benefit canbe realized over ten years. In other words,recipients are given ten years to “pay back”through their provision of public benefitsa payment that has been construed as asort of “loan.” Thus, the typical contractis a 70 percent gift and a 30 percent loan,which the recipient pays back with serv-ices, not cash. The goal is to achieve abalance between finance and benefit.

If there is one single message about statecultural policy to emerge from our inter-views with staff of the Cultural Develop-ment Authority of King County it is theirwish to see cultural policy at the state


expenditures now flowinto endowment, andeventually they will flowinto operating expenses.Under the current agree-ment there is a twenty-year limit on expendituresfor culture. Beginning in2013 (through 2020) allof the excess is targetedto go into an account topay off debt on theSeattle Seahawks footballstadium. The CulturalDevelopment Authorityof King County believesthat there is excess in thatwindow and is trying todecide whether to goafter any excess thatmight be available from2013 to 2020 or to simplygo after all of the excessbeyond that point. Theendowment is intended tohelp make whateverbridge in funding isnecessary.

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its commitment to the humanities broadlyconstrued.

By contrast, the Washington State HistoricalSociety’s interactions with local organiza-tions are broader, including the activitiesof its Heritage Resource Center, particu-larly in the administration of the CapitalGrants Fund for Washington’s Heritage;its involvement in the Center for ColumbiaRiver History consortium; its director’speriodic participation in Inquiring Mindprograms; and its leadership of the Lewisand Clark bicentennial effort. Neverthe-less, most of its programmatic effortstake place almost exclusively within itsown administrative boundaries and mostof its resources are allocated toward thatend. In other words, it is running the statehistorical museum with a wide panoply of related programs more than it ispromulgating a state heritage policythrough its actions.

The Center for Columbia River History is an example of state involvement in alocal program that is entirely unlike any of the others described here. By makingits archival resources and travelingexhibitions available to local museumsand historical societies in NorthwesternOregon/Southwestern Washington, thecenter reinforces the efforts of its part-ners to celebrate the history of the region.It is a collaboration that seems to workwell on two levels: (1) as an institutionalpartnership between WSHS and two uni-versities, and (2) as a programmatic part-nership between the center and localheritage programs that operate within itsservice area. This model would appear tooffer a particularly promising frameworkthrough which the state might make costeffective investments in programs ofregional interest that capitalize on andexpand the impact of ongoing local her-itage activity.

It is worth asking whether efforts such as the Center for Columbia River Historyare the result of the particular institu-tional makeup of cultural policy in Wash-ington. It can be seen as a progressivedevelopment that becomes possible whenan agency chooses to extend itself (much

Washington—differ from one another intheir structure (private v. public v. hybrid),financing, scope of policy authority, andinteractions with the local historicalsocieties, museums, and municipal agenciesengaged in heritage and preservation work.The interactions with local communitiesof the Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation and the Heritage CorridorsProgram are the clearest, the most enduring,and the most explicit. Much if not mostof the work of the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation is triggered bylocal initiative, and in this important respectit is similar to the Heritage CorridorsProgram, which relies as a matter of pol-icy on community initiative in nominatingroutes for Scenic Byway and HeritageCorridor designation. Both of them operatewithin the context of state agencies whosebroader purposes are only incidentallyrelated to culture. The Heritage Caucusoffers some coherence and coordination,but its deliberations focus more on strate-gies to support each of the elements ofheritage (and arts and humanities) policythan on ways to collaborate in order todevelop a richer state cultural policy.

Having said this, it is also true that thereare more examples of collaborationwithin the heritage portfolio than thereare in either the arts or humanities portfo-lios. The Lewis and Clark bicentennial isthe best example. It may well be that spe-cial moments related to the heritage arethe moments at which one is most likelyto find the impetus for cross-agency col-laboration and cooperation. The nascenteffort toward cooperation on culturaltourism (discussed in Chapter VI), whilean important expression of intent, hasseen less progress.

The Inquiring Mind program and its smallgrants programs have given HumanitiesWashington a fair degree of local presenceand visibility, although its presence in anyone locale is limited to the relatively shortduration of any given presentation orproject and/or the limited amount ofgrant dollars involved. And heritage isonly one, admittedly significant, aspect of

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munity sponsors and advocates. Somedegree of variation surely occurs in theways in which local programs actually goabout doing their work. Yet the purposesthat animate the work and the statutoryand procedural requirements associatedwith determining the historic significanceof a site or a route are sufficiently trans-parent to reduce substantially the level ofpotential ambiguity.

In both instances, the purposes of lawand policy are clear, but the origins oftheir policies are essentially federal. TheNational Historic Preservation Act framesthe work of the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation to a high degreeand establishes the definitional constructswithin which it carries out its work. Thefocus is explicit—the preservation of val-ued examples of the built environment—and the network of local and countyheritage preservation programs must fittheir activities to it if the valued historicproperties they identify are to be assignedanything more than local historic designa-tion. The federal and state tax incentivesassociated with designation make thesedeterminations particularly meaningful toeveryone having a stake in the outcome,as do the limited grants funds.

Similarly, the significance of the HeritageCorridors Program is intimately linked tothe Intermodal Surface TransportationEfficiency Act and the National ScenicByway Program established in federal lawand policy in 1991. The requirement inISTEA that states must define their rolesand responsibilities with their ScenicByways programs to qualify for federalgrant support triggered the series ofactions by the governor, a few key legisla-tors, and WSDOT officials that broughtthe program to its current level of influ-ence and impact. But the federal influencein defining the functions and operationsof the Office of Archeology and HistoricPreservation and the Heritage CorridorsProgram (and their administrative locationwithin state agencies whose purposes arevery different from one another and areessentially unrelated to cultural pursuits)has also contributed to their relative

like the creation of Centrum through thecombined efforts of the Washington StateArts Commission and the WashingtonState Parks and Recreation Commission).In this case, the hybrid status of theWashington State Historical Society placesit in a position to be able to tap moreeasily private sources of funding support,e.g., the first major grant for an endow-ment ever made by the MurdockCharitable Trust. It has not yet becomecommon, and it may well be more diffi-cult, for mainline state agencies to seekout such funding, though the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds Arts ParticipationInitiative through the Washington StateArts Commission is one such example.

Moreover, the involvement of both statehistorical societies as partners with regionalpublic universities offers a particularlyintriguing model of a collaboration pro-ducing significant heritage (and humani-ties) program activity that would probablynever occur under other local auspices.

A major defining element in the interac-tions between the Office of Archeologyand Historic Preservation and theHeritage Corridors Program, on the onehand, and the array of local programs, onthe other, is the high level of shared pur-pose and programmatic coherence thatexists among them. The procedures asso-ciated with identifying, assessing, nomi-nating, and listing historic sites and scenicroutes are designed to be consistentacross cases and at all levels of govern-ment. Each Certified Local Governmentheritage preservation program must knowand incorporate the standards embeddedin the National Historic Preservation Actand related state law as regards the deter-mination of whether a given nominatedsite has historic value and the level of sig-nificance—national and/or state and/orlocal—attached to it. Similarly, the proce-dures for identifying, nominating, andassessing prospective Scenic Byways andHeritage Tour routes are reasonablyexplicit, and Heritage Corridors programstaff exert a good deal of programmaticeffort in the provision of guidance andtechnical assistance to prospective com-

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Affairs Office of the City of Vancouver.By contrast, the Cowlitz County Museum’squasi-public character and the definingfeatures of public life in that locale makeit the best available candidate to do thesame or similar work.

One model of a dedicated city/countyheritage program is the Spokane HistoricPreservation Department. Local publicinvolvement in the arts in that communityis the province of an entirely differentmunicipal agency. But elsewhere (Vancouver,Tacoma, and King County) arts, heritage,and humanities programs are consolidatedinto single agencies. In Tacoma the missionof the agency is expanded even further by explicitly tying it to the promotion oftourism and economic development. Thenature and extent of state heritage policyinvolvement in any of these programs isclearly the product of factors that areprofoundly local in their origins and char-acter. Clearly, one size does not fit all.The question that remains is: Should thisbecome the reason for not developing amore integrated statewide approach toheritage policy, in particular, and culturalpolicy, more generally?

Despite the wide variety of agencies,programs, and institutions that have beendiscussed in the current chapter, there isanother important element of state cul-tural policy—and state heritage policy inparticular—that has not been addressedhere: the role of what might be called the“land-based” state agencies. In Washing-ton, the natural environment looms largein the public’s consciousness, and withinthe agencies that are charged with envi-ronmental and land-based policy, there isa growing consciousness of the presenceand importance of historic resources.Many land-based agencies are directlyresponsible for cultural resources thatcome within their purview, many ofwhich are actually owned by these agen-cies. The role that these agencies play instate cultural policy is explored next.

isolation from one another among theconstellation of state-level actors involvedin heritage policy work. In both cases,their focus is entirely on the built environ-ment, and their reliance on federal match-ing funds means that federal priorities andexpectations largely define the scope oftheir activities. The broader storytellingand interpretation aspects of heritageactivity inevitably fall outside the range of their federally defined resources andcapabilities.

The interaction between any state heritageagency and any given local program isprofoundly influenced by the nature andcharacter of the local program in question.Each local program is a creature of thecommunity from which it springs; each ofthose described here is unique. Even thetwo county historical museums discussedhere—the Cowlitz County Museum andthe Clark County Museum—exhibitunique features. The Cowlitz CountyMuseum, while a 501(c)(3) entity, is in itsstructural relationship to county govern-ment akin to the sort of trustee relation-ship exemplified at the state level by theWashington and Eastern WashingtonState Historical Societies, while the ClarkCounty Museum is a more traditionalexpression of the nonprofit organizationalmodel. Yet, both of them do receive sig-nificant funding from county government,one as a quasi-county department and theother as the recipient of ongoing biennialcontracts that underwrite a portion of itsoperating budget.

Both of these museums have participatedin the Inquiring Mind program. However,the Cowlitz County Museum’s involvementwith the Office of Archeology andHistoric Preservation in the assessment of local sites nominated for historic desig-nation and its participation in the CapitalProjects Fund for Washington’s Heritageset it apart from its Clark County counter-part in the extent to which it interactswith state policy actors and resources.This is a reflection of the fact that inClark County local participation in thenomination and assessment of historicsites is the responsibility of the Cultural

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The Land-Based Agencies and State Cultural PolicySusan Bonaiuto

Chapter VI

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We wondered if the collective referencesto culture, aesthetics, and heritage in theRevised Code are the result of the influ-ence of particular legislators or legislativestaff, or if they reflect a shared under-standing that the land and the culture ofWashington are inseparable. We con-cluded the latter; over and over we askedinterviewees about the cultural referencesin the Revised Code governing land-basedagencies and programs, and the answerwas always similar: “For Washingtonians,our relationship with the environmentdefines our culture.” Harriet Beale of thePuget Sound Water Quality Action Teamsaid that the preservation of Puget Soundis, by definition, cultural: “It is aboutpreservation of the smells, sounds, andvisual impact of the Sound. It is aboutthe economic and leisure activities offishing and shell fishing. It brings peopletogether and defines peoples’ sense ofcommunity.” Or as Regina Hackett, artcritic, and M.L. Lyke, Lifestyles writer forthe Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said in responseto this observation, “It’s an assumed con-text [describing] what people want to be,and what we assume we are in the busi-ness of doing. This is a reflection ofpolicy. [It’s like] motherhood and applepie, a reflection of the Washington spirit.”Thus, in Washington cultural policy andenvironmental policy intersect.

Helped by the prevalence of thisunderlying philosophy and understanding,whether stated explicitly in policy orunderstood implicitly in a “Washingtonway of life,” land-based agencies areimportant players in the realm of culturalpolicy in Washington. The major players—the Department of Natural Resources, theDepartment of Fish and Wildlife, theDepartment of Transportation, and the

Despite the material insulation in which we wrapourselves, these tousled forests and ocean currentspushing through inland passages still determinehow we live; the landscape overwhelms. We are notthat removed—yet—from the arms of the land.

Timothy Egan, The Good Rain, 8

The natural environment looms large inthe consciousness of Washingtonians, andthe land, the landscape, and the environ-ment are key concerns of state policy inWashington. Accordingly, a number ofthe departments of the state governmenthave been charged with overseeing thevarious aspects of land management,environmental policy, and developmentpolicy. At the same time, many of theseagencies are becoming increasingly sensitiveto cultural policy—in large part becausethey have come to realize that importantcultural resources are under their steward-ship—and they have begun to becomedirectly involved in state cultural policythrough a wide variety of programmaticinitiatives.

Some of these agencies have entered thecultural policy arena quite simply becausethey have had to figure out how to carefor the cultural heritage properties andartifacts that they happen to own, butothers have become involved through avariety of individual programs that gowell beyond ownership, protection, main-tenance, and conservation. Throughoutour interviews with the land-basedagencies, terms such as cultural landscape,historical trails, cultural resources, culturaland historical artifacts, aesthetics, andenvironmental design came up again andagain. A review of the sections of theRevised Code of Washington that governthese agencies reveals countless referencesto these same concepts.1

1 For some examples, seeRCW §27.34.200; §43.30.138;§43.330.060; §43.21C.020;§43.51.395(3); §47.06C.040;§47.39; §50.65.010;§70.94.011; §79A.35.070;§79A.05.305; §79A.55.020;§90.54.010; or §90.58.100.

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Cultural Policy Themes inthe Land-Based AgenciesAs has already been mentioned, it becamevery clear early in our interviewingprocess that we would have to expand ournotion of state cultural policy actors toincorporate a wide range of what mightbe termed the “land-based agencies.”2

Some of the cultural policy themes thatwe became aware of as part of thisinquiry were quite familiar, having beenobserved in each of the other areas ofcultural policy, but some of them wererather different, reflecting the particularconcerns that become evident whencultural policy and environmental policyintersect.

Explicit Statements of Cultural PolicyThe first place to look for cultural policyin any of its manifestations is to evidenceof explicit cultural policy statements.Among the land-based agencies, two suchdocuments stand out—the Memorandum ofUnderstanding on Cultural Tourism and theCultural Resources Management Policy of theWashington State Parks and RecreationCommission. Our interviewees mentionedthese documents often, citing them as evi-dence of a palpable move toward culturalpolicy within the land-based agencies.These documents provide excellent exam-ples of the depth and breadth of culturalpolicy already in place in these land-basedagencies.

Memorandum of Understanding on Cultural Tourism

The Memorandum of Understanding onCultural Tourism (MOU) featured promi-nently in many of our interviews withland-based agencies. It was created as across-agency initiative with the specificgoal of “capturing the economic value ofcultural tourism while protecting the veryresources that attract visitors.” Although it was created in the service of tourismgoals, it appears to have a greater pur-pose. The memorandum defines culturaltourism and outlines specific principalswith respect to cultural resources. To

Parks and Recreation Commission, amongothers—all support initiatives designed topreserve and protect the cultural, histori-cal and aesthetic landscape. Moreover, theParks and Recreation Commission actuallyspecifies the protection of “cultural sites”as part of its mission statement (discussedfurther below). The Department of Commu-nity, Trade and Economic Developmentsupports initiatives related to culturaltourism and the design and preservationof the built environment. Smaller agen-cies such as the Interagency Committeefor Outdoor Recreation, the WashingtonState University Cooperative ExtensionService, the Puget Sound Water QualityAction Team, and the Department ofAgriculture and its related CommodityCommissions all either support orencourage initiatives that include culturalcomponents. Although we have refrainedfrom estimating the total expenditureinvolved in the cultural investmentsrevealed by our analysis, it is noteworthythat among the land-based agencies tensof millions of dollars are invested incultural resource preservation, interpreta-tion, creation, and infrastructure, allinvestments that would not necessarilycome first to mind when considering astate’s cultural policy.

In this chapter, we first explore the broadthemes that have emerged from ourresearch on cultural policy in the land-basedagencies. We then turn to a discussion ofthe policies and programs of a number ofthese agencies, highlighting how thesepolicies and programs intersect culturalpolicy. Note that the Heritage CorridorsProgram of the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation hasalready been discussed in Chapter V,though it might also have been easilyincluded here.

2 It has been suggested that we might have used the morefamiliar term, the “landmanagement agencies” here,but what we want to suggestis that cultural policy of thesort described in this chaptergoes beyond the boundary of the land managementagencies, narrowly defined,to other agencies dealingwith a wider range of envi-ronmental and developmentconcerns.

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Chapter VI: The Land-Based Agencies and State Cultural Policy

Seven principles are outlined in thememorandum. These principles comprisea strong statement about the importanceof cultural resources and the state’s rolein their protection, promotion, andinterpretation:

Cultural resources are an irreplaceableasset and must be protected.

Stewardship and responsible manage-ment must be supported.

Authenticity and quality of interpreta-tion is essential.

Respect for customs, cultures, and sitesmust be maintained.

The human impact of tourism onresources and communities must bemanaged.

Locally driven decision making isappropriate.

Partnerships are essential.

The adoption and signing of the memo-randum was an important expression ofthe intent of all participating agencies tosupport cultural tourism efforts throughcoordination of marketing, sharing infor-mation, providing technical assistance tolocal communities, and collaborating onprojects. Yet, according to some interviewees,especially those most interested in thetourism aspects of the agreement, thepartnership is stalled and the initial energyand momentum has dissipated. Neverthe-less, other interviewees believe that thememorandum has served as a criticalcoming together that has resulted in bothpolicy articulation and the development ofimportant partnerships such as thosesurrounding the Lewis and Clarkbicentennial. In the current climate ofstate budget cutting, the success of thememorandum will be judged more by itsability to engender cooperation and col-laboration than by its ability to attractincreased state resources to these efforts.

many of the agency heads interviewed itis an important articulation of the ideathat culture, broadly defined, is part oftheir purview; moreover, it provides aclear statement of policy intent thatfacilitates cooperation and collaboration.

The memorandum defines culturaltourism as “travel directed toward experi-encing the arts, heritage, and specialcharacter of a place…[It] embraces thearts (visual, performing, literary, andmedia), traditional crafts, customs and cel-ebrations, historic sites and structures,museums, wildlife viewing and nature-based recreation.” Thus, cultural tourismembodies all of the art and cultural mani-festations considered in earlier chaptersbut also explicitly adds wildlife viewingand nature-based recreation, activitiesclearly vested in the land-based agencies.

Indeed, the signatories to the Memorandumof Understanding include a number of theland-based agencies in addition to themore usual cultural agencies:

The Washington State ArtsCommission;

The Washington State Department ofFish and Wildlife;

The Washington State HistoricalSociety;

The Washington State InteragencyCommittee for Outdoor Recreation;

The Washington State Department ofNatural Resources;

The Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission;

The Washington State Department ofTransportation;

The United States Department ofInterior, National Park Service–Pacific West Region;

The Washington Commission for theHumanities (since renamedHumanities Washington); and

The Washington State Department ofCommunity, Trade and EconomicDevelopment.

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Corps. A database describing this inven-tory, including narrative descriptions,photographs, and in some cases measureddrawings, aids the decision-makingprocess concerning which properties arethe most important to preserve, whatneeds to be done to preserve them, androughly what the cost would be.

Once the number and scope of theresources owned by the commission wasunderstood, it became critical to develop a Cultural Resources Management Policy(November 2001). This document offers a brief introduction to the commission’scultural resources and a rationale for theirconservation and preservation. It thendefines some thirty-one terms that arecritical to cultural resources managementsuch as adaptive use, archeologicalresource, cultural landscape, culturalresource, cultural resources management,historic, interpretive use, current use,integrity, structure, rehabilitation, andrestoration. But, most importantly, itarticulates fourteen statements of policy(fifteen as of January 2003) regardingtraining, research, treatment, protection,and interpretation.

By all accounts the development of themanagement policy was a critical internalstep because it offered staff throughoutthe agency a framework against which tojudge their own actions with regard to theagency’s cultural resources. In this way,various offices and departments could besure that they were on the same page andmoving in the same direction. For formerDirector Cleve Pinnix this was an impor-tant step forward: “Before our currentdocument, cultural policy was developedby accident. We need a long-range plan tohelp us understand the significance of ourcultural resources in state parks and whatshould be done about them. We areheaded in that direction, but have reallyjust begun.”

Once the inventory and the associatedmanagement policy were in place, theCultural Resources Working Group withinthe agency began preparing a CulturalResources Action Plan. The commissionershave approved this plan, which identifies

Cultural Resources Management PolicyWashington State Parks and

Recreation Commission

Another significant statement of explicitpolicy can be found in the WashingtonState Parks and Recreation Commission:

In September 1998 the Washington State Parksand Recreation Commission adopted its CulturalResources Management Policy. For the first time,the Commission outlined its expectations for stan-dards to care for the more than 600 historicbuildings, structures, and objects in state parks.The policy emphasizes the importance of trainingfor all agency employees, the development of cul-tural resource management plans, the nominationof eligible properties to the National Register ofHistoric Places, and the use of the Secretary ofthe Interior’s Standards and Guidelines to guidework on historic properties.

Cultural Resources Working GroupWashington State Parks and Recreation Commission“On the Way to 2010,” Report No. 1, 1998-2000

Since 1996 the budget of the WashingtonState Parks and Recreation Commissionhas included monies to conduct a com-prehensive assessment of all historicproperties in Washington’s state parks,documenting their significance, interpre-tive value, and physical condition. Thisbudgetary allocation was made availablewhen it became clear that many histori-cally important buildings and structureswere actually located in the state parksand that the commission, for better orworse, was the only agency with clearresponsibility for them. With the help ofthe state historic preservation officer, thestaff of the Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, and private consult-ants, this survey was essentially completedin September 2000. By its count, 608 his-toric buildings and structures are locatedin fifty-two of Washington’s 125 parks.Two of the fifty-two are National HistoricLandmarks in their own right, fifteen arelisted in the National Register of HistoricPlaces, and three are included in theWashington Heritage Register. Theseresources represent twelve themes of sig-nificance—278 are categorized under thetheme of national defense (coastal forts)and 195 are Depression-era buildingsconstructed by the Civilian Conservation

about being on a mission, working longand hard and uphill because “it’s the rightthing to do.” Even though many had beenin their jobs for a decade or two, theircompetence, energy and dedication wasclear. In some cases, program managerstalked about competition within theiragencies for resources, or a feeling thattheir immediate (within agency) colleagueswere envious of their success. They alsotalked about an occasional lack of under-standing among these colleagues aboutwhat they do. But without exception theyfelt that their cultural policy outpostsbelonged in these agencies and that theyreflected a fundamental change in howthe work of the land-based agencies isbeing conceived.

Coordination among Land-Based AgenciesAnother theme that emerged from ourinterviews is that cultural policy coordina-tion among the land-based agencies is at ahigher level than among traditional artsand humanities agencies and organiza-tions. There appear to be at least threereasons as to why this might be the case:

Competition for resources is morelikely to occur within the agency thanwith other agencies. Therefore, there islittle competitive risk in collaboratingwith other agencies. The HeritageCorridors Program (see Chapter V) is more likely to compete with an in-house program such as TransportationSafety for resources than, for example,with Watchable Wildlife at the Depart-ment of Fish and Wildlife. As a result,these agency programs generally havemore to gain than to lose through col-laboration. Indeed, by collaboratingthey are likely to leverage more moneythrough federal grants or other sources.

The cultural programs of land-basedagencies are generally relatively sepa-rate from the larger agencies of whichthey are only a small component, socollaboration with other like programsin other agencies offers them the free-dom to pursue projects, attain publicrelations exposure, and be effective

a series of action steps and estimates thecosts associated with each of them. Thenecessary steps are identified for the nextten years over four areas: Identificationand Evaluation, Policies and Procedures,Education and Training, and Interpretationand Visitor Experience.

Middle Management as Leaders and Policy Makers

Of particular interest to us was the factthat middle managers played the key lead-ership roles in both the Memorandum ofUnderstanding on Cultural Tourism and theParks and Recreation Commission’sCultural Resources Management Policy. Thisseems to be more generally the casethroughout the land-based agencies: it ismiddle management that provides theimpetus for putting cultural policy on theagency’s agenda. This trend is rather dif-ferent from the trend that we observed inother agencies where leadership tended tocome from the top.

In part, this trend seems attributable toyounger middle managers who have arrivedfrom other jobs in which cultural policyfigures more strongly. They are then eagerto apply what they have learned in a newcontext. Cleve Pinnix, former director ofParks and Recreation, for example, was akey supporter of the commission’s pro-gressive cultural policies, which he attrib-utes to specific agency hires: Gerry Tays,who came in the mid-’90s from the NationalPark Service, and David Hansen, whocame from the Office of Archeology andHistoric Preservation. For their part, mid-dle managers cited the support of keypeople in top management positions whomade their work possible. At the Depart-ment of Transportation, Judy Lorenzo,manager of the Heritage Corridors Program,recalled the support of WSDOT officialsDenny Ingraham and Paula Hammondand of Dick Clifton from the Parks andRecreation Commission as instrumentalto the development of that program.

The focus and clarity of purpose thatevery one of these land-based agencymiddle managers expressed was striking.In many cases, these change makers talked 153


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3 The Otak Team, DesignGuidelines Commemorating theBicentennial Anniversary of theLewis and Clark Expedition inWashington, Final Draft,April 2000, I-3. This reportoffers a brief version ofWashington’s Lewis andClark story: “In the Autumnof 1805, after crossing theLolo Trail through theBitterroot Mountains ofpresent day Idaho, the Corpsof Discovery, led byMeriwether Lewis andWilliam Clark, descendedinto Nez Perce homelands.The party was weak andexhausted from near starva-tion. The Nez Perce let themrecuperate in their villagesand provided them withsalmon and camas roots. Notaccustomed to this new diet,the party became extremely


is to develop a plan and then worktogether (local and state government,nonprofit organizations, private landowners,public land agencies, and interested indi-viduals) to develop signage, infrastructure,and sites and trails along the corridor; toimprove safety; to provide greater heritageand wildlife protection; and to promotethe region as a destination. This partner-ship has resulted in a unified culturaltourism plan that has renewed interest inenriching the region with a sense of place,reinforcing the ethic of valuing the landand the natural environment while devel-oping a stronger economy for the region.

Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Some of the most interesting culturalpolicy initiatives are often linked to tem-porary events: Olympic Games, festivals,historic anniversaries, and the like. Thecommemoration of the bicentennial ofthe Lewis and Clark expedition in Wash-ington (2003-2006) is no exception. Thebicentennial has offered a significantopportunity for value-added collabora-tion, one that the land-based agencies andthe heritage agencies are attempting touse to full advantage. A consortium ofstate agencies teamed to create the Lewisand Clark Interpretive and Tourism Plan. Thisplan recognized that commemoration ofthe Lewis and Clark bicentennial had thepotential to honor one of the mostimportant stories in the state’s history.They recognized that the opportunity totell the story to residents and visitors isalmost irresistible. It could be used toconvey “the notions of vision, leadership,teamwork, and friendship set on thetheme of exploration and a quest forknowing and understanding. From thenative plants and animals to native cul-tures and the landscape, the essence oflearning embodied in the concept ofexploration will be key to Lewis and Clarkinterpretation in Washington State.”3

Washington’s preparations for its partici-pation in this multi-state celebration areextensive. Collaborative grant proposals to federal and local sources have beenprepared—a large unified proposal was

without having to work through layersof bureaucracy.

There is a consensus that tourism isimportant to the economy of Washing-ton, and cultural tourism—a majorfocus of collaboration across the land-based agencies—has been embraced asgood for everyone.

But note that coordination and collabora-tion tend to take place primarily withinthe group of land-based agencies, ratherthan with the more traditional arts andhumanities agencies and organizations.Where there are linkages to cultural policymore broadly, they tend to involve her-itage, history, folk arts, design, or architec-ture—all areas that, not surprisingly, aremore closely tied to the cultural concernsof the land-based agencies.

Our interviewees often cited the Memo-randum of Understanding on Cultural Tourismas a model of cross-agency collaboration,though these same interviewees were usu-ally hard pressed to articulate exactly whatthat collaboration has accomplished todate. Nevertheless, two specific exampleswere mentioned, both of which are alliedto the memorandum: the Othello-CouleeDam project and the bicentennial of theLewis and Clark expedition.

Othello-Coulee DamThe roughly 100 miles between theO’Sullivan Dam in Othello, Washington,and the Grand Coulee Dam along StateRoutes 17 and 155 form the transporta-tion backbone of East Central Washing-ton. The north/south route is rich withscenic farmlands, natural grandeur (river,falls, lakes), the arts and culture of NativeAmericans, and wildlife, as well as the sto-ries of the peoples who have inhabitedthis part of Washington. As a result ofthe Memorandum of Understanding onCultural Tourism, the local communitiesalong this route were approached by thememorandum’s signatories to develop acorridor management plan. The partici-pating state agencies have offered techni-cal assistance and funding to help thelocal groups plan toward a sustainabletourist and recreation economy. The idea


ill. Fearing the oncomingwinter, they needed to get tothe Pacific Ocean as quicklyas possible. Now fightingsickness, they mustered someenergy to cut down largetrees for canoes, but had littlestrength to carve them out.The Nez Perce showed themanother method—burningout the logs with hot stones.By early October, the Corpshad five canoes and hadacquired enough suppliesthrough trading to begin thefinal leg of their journey totheir ultimate goal, thePacific Ocean. Intimately tiedto the native cultures andenvironment, the descentfrom the Clearwater downthe Snake and Columbiarivers to the ocean is thestory of the Lewis and ClarkExpedition in Washington.”

due to budget restrictions, state agencieswill not be allowed to enter into newfederal matching grant programs thatrequire a match. The sense is that onesource of growth in the state’s budget hasbeen the pressure put on it by a widerange of federal matching requirements.

Balance—A Constant ChallengeFor the land-based agencies (as well as for the Native American tribes consideredin Chapter VII) maintaining a balanceamong various policies is a constantstruggle. For the more traditional arts,humanities, and heritage agenciesdescribed in Chapters III, IV, and V, thestruggle for balance has mostly to do withgeographic balance, rural versus urbanbalance, or the balance between contem-porary and traditional creativity. For theland-based agencies, the balance andstruggle is between preservation anddevelopment, between conservation andeconomic opportunity. This crosscuttingtheme showed up repeatedly in our inter-views with many variations:

The balance between the revenue-generating capacity of trust lands andlong-term sustainability of that rev-enue, especially as pressures increaseto make more lands available for con-servation and passive recreation(Department of Natural Resources).

Tradeoffs between the use of land forrecreational purposes and the protec-tion of natural and cultural resources(Parks and Recreation Commission).

The conflict between preservingNative American culture dating backas far as 2,000 years and preservingEuro-American culture dating backonly to the 1930s (Parks andRecreation Commission).

Accepting responsibility for thepreservation of historical and culturalresources and adding this responsibilityto a policy envelope without adequateresources to do so.

Conserving and preserving theseresources, perhaps at considerable cost,

submitted to the US Department of Trans-portation for T21 funds, and according tointerviewees the unified collaborativeapproach has generated a total of about$10 million in funding; various state/localpartnerships have been brokered; consid-erable cooperation among state agencieshas been achieved; design guidelines,tourism promotion materials, educationalinformation, and teacher training pro-grams have been developed; and on andon. The primary collaborators haveincluded the Washington State HistoricalSociety, the Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission, the WashingtonDepartment of Fish and Wildlife, theWashington Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development(Tourism), and the Washington StateDepartment of Transportation.

The Importance of Federal Fundsand Federal InfluenceAs mentioned in previous chapters, fed-eral funds and federal influence shapemany state cultural policy initiatives, andthis is no less true of the land-basedagencies. The influence of the NationalPark Service is cited as being critical inthe development of the cultural policiesnow being implemented by the Parks andRecreation Commission, and federal fundscontinue to support programs like theHeritage Corridors Program and the Watch-able Wildlife Program. New and expand-ing initiatives are often linked to theavailability of federal matching grants;special projects, like the Lewis and Clarkbicentennial mentioned above, have beenseeded and supported with federal funds.

However, federal grants also create prob-lems, especially in the extent to whichthey trigger certain requirements. As thearchaeologist for the state parks said,“With federal money comes federal regu-lation….That extra $50,000 from thefederal government [for a project]…bringswith it thousands of dollars in federalregulation. [It] may increase the cost of aproject five-fold.” The influence of fed-eral matching grants has also had anothereffect. The governor has announced that 155


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informal conversation. Our experience ininterviewing at the land-based agenciesdemonstrated just how difficult it is todraw a clear line between a naturalresource and a cultural resource.

Salmon are a case in point. As we pro-gressed with our interviews, it becameapparent that in Washington the linkbetween environmental identity andcultural identity is so strong that it hasbecome natural to think about salmon asculture (and cultural to think aboutsalmon as nature).

These connections are made in any num-ber of programmatic initiatives alreadyunderway. The Salmon Recovery Programof the Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission, for example,includes an interpretive trail, salmon art, aproject to turn a barn into a salmon inter-pretation center, a salmon exhibit, and“salmon trunks” filled with materials forschool education outreach. Salmon arenot just the object of artistic expressionin these programs; they become anexpression of culture.

Much the same could be said of otherinitiatives taking place within the land-based agencies. Regional tourism effortsare being linked to the folk arts and NativeAmerican arts practiced in those places.Efforts at agro-tourism attempt to explainthe heritage of living in an agriculturalcommunity. Visitor centers associatedwith the various commodity commissionsexplain agricultural processes but also tiethese activities to the heritage of the state;cuisine is ever more tightly interwovenwith culture. Support for local, county,and state fairs combines agriculturalpolicy with environmental policy withcultural policy.

We now turn away from crosscuttingthemes to a consideration of each of theland-based agencies and programs involvedin cultural policy. Many of the examplesthat are offered here amply illustrate howresources that have been made availablefor other goals—e.g., transportation pol-icy or economic development policy—can

can come into conflict with the impe-tus to modernize and develop thesame resources so that they canbecome revenue generating and thusbudget-neutral. This is particularly thecase for the Parks and RecreationCommission. Donated land, which is acommon source of new park property,is most definitely not free. In acceptingsuch a donation Parks and Recreationis also, in effect, making a commit-ment to maintain and protect the cul-tural resources that accompany thatdonation. To raise the revenue to doso, more intensive recreational usebecomes an attractive option but runsthe risk of damaging the resource itwas hoping to support.

Various demographic balances: eastversus west, urban versus rural, long-time residents versus newcomers;conflicts in values between a “sophisti-cated” urban population that empha-sizes newness and creativity and morerural residents who are concerned withkeeping cultural memories alive andpreserved (Puget Sound Water QualityAction Team).

The tension between economic devel-opment and preservation (the MainStreet Program in the Department ofCommunity, Trade and EconomicDevelopment).

Natural Resources as Cultural Resources: Salmon as a Case in PointIn our interview with Katherine Baril of theWashington State University CooperativeExtension Service, she responded to ourbroaching of the subject of “culturalpolicy” with, “We have a vocabularytranslation issue!” But once the dialoguestarted, it became clear that aspects ofher work did come under the rubric of“cultural policy.”

The key here was understanding thatmany of our interviewees have come toview natural resources as cultural resources,whether or not they would actually describethem as “cultural resources” in an

policy swings.” He added, “Boards andcommissions are very commonplace inWashington State because of its populistpolitical culture and because it is a verydecentralized state.”

But the commission, of course, is notentirely independent of the state. Theagency does not interact directly with theLegislature, yet it has to maintain goodrelationships with legislators. The agencyfollows a policy planning process todevelop its budget. The various programswithin the agency first propose “policypackages.” This is noteworthy because itmeans that the program that will ulti-mately be approved and funded will bedirectly linked to policy in a much clearermanner than is the case in many of theother state cultural agencies considered inthis report. The staff then chooses fromamong the proposed packages those thatit wishes to recommend to the commis-sioners. The commissioners then approveeach policy package, modify it, or turn itdown.5 These priority policy packagesalong with their proposed budgets arethen submitted to the Office of FinancialManagement (OFM). After review (andoftentimes modifications), they are thenforwarded to the governor, who makesthe final decision about how they will beincluded in his proposed budget that willultimately be submitted to the Legislature.

According to its mission statement, “TheWashington State Parks and RecreationCommission acquires, operates, enhancesand protects a diverse system of recre-ational, cultural, historical and natural sites.The commission fosters outdoor recre-ation and education statewide to provideenjoyment and enrichment for all, and avalued legacy to future generations.”6

Note the presence and the implied impor-tance of the word “cultural” in thisdescription. It is clear that this missionstatement locates the commission squarelywithin the realm of state cultural policy.Our interviewees characterized the workof Parks and Recreation as being built onthree pillars—recreation, naturalresources, and cultural resources—thoughthey have not always been accorded the

be creatively tapped to further culturalpolicy goals at the same time. Indeed,much of the story of the involvement ofland-based agencies in cultural policy is astory of this type of policy creativity.

Policies and Programs ofthe Land-Based AgenciesIn this section we describe the policiesand programs that collectively define theexplicit and implicit cultural policies ofthe land-based agencies in the State ofWashington. Included here are accountsof eight different state agencies and theirprograms: the Parks and Recreation Com-mission; the Department of Fish andWildlife, Watchable Wildlife Program; theDepartment of Natural Resources; theInteragency Committee for OutdoorRecreation; the Puget Sound Water QualityAction Team; the Washington StateUniversity Cooperative Extension Service;the Department of Community, Trade andEconomic Development, Main Street,Tourism, and Rural Tourism programs;and the Department of Agriculture andthe allied Commodity Commissions. TheHeritage Corridors Program of the Wash-ington State Department of Transportationhas already been discussed in Chapter V.

Washington State Parks andRecreation Commission The Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission, which recently celebrated its90th anniversary, oversees a vast portfolioof land and properties across the State ofWashington. The system includes 125parks with a biennial budget of $90 mil-lion and approximately 500 full-timeemployees. Because of its structure as acommission, the agency is overseen by anindependent board (“the commission”)comprised of seven citizen commissionersappointed by the governor.4 These com-missioners approve policy and hire theagency’s director. According to formerDirector Cleve Pinnix, “Because commis-sioners serve overlapping terms (of sixyears), continuity is preserved and thebody is reasonably protected from radical 157


4 The use of the word “com-mission” is a bit ambiguoushere referring to both theagency itself and the boardof commissioners that over-sees its operation. This isalso the situation withrespect to the WashingtonState Arts Commission, with“commission” once againreferring both to the agencyand to the independent pol-icy board that oversees itsoperations. The structuresare not entirely similar,however, as the executivedirector of the WashingtonState Arts Commission isappointed by and reports tothe governor, while thedirector of the Parks andRecreation Commission ishired by the independentcommissioners, so here thelines of authority may be abit more insulated from dayto day politics.

5 In a recent year, for example, the staff preparedthirty-four policy/programpackages, fourteen ofwhich were ultimately rec-ommended to the commis-sioners. Twelve of thesewere approved and sent tothe governor. These num-bers alone appear to offerclear evidence that policy-informed choices are being made.

6 www.parks.wa.gov/agency.asp

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the true extent and the importance ofthe cultural resources that are alreadyunder its stewardship (many of thembuildings and facilities constructed by theCivilian Conservation Corps), and the firstorganized attention to these resourcesneeds to happen as part of the planningand development function. In otherwords, the Parks and RecreationCommission has gotten into culturalresource management through a relativelyrecent (post 1995) reexamination of exist-ing resources in order to determine theircultural or historic significance.

The Resource Stewardship Program

Many of the cultural resources initiativesof the agency come under the umbrella ofits Resource Stewardship Program. Thisprogram deploys a team of resources spe-cialists to work with park staff, park users,and other interested parties to balance thecomplex and conflicting demands of envi-ronmental protection, cultural/historicpreservation, and outdoor recreation. Theprogram administers a broad range ofactivities including: resource inventoriesand assessments of natural and culturalresources, the Classification and Manage-ment Planning Process for the manage-ment of park resources, applied research,and stewardship training including theencouragement of volunteer stewardship.

The resource inventory and assessmentprocess for natural and cultural resourceswas put in place because there had been a scarcity of information about the quan-tity, quality, and distribution of culturaland natural resources in state parks,particularly information about thoseresources that were at risk of degradationthrough natural processes or development.According to Gerry Tays, “25 percent ofour buildings were so degraded by ourown employees that their historic integritywas close to ruined completely. This wasnot intentional…but just out of ignorance.We often converted buildings to new useswithout even knowing they were of cul-tural or historical significance.”

The Classification and ManagementPlanning Process (CAMP) was imple-

same priority. In the beginning, the focuswas primarily on recreation, then on natu-ral resources; today cultural resources areemphasized as well.

The fact that cultural policy has gottenonto the agency’s radar screen is due inlarge part to agency hiring. Gerry Tayswas hired from the National Park Service—“I came from thirty years in the NationalPark Service where cultural policy was abread and butter issue. So I was surprisedat the lack of cultural policy at the statelevel. I did some research and found outthat, besides California, almost no otherstate park system has a cultural policy.Indeed, many states are extremely jealousthat we were able to develop a policy….Cultural policy was part of our mission allalong, but never embraced or taken on.”—and David Hansen moved from the Officeof Archaeology and Historic Preservationto become the historic preservationofficer for the state parks. Together theydeveloped the Cultural Resources ManagementPolicy, and, much to their surprise, thecommissioners approved it without modi-fication. Work subsequent to this docu-ment has now led to a ten-year CulturalResources Action Plan that has also beenapproved by the commissioners.

The work of the Parks and RecreationCommission is divided among threemajor divisions: The Operations Divisionis responsible for park management andregional offices, environmental learningcenters, maintenance and preservation,natural resource management, public pro-grams and services, interpretive services,and park concessionaires; the ResourcesDevelopment Division is responsible forland acquisition, planning and develop-ment, engineering, park facilities, andenvironmental protection; and the Admini-strative Services Division is responsiblefor boating, winter recreation programs,volunteer programs, the central reserva-tions system, information management,agency contracts, and all fiscal/budgetefforts. Interestingly, most of the culturalresources work is currently within theResources Development Division. This isbecause the agency has just begun to realize

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7 Peter Herzog, Report toWashington State Parks andRecreation Commission,November 20, 2001.

8 Herzog, Report to WashingtonState Parks and RecreationCommission.

9 Herzog, Report to WashingtonState Parks and RecreationCommission.

scheme would have modestly increasedthe size of the park’s developed areas byallowing for significant expansion of theboat launch and the group camp andadding formal sports fields, picnic areas,and group shelters.

The staff recommended that “lands beclassified…to maintain or modestly expandthe intensity of recreational use anddevelopment yet significantly enhanceprotection of sensitive natural resourcesand embrace the rural character of thepark’s cultural landscape.”9 This recommen-dation reflects the balance and tensionbetween development and conservation/preservation that commission staff faceevery day. Park use has remained flat oreven declined in recent years. Especiallyduring periods of tight state budgetswhen the staff feel that they must relymore heavily on park user fees, theybecome even more cognizant of the needto revitalize recreational facilities to keepabreast of the public’s needs and desires.Yet, they also want to maintain, preserve,and protect each park’s natural and cul-tural resources.

The agency is currently working withpartners such as other state institutionsand interested stakeholders to help identifypractical resource management approachesto help them balance resources and pro-tection. To this end it is conducting a varietyof applied research. As user numbersincrease at some parks, and lands surround-ing the parks become increasingly domes-ticated, there is growing concern formonitoring and protecting threatened/endangered species habitats and culturalsites of statewide significance. Two exam-ples are the archaeological test excavationsthat have been conducted at Cama Beach(discussed below) and Beacon Rock tolocate any sensitive cultural sites andCentral Washington University’s Scholarsin the Park program, which sends graduatestudents to do historical research aboutstate park properties. At the time of ourinterviews scholars were working on acomplete cultural landscape inventory(from prehistory to the present) of the

mented five years ago to identify andaddress important resource issues in stateparks. Building on the Cultural ResourcesManagement Policy and the Cultural ResourcesAction Plan, the CAMP process serves asthe guiding document for on-the-groundresource protection and recreationaldevelopment.

One example of a CAMP project is theLake Sammamish State Park Area. Forthis park, the staff conducted a publicplanning process to guide its future devel-opment and management. They drew oninput from several public workshops. Thestaff sought approval from the commis-sioners to classify lands and set long-termboundaries for Lake Sammamish, BridleTrails, and Squak Mountain State Parks.(This request was the fourteenth suchclassification and long-term boundarydecision that had been put before thecommissioners for consideration underthe auspices of CAMP.)

Using CAMP, the staff and public consid-ered a wide range of land classificationoptions for Lake Sammamish:

One approach explored how the park might beclassified if management were to emphasize pro-tection of natural resources, open space, and cul-tural landscapes. In general, all streams, riparianareas, and shorelines were classified as NaturalAreas; a modest reduction of the existing devel-oped footprint was classified as a RecreationArea; and the balance of the park was classifiedas a Resource Recreation Area. The effect of thisscheme on the existing park landscape would haveincluded extensive restoration of natural[resources], and restoration of rural cultural land-scapes associated with former agricultural fields.7

Planning participants also considered asecond approach that would emphasize ahigher intensity of recreational activityand developed facilities while still provid-ing adequate protection to sensitive natu-ral resources. “Areas of the park that didnot contain emergent wetlands or othersensitive natural resources and that couldreasonably sustain some type of high-intensity recreational development wereclassified as Recreation Areas. Theremainder of the park was classified as aResource Recreation Area.”8 In effect, this

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attended field school sessions. Accordingto Gerry Tays, the Field School, in partic-ular, and the partnership, in general, are“the best investments we as a public landmanaging agency can make. Only byteaching our employees the principles ofhistoric preservation as well as the skillsto implement preservation projects cor-rectly can we hope to fulfill our responsi-bilities to the people of Washington.”

Three Projects

For our study we were unable to considerall of the activities of the Parks andRecreation Commission; indeed, many ofthem would be outside of the realm ofcultural policy in any event. In our inter-views with the former director, the stateparks archeologist, the chief of interpre-tive services, the chief of resource stew-ardship, an engineer, a regional planner, apreservation planner, a parks planner andothers, beyond the main profile of agencypolicy and planning we focused on illus-trative programs and projects to demon-strate how the work of the agency isintertwined with cultural policy at manyjunctures. Here we discuss three suchprojects: the Cama Beach Project, FortWorden/Centrum, and the SalmonRecovery Project.

While each of these projects is distinctwith its own policies and priorities, theinfluence of the Cultural Resources Manage-ment Policy is evident in all of them.Indeed, this is the intent of having anagency-wide policy.

Cama Beach: The Cama Beach Project onCamano Island illustrates the difficultquestions surrounding land acquisitionand cultural resource preservation. CamaBeach is a perfectly preserved 1934 autofishing resort, not far from a fully devel-oped state park. It is listed on theWashington Heritage Register. Its ownersoffered the property as a donation to theParks and Recreation Commission tobecome a state park. Once it was offered,pressure was put on the Legislature tomove the project forward. “Led by agroup called Friends of Cama Beach,

undeveloped Dalles Mountain Ranchproperty.

In March 1999, the Washington StateParks and Recreation Commission offeredits first basic training course for agencyemployees in the principles of historicpreservation. Given twice annually at FortWorden State Park Conference Center inPort Townsend, this introductory class isdesigned to introduce both field staff andsenior management to the Commission’sCultural Resources Management Policy througha three-day workshop. Guests from otheragencies have been invited to join inlearning the basic principles and conceptsthat professional historic preservationiststake for granted. To date over 200 indivi-duals within the agency have availedthemselves of this opportunity. As is sooften the case when people from differentorganizations get together, the networkinghas yielded several additional trainingopportunities for those who are seekingto learn more hands-on skills in historicpreservation.

In 2000, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, the OregonDepartment of Parks and Recreation, theUniversity of Oregon, Oregon StateUniversity, the state historic preservationoffices of Washington and Oregon, andthe National Park Service formalized acooperative partnership designed tofacilitate the sharing of expertise andresources for the development and pres-entation of educational training and tech-nical assistance in historic preservation.This arrangement became know as thePacific Northwest Preservation Partner-ship, and through it further accomplish-ments have been possible.

The centerpiece of the partnership is theannual Preservation Field School thataffords participants the opportunity toput into practice the principles of historicpreservation in a controlled environmentwith instruction and oversight by recog-nized experts in the fields of archaeologyand historic preservation in the PacificNorthwest. Participants come from universi-ties, various state agencies, and the generalpublic. To date over 400 participants have

ances and exhibits, multigenerationalworkshops and festivals, and Elderhostels.

Partnership is the main characteristic ofthe operation of Fort Worden. Parks andRecreation signs contracts and enters intocooperative agreements with a variety of nonprofit organizations includingCentrum to run facilities and provideservices on the property; none pay rent orfees to the commission. The largest unit isthe conference center, whose facilities areintensively used by Centrum but also by alarge variety of other organizations andindividuals. (Fifteen to 20 percent of theoverall business of the park comes fromCentrum, 80-85 percent from the confer-ence center.) Interpretation on site is donethrough agreements with a variety ofspecialized nonprofit organizations:

The Puget Sound Coastal ArtilleryMuseum Association runs the coastalArtillery Museum. This organizationgrew out of an Army unit. Parks andRecreation pays for the utilities andmaintains the buildings; the museumassociation does exhibits and interpre-tation and charges an admission fee tocover its costs.

The Port Townsend Marine SciencesSociety runs the Marine ScienceCenter. (The agreement that allows theMarine Science Center to use facilitieswithin Fort Worden guarantees alonger time period than would other-wise be the case in order to facilitatesecuring grants.)

The Jefferson County HistoricalSociety runs the Rothschild House.

The Guard House (InformationCenter) is run by the Friends ofFort Worden.

A heritage group runs theCommanding Officer’s QuartersMuseum. They develop and maintainexhibits, provide staffing, and chargean admission fee.

Each nonprofit partner is required tosubmit an annual business plan to thepark manager for approval. This plan isthe means by which the quality of the

thousands of people lobbied the state tomove Cama Beach up the priority [list].”10

According to the Parks and Recreationproperty acquisition staff, the CamaBeach property raised difficult policyquestions. Could it be managed with thecurrent staffing in place? Could this his-toric property be adapted for modern useso that it would become a break-even ormoney-generating venture? Once Parksand Recreation agreed to accept the dona-tion, the Cultural Resources ManagementPolicy kicked in, prompting an archeologi-cal dig to determine the extent to whichthe land had cultural or historical signifi-cance. That led to the discovery of NativeAmerican artifacts roughly 2,000 years oldand to claims from two Native Americantribes to rights to the Cama Beach land.As a result, the project has become verylarge and very complicated. According tothe state parks archeologist, “State Parksis not equipped to handle large, complexprojects like this. Negotiating with tribes,building consensus, working through dis-pute resolutions…all this is very difficultand takes time.”

Nevertheless, the fact that Parks andRecreation has articulated a policy withrespect to cultural resources has meantthat appropriate steps can be taken toprotect these cultural resources.

Fort Worden/Centrum: Fort Worden andCentrum have already been described inChapter III in the context of arts policy.From the Parks and Recreation perspec-tive what is noteworthy here is the part-nership with the Washington State ArtsCommission and the Office of theSuperintendent of Public Instruction thatlaunched Centrum as an arts center locatedat, and using the historic facilities of,Fort Worden State Park. The FortWorden/Centrum facilities include oldofficers’ barracks used for dormitories, ahangar transformed into a performancespace with lawn seating, art studios, class-rooms, and rehearsal spaces. Centrumoffers artist residencies, arts education inpartnership with Washington’s schools(“Experiences in Creativity”), perform- 161


10 The Seattle Times,September 24, 2000.

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The Salmon Recovery Project: A variety ofinfluences can impact the work of theParks and Recreation Commission. In thecase of the Salmon Recovery Project itwas a combination of three factors: theplacement of salmon on the nationalEndangered Species List; the passage of the Watershed Recovery Act, whichaddresses water quality and quantity; andthe passage of the Modified ForestPractice Act, which mandates that all road culverts must be fixed by 2015.

The governor charged Parks andRecreation with developing and adminis-tering a statewide plan for on-the-groundinterpretive resources at state-managedproperties and to implement restoration,enhancement, and protection effortsthroughout any salmon habitat located onstate parks properties. A memorandum of understanding between the StateDepartment of Fish and Wildlife, theTribal Nations (Northwest Indian FisheriesCommission), the State Department ofNatural Resources, and the Parks andRecreation Commission led to coopera-tion among these agencies in the assess-ment, interpretation, and restoration ofthis habitat.

At Parks and Recreation, this led to threemajor efforts: salmon habitat assessmentand restoration on state parkland, assess-ment of the salmon habitat aroundculverts on state parkland, and theinterpretation of salmon as a natural andcultural resource. The combination ofthese efforts includes dozens of sub-efforts with interesting and complicatedpolicy implications; for purposes of ourfocus on cultural policy, the story ofsalmon interpretation is most relevant.

Out of a Salmon Recovery budget of$240,000, approximately $30,000 is desig-nated for interpretation. As a result, Parksand Recreation relies mostly on externalfunding for the interpretive projects thatit is implementing:

The Salmon Interpretive Trail at FlamingGeyser State Park. This initiative iscreatively funded off of a $10,000 finepaid by the Department of Ecology

partnership is monitored. Parks andRecreation even goes so far as to controlwhat can be sold.

Many of these activities are related to theidea of moving the public’s perception ofthe site from a fort to a park. Accordingto Jim Farmer, former park manager, “Wewant people to recognize this as a park,not a fort. People understand that parksneed to be protected, remain natural, etc.They don’t think that about a fort.”Interpretation is a key to accomplishingthis transformation; when it was “just afort” it did not show up on the public’sradar screen.

Fort Worden is hardly typical of the otherstate parks in Washington. Because of itssize and the variety of its programming, itis the anchor of cultural tourism in Jeffer-son County. As a result it is the largestgenerator of hotel-motel tax funds. Parkstaff are directly involved in the advisorycommittee that advises on expenditure ofthe hotel-motel tax (which must be spenton activities related to tourism, whichmight include marketing, buildings, main-tenance, visitor centers, science centers,etc.), so Fort Worden is very muchenmeshed in the process.11

Former Park Manager Jim Farmer had avery practical view of policy: “I see policyas a way of expressing what has actuallybeen going on. Policy seldom leads theeffort; policy comes in when informalactions have not achieved the necessarylevel of communication. Baby boomersare retiring. Therefore, less ‘policy knowl-edge’ is being passed along so we have tocapture things in policy.” Nevertheless, hewas a big supporter of the CulturalResources Management Policy and its imple-mentation. “This is an evolution of whatit means to be stewards. We have gottenmuch better over the past few years.Historically our focus has been on natureand conservancy, now we are making theleap to cultural. To be sure there was aconsciousness among individuals andparks have been doing a lot of culturalwork, but the rhetoric has now changed.We have gotten better at identifying andlabeling the cultural.”

11 For a further discussion ofthe state’s authorization ofadditional hotel-motel taxes,see Chapter VII.

12 www.wa.gov/wdfw13 See Department of Urban

and Regional Planning,Eastern WashingtonUniversity, “Coulees andCanyons: State Route 17-155Heritage Corridor ResourceInventory—ExecutiveSummary,” January 4, 2001.

funds are now targeted for recreation and education.

This shift has also been accompanied bythe opportunity to participate in certainfederally funded programs. Around 1990,the U.S. Forest Service offered “NatureWatch” challenge matching grants.Between 1993 and 1997, the ForestService funded a project entitled, “PugetSound Eyes on Wildlife.” The WashingtonState Department of Fish and Wildlifematched the federal grants in-kind bydedicating a full-time staff member to aprogram it named “Watchable Wildlife”:

What is Watchable Wildlife? Watchable Wildlifeincludes a wide array of state animals, some ascommon as a familiar bird at a backyard feeder,some passing through on seasonal migrations, somerarely-seen species that provide the dedicated viewerwith a reward for hours of patient waiting….Wildlife viewing is a pastime that can be enjoyedin any season, any corner of the state, by any age group. [S]pecial equipment is not required.12

When the mission statement of theDepartment of Fish and Wildlife focuseson conservation and restoration, itemphasizes the maximization of animalhabitats in order to maintain wildlifediversity and population. In carrying outthis mission, the Watchable Wildlife pro-gram articulated a responsibility and con-cern for preserving a piece of Washingtonculture and values: the opportunity forpeople and nature to co-exist in balanceand for visitors to have an aesthetic expe-rience as they pursue wildlife watchingconsistent with the heritage of the state.13

The Watchable Wildlife Program takes theMemorandum of Understanding on CulturalTourism very seriously, recognizing whatthe MOU offers the program, but alsofeeling a responsibility to the larger policygoals of the MOU. Chuck Gibilisco,Watchable Wildlife coordinator and MikeO’Malley, Watchable Wildlife programmanager, describe this larger policy goalas, “offering people a total experience ofplace that includes arts, traditional crafts,customs, celebrations, historic sites,wildlife viewing, and nature-based recre-ation.” They subscribe to the belief that“exposure to resource sites, stories and

for failing to adequately maintain asewage treatment plant.

The Salmon Interpretive Center also atFlaming Geyser State Park. A grantfunded the feasibility study.

The Olympia Salmon Run Public ArtProject. Inspired by the “Cows onParade” project in Chicago, this proj-ect commissioned artists to decoratefiberglass salmon, which were thenplaced around the city.

A Salmon Exhibit, originally designedfor Horsethief Lake State Park, butfirst displayed at the Maryhill Museum.

Salmon Trunks. These kits containededucational items to be used at statepark campfire talks or at schools.

Considered together, all of these activities undertaken under the rubric ofthe Salmon Recovery Project are clearlycultural in nature, and they suggest onceagain how far the boundary of state cul-tural policy needs to be stretched in orderto capture and incorporate all of itsmanifestations.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Watchable Wildlife ProgramIn Washington the Department of Fishand Wildlife is a well-established, largedepartment. Its Watchable WildlifeProgram, however, was established onlyrecently in the mid 1990s. The genesis ofthis program was described to us as theresult of a paradigm shift within theorganization, which began with the intro-duction of vanity license plates in the1970s. Washington was one of the firststates to create a revenue stream out ofvanity license plates. Funding generatedby the sale of plates was dedicated towildlife diversity, thus offering new fundingfor non-game, non-land, non-sciencemandates. This revenue stream created an opportunity for Fish and Wildlife todevelop a new vision. Initially, the fundssupported research and conservation.Today, the plates generate about $2.5million annually, and some of these 163


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department manages 2.1 million acres offorest; 1.2 million acres of agriculturaland range land; 75,000 acres of NaturalResource Conservation and Preserves; and2.4 million acres of aquatic (submerged)lands; plus commercial properties; com-munication tower sites; mineral, oil andgas leases; mining contracts; and sand,gravel, and rock sales.14

The Department of Natural Resources is a major revenue-generator for the state.Between 1970 and 1999, trust lands gen-erated $4.7 billion for the trusts to sup-port construction of public facilities(schools, universities, prisons, state capitolbuildings, and the like). This revenue-pro-ducing function was established upon thefounding of the state. “More than 200years ago, the federal government had theforesight to grant trust lands to new statesto forever support education and otherpublic services.”15

This revenue-producing mandate has led DNR to look very closely at issues ofsustainability. According to DNR PolicyDirector Rick Cooper, lands are currentlymanaged on a sixty-year cycle. However,as pressures increase to make more landsavailable for conservation and passiverecreation, the DNR has adopted a three-point policy approach. The DNR is seek-ing a sustainable blend of trust revenue,healthy ecosystems, and other benefits forthe people of Washington (e.g., passiverecreation, wildlife viewing, berry andmushroom picking).16

Population growth and other factors havecreated some difficult tensions for theDNR and its land management policies:

Growth versus quality of life: Fastgrowth is challenging the naturalresources that attract people to comeand live in Washington.

Urban newcomers versus ruralagrarian/forest employees: Environ-mentalists and urban newcomers wantDNR to be more proactive in protect-ing forests and lands; forest and tim-ber workers who make a living off theresources want to protect their jobs

nature leads to a stronger sense of placeand a better land ethic.” Thus, culturalpolicy and the other policy concerns ofthe land-based agencies come into directrelationship with one another.

The Watchable Wildlife Program pursuesits conservation, education, and recreationgoals with a budget of approximately$160,000, half state and half federal, andtwo staff people. Projects that areincluded within this program include:

The Washington Wildlife Viewing Guide,which is available both in bookletform and on the program’s website.

Wildlife CAMs: video cameras that are installed at various locations thatallow citizens to watch wildlife via the Internet (especially popular isEagleCam, which is focused on aneagles’ nest; but a BatCam, aHeronCam, a SealCam, and aSalmonCam are also maintained).

Roadside Markers, which use a symbol depicting binoculars to indicatea wildlife viewing area by the side ofthe road.

Technical Assistance that is made avail-able to local communities wishing toorganize a wildlife festival (which usu-ally includes traditional music, food,and arts as well).

Education, including “Wildlife ViewingHints” and “Wildlife Viewing Ethics”offered on the program’s website.

The Watchable Wildlife Program, whileappearing to be at the margin of culturalpolicy, actually succeeds at pullingtogether a variety of streams in culturalpolicy including the heritage of the stateand cultural tourism and suggests thedirections in which cultural policy isdeveloping most rapidly.

Washington State Department of Natural ResourcesOf the large land-based agencies, wefound the fewest connections to culturalpolicy at the Washington State Depart-ment of Natural Resources (DNR). The

14 Washington StateDepartment of NaturalResources, “Diverse Agency,Diverse Resources,”brochure, February 2, 1999.

15 Washington StateDepartment of NaturalResources, “SustainableForestry,” brochure, undated.


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train our field folks in Indian affairs, andin the characteristics of potential archeo-logical resources. We maintain a staffmember specifically for cultural resourcesas a tribal liaison.”

Interagency Committee forOutdoor Recreation (IAC)The Interagency Committee for OutdoorRecreation (IAC) was established byCitizen Initiative 215 in 1964. It was cre-ated to oversee the investment of publicfunds in parks, trails, beaches, boatingfacilities, wildlife habitat, and naturalareas. It is led by a director, who isappointed by the governor, and an eight-member committee composed of fivecitizens appointed by the governor andthree state agency directors. The com-mittee has no regulatory authority; itspolicy tools are providing funding toprojects, providing technical assistance,undertaking research and policy develop-ment, providing coordination, and organ-izing and conducting advocacy.

IAC oversees a wide range of grantcategories (each legislatively established)including Boating Facilities, BoatingInfrastructure, Firearms and ArcheryRanges, the Land and Water ConservationFund, the National Recreational TrailsProgram, Nonhighway and Off-RoadVehicle Activities, the WashingtonWildlife and Recreation Program, and the Salmon Recovery Program. Takentogether the grants made under theseprograms total approximately $120 mil-lion each biennium. A staff of more thantwenty oversee the application process.Grantees range from municipalities tostate agencies, Native American tribes,and nonprofit organizations.

When asked about IAC’s activities thatmight have cultural content or intersectwith cultural policy concerns, Jim Fox,special assistant to the director, offered aneight-page report entitled, Recreation, OpenSpace and Preservation of Heritage Values inIAC Grant Programs. The introductionreads, “Woven into the spectacular scenicbeauty of Washington is the state’s inter-esting and important cultural history,

and, therefore, want the exploitation ofthe forests to continue.

Revenue raising versus increased fed-eral regulation: For a number of rea-sons particularly federal regulatoryrestrictions related to avoiding “taking”of spotted owls when they becamelisted as “threatened” under theEndangered Species Act, the annualtimber harvest volume from state-owned trust lands declined from nearlyone billion board feet per year to alittle over 400 million board feet. Withthe completion of DNR’s federallyapproved habitat conservation plan in1996, the harvest level climbed back toabout 600 million board feet, but hasbeen closer to 500 million in the pastfew years. The net result has been adramatic reduction in the revenue-generating capacity of DNR.

Tribal customs and tribal rights to land versus commercial demands onresources: To take but one example,the federally recognized tribes areentitled to half of the fish and shell-fish catch in the state. In order for thisto remain meaningful, DNR needs toprotect the habitat so that that half ofthe catch is a sustainable food sourcefor the tribes.

Rick Cooper responded to questionsabout cultural policy by stating that at the Department of Natural Resources“cultural” means “tribal.” Primarily thismeans that DNR must, by policy, main-tain the lands under its control in waysthat are consistent with tribal interests.

When asked about the considerablelanguage in DNR’s statutes that refers toculture, archeology, heritage, and the like,Cooper responded, “It’s part of how wemanage our affairs. We are careful toidentify and preserve archeologically orculturally significant resources, and it isour responsibility to follow state and fed-eral laws. We must make sure that culturalresources are not damaged in our forestmanagement work. The state Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation isour partner for tracking resources. We

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The Action Team is a program of theOffice of the Governor. According toHarriet Beale, outreach and implementa-tion manager, its predecessor was thePuget Sound Water Quality Authority,which was charged solely with the devel-opment of a water management plan forPuget Sound. The need for a plan wascaused by the tremendous growth ofPuget Sound communities. Citizen con-cern, combined with federal dollars, gotthe program started. The state and theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA)accepted the resulting plan, the PugetSound Water Quality Management Plan. As a result of this plan and a sunset reviewof the predecessor agency, in 1995 theorganization was restructured to itscurrent configuration.

The Action Team now has a staff oftwenty-five, and the Puget Sound Councilhas been constituted as a citizens advisoryboard. The Action Team must develop aplan every two years, and the Legislatureuses the plan to determine funding priori-ties. The Action Team uses technicalassistance, planning, monitoring andresearch, publications and website-basedinformation, and outreach. It makesPublic Involvement and Education (PIE)grants, which put “money and motivationinto the hands of dedicated individuals,businesses, non-profit organizations andlocal and tribal governments that createand nurture environmental programs intheir communities.”18

When asked about cultural connections,Beale said that by definition the preserva-tion of Puget Sound is cultural: “It isabout preservation of the smells, sounds,and visual impact of the Sound. It isabout the economic and leisure activitiesof fishing and shell fishing. It bringspeople together and defines peoples’sense of community.” She also talkedabout the artistic and cultural effortsfunded through the PIE grants. Culturalinterests serve environmental purposesand vice versa, encouraging creativity andnew ways to communicate and educate.As examples she mentioned a play aboutPuget Sound and support for fairs. The

including the stories of native people,early settlers, and the state’s early com-mercial activities.”17 The paper exploresIAC grants to twenty-one projects, whichinvolved “heritage values.” Eight of thosewere grants to projects in state parks; theremainder were a mix of county and cityprojects, with one grant to a tribe, andone to a U.S. Forest Service project. Notethat the IAC offers another source offunding for cultural projects that is out-side each agency’s normal state budget.

The IAC has defined “heritage values” asthose values associated with a significantarchaeological, historical, or cultural area.They use surveys, focus groups, townmeetings, workshops, draft plans, andpublic review in their policy developmentprocess. In Fox’s view, IAC’s policy is theaggregate of the information gained inthese various public input forums plus theinput of experts in public land manage-ment and outdoor recreation.

Accountability is important for the staffof IAC. They consider it part of theirmission to be accountable for their invest-ment of state resources. They track allgrants in a computerized database, con-duct site visits to grantees, and maintaindata on outputs. They are beginning tolook for ways to look at outcomes—measuring the degree to which policy hasactually achieved its intent—in addition tooutputs. This is one of the few places thatwe found evidence-based evaluationbeginning to play a role in the implemen-tation and monitoring of cultural policyin Washington.

Puget Sound Water Quality ActionTeam (Governor’s Office)Like the Interagency Committee forOutdoor Recreation, the Puget SoundWater Quality Action Team offers anotherset of resources to organizations (non-profits and local and tribal governments)to carry out projects to restore and pro-tect the biological health and diversity ofPuget Sound by protecting and enhancingPuget Sound’s water and sediment quality,its fish and shellfish, and its wetlands andother habitats.

17 Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation,“Open Space andPreservation of HeritageValues in IAC GrantPrograms,” March 10, 1999.

18 www.wa.gov/puget_sound/Programs/Education.htm

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19 When the MassachusettsCouncil on the Arts andHumanities was reconfiguredas the Massachusetts CulturalCouncil, for example, itsmandate was enlarged toinclude the arts, humanities,and science. The DenverScientific and CulturalFacilities District is anothercase in point at the metropol-itan level.

20 http://ext.wsu.edu/

the teaching of art history, philosophy,and ethics to welfare mothers. Culturalconcerns can take her program in anynumber of directions: “We do programsaround wooden boats. In working on anoral history project with the Hispaniccommunity we discovered that they weremaking cheese in a way that encouragedthe growth of salmonella.”

Baril talked about her “Sense of Place”workshops designed to get people tounderstand the culture and history oftheir local community. She used “sense ofplace” as a phrase that refers both to asensitivity to one’s surroundings and to aspecific academic curriculum. In her view,“We are doing bioregional education—the New West. We are listening to theland and becoming a people of place.This is a reflection of tribal ways ofthinking. The Jamestown S’klallam tribehas a saying, ‘Every river has its people.’”Thus, cultural policy is once again linkedwith the concerns of the land-basedprograms of the state.

Washington State Office of Tradeand Economic DevelopmentThe Washington State Office of Tradeand Economic Development is one partof what was, until recently, the Washing-ton State Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development. Thisagency is now divided into two compo-nents (which share an AdministrativeServices Division and an EmployeeServices unit): the Washington StateOffice of Trade and Economic Develop-ment and the Washington State Office ofCommunity Development. The primarycultural policy initiatives on the CommunityDevelopment side have already been dis-cussed: the Building for the Arts program(Chapter III) and the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation (Chapter IV).Within the Office of Trade and EconomicDevelopment, we looked particularly atthe Downtown Revitalization Program(Main Street Program), and Business andTourism Development, including RuralTourism, each of which is discussedbelow.

Marine Science Center at Fort Wordenhas received funding from the PugetSound Water Quality Action Team forsome of its exhibits.

Although the grants that are available forsuch purposes through the Action Teamare small, they are one of the few pathwaysthrough which organizations involved inthe interpretive sciences in Washingtoncan tap state money. In other states, bycontrast, science museums, aquariums,and other interpretive science centersoften have access to grants through thestate arts agency or through anothersimilar mechanism.19

Washington State UniversityCooperative Extension ServiceOne recipient of the Puget Sound WaterQuality Action Team’s Public Involvementand Education grants (described above)has been the Washington State UniversityCooperative Extension Service. KatherineBaril, chair for Jefferson County, said thatthey have used the PIE grants to build alarge salmon, create a dragon trackinggame, commission a Queen Salmon play,and sponsor arts festivals.

As one who was surprised to be approachedabout a study on cultural policy, Barilquickly realized that many of the activitiesof the Extension Service, and especiallyher Office of Community Leadership,came under the rubric of cultural policy.In carrying out the Extension Service’smission to “help people develop leader-ship skills and use research-based knowl-edge to improve their economic status andquality of life,”20 the Extension Servicefocuses on a four-fold framework: 4-HYouth Development, Natural Resources,Community Leadership, and Access toDegrees and Technology. CommunityLeadership is the place in which the activ-ities of the Cooperative Extension Servicehave begun to intersect with the interestsand concerns of cultural policy.

Baril mentioned collaborations withCentrum, participation in eco-tourismpartnerships, work with Humanities Wash-ington and its fireside chat programs, and

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planning. As Kempf said, “[The] culturalpolicy piece is the focus on historic qual-ity. It’s all about the life of a place, the‘sense of place’—that is the preservationelement.”

Business and Tourism Development and Rural Tourism

The state tourism office began focusingon cultural tourism in 1997 when its thendirector, Robin Pollard, attended a culturaltourism workshop in San Francisco.Pollard’s leadership led to the developmentof the Memorandum of Understanding onCultural Tourism discussed at the beginningof this chapter. While tourism is a majorpiece of the Washington economy, theoffice (and the effort) is surprisingly small.

George Sharpe, rural tourism develop-ment manager, views cultural tourism asan option for many rural communities. Ina manner that is similar to the Main StreetProgram, he works with local communitystakeholders in developing tourism plansthat make sense for the community. Hehelps communities identify their strengths,develop a plan for infrastructure develop-ment, and find partners to meet tourismobjectives. Sharpe described RuralTourism’s goal as maximizing tourismrevenue while maintaining equilibriumwith quality of life and sustainability. Aswith the Main Street Program, he notedthe biggest barrier as funding. Very smallcommunities may develop great plans butstill lack the seed money to get started.As the MOU would suggest, Tourism andRural Tourism work closely with HeritageCorridors, Watchable Wildlife, and otherstate programs that seek to attract visitors.

Peter McMillin, director of business andtourism development, was clear that “policy is driven by client and customerneeds (new businesses coming to Washing-ton, tourists, etc.) rather than by legisla-tion, in both tourism and businessdevelopment.” Therefore, when theseoffices pursue cultural policies they willalways be in the service of economicgoals.

The Downtown Revitalization Program (Main Street Program)

The Washington Downtown RevitalizationProgram uses the “Main Street Program”model developed by the National Trustfor Historic Preservation. The Main StreetProgram was developed in the 1970s tohelp communities preserve and revitalizetheir downtowns using a variety of pro-grammatic interventions. Some thirty-fiveto forty states have Main Street programs;like Washington, most are located within astate government agency.

Washington, which developed its programin 1984, “…has been helping communi-ties revitalize the economy, appearance,and image of their downtown commercialdistricts using the successful Main StreetApproach™. Main Street is a comprehen-sive, incremental approach to revitaliza-tion built around a community’s uniqueheritage and attributes. Using localresources and initiative, the state programhelps communities develop their ownstrategies to stimulate long term economicgrowth and pride in the heart of the com-munity—downtown.”21

According to Susan Kempf, director ofWashington’s Main Street Program, thedemand for this program’s services is fargreater than the services she can provide.No federal funds support the program;state general funds provided about$168,000 at the time of our interviews.To stretch resources, she has developed a three-tier system: eleven communitiesparticipate as full partners, and a greaternumber participate at the associate orparticipant levels. Annual conferencesextend the training opportunities to evenmore communities.

From a cultural policy perspective theinteresting characteristic of the programis that it is “preservation-based” with fourcritical pieces: organization of stakeholders;promotion of historic downtowns; anemphasis on design, including both archi-tecture and public art; and economicrestructuring. The central idea of theprogram is to promote the symbiotic rela-tionship of preservation and economichealth through technical assistance and

21 www.oted.wa.gov/ed/cea/downtown/

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22 www.wa.gov.agr

Observations andConclusionsIn Washington, the natural environmentlooms large in the public’s consciousness.This is reflected in the size and scope ofthe state agencies and organizationsaddressing issues of the land. It was asurprise when visiting Olympia to findthat the Department of Natural Resources,the Department of Fish and Wildlife, andother related agencies command an entiresection of “campus” near the state capitolincluding a huge, multi-story headquarterswith what appeared to be thousands ofoffices. As we began to interview agencyheads and to discover just how importantthe environment is to the Washingtonidentity, the Washington economy, andWashington State revenues, the picturebegan to clear. The next surprise was thegrowing consciousness of the presenceand importance of historic and culturalresources within these agencies.

Our interviews and research into the workof Washington’s “land-based agencies”revealed sophisticated and explicit state-ments of cultural policy, as well as implicitevidence of cultural policy. A further sur-prise came when interviewees hypothesizedabout why the environmental and culturallinks were so strong. The answers werealmost always the same, no matter whomwe asked—usually along the lines of “InWashington, the environment is the culture.This is what we are about as a people.”Most striking was the ease and fluiditywith which so many state employees coulddescribe the connection between the landand heritage and culture. Indeed it wasrare to leave an interview without a handfulof quotes about cultural landscapes, theconnection of the people to the land inheart and in livelihood, and the inextricablelink between the environment, the people,and Washingtonians’ sense of identity andplace. And the articulation of this senseof identity came from all corners: policyprofessionals, legislators, middle managers,citizens, lobbyists, and journalists. Thiswas also evident in multiple citations fromthe Revised Code of Washington, our

Department of Agriculture/Commodity CommissionsThe Department of Agriculture’s missionis to support the agricultural communityand promote consumer and environmen-tal protection.22 While most programs ofthe agency do not intersect with culture,the department’s assistance to state fairsdoes address, to some extent, the preser-vation of agricultural traditions; the depart-ment is involved along with the StateAgricultural Extension Service to somedegree in harvest festivals and the inter-pretation of the agricultural heritage; andat least one of the commodity commis-sions, the Washington Wine Commission,is looking to cultural tourism as a growthopportunity.

The Wine Commission, one of twenty-three Washington Agricultural CommodityCommissions, is a self-governing tradeassociation with legislative authority to taxwine production and grape sales (6 centsper gallon of wine, and $6.00 per ton ofgrapes) to support its marketing activities.The Wine Commission’s mission state-ment, Washington Wine 2020, states thatWashington plans to become the mostimportant and successful wine growingstate in the United States.

Through the Wine Commission, vintnersand growers work closely together to pro-mote cultural tourism, linking with fairs,theaters, and symphony orchestras to attractpeople to visit the vineyards and to raisevisibility for Washington wines. They havealso established the Northwest Wine BenefitFoundation, which contributes in excessof $2 million per year to charities andcultural organizations.

Thus, even in agricultural policy hints ofcultural policy can be found (and are only likely to grow).

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cultural activity are insulated. Programdirectors within the land-based agen-cies are often insulated by layers ofbureaucracy, and they find themselvesmany rungs away from access to offi-cial policy makers. This results in twooutcomes: policy is either implicitlycreated through program actions ortop-level agency heads support andfacilitate the adoption of culturalpolicies and enterprises.

The fundamental link betweenenvironment or land and culture iswidely understood and supported bygovernment leadership and the publicas part of the Washington way of life.This acceptance is also enjoyed byheritage programs. In contrast, the arts and humanities agencies are not as likely to be immediately understoodand appreciated.

In some cases, such as Parks andRecreation, entry into the realm ofcultural policy results from the realityof owning land, buildings, or resourcesof cultural value. Tribal interests alsopromote cultural sensitivity in theland-based agencies, as evidenced atthe Department of Natural Resources.In other cases, cultural policy has beendeveloped as a result of federal seedmoney (e.g., Heritage Corridors or theMain Street Program). But in mostcases, the cultural policies and programshave been developed as a result of theenergy and passion of a few individu-als, often middle managers, who havehad the vision and drive to make change.

Almost all our interviews with repre-sentatives of the land-based agenciesrevealed a remarkable clarity of pur-pose about the who, what, when, andwhy of their work. Similar to the cul-tural agencies, interviewees describedfrustration at not being able to satisfythe appetites and needs of the field.What was very different is that programimplementation in the land-basedagencies is strategic, grounded in policy,and, to a noticeable extent, using outcomes-based criteria for resourceallocation. Rarely were decisions made

first hint that something remarkable washappening.

The characteristics and implementation ofthe cultural policies of the land-basedagencies are probably best viewed in con-trast to the more traditional cultural agen-cies described in Chapters III, IV, and V:

In the land-based agencies, the resourcesin support of cultural policies havebeen creatively linked and tapped fromother sources, such as natural resources,transportation, wildlife funds, etc. Forthe arts, heritage, and humanitiesagencies, on the other hand, statefunding is directly appropriated by thegovernor and the Legislature.

The resources in support of culturalpolicies are a small part of the budgetfrom which they are invested.Especially in agencies such as theDepartments of Natural Resources,Transportation, and Fish and Wildlife,the funds and resources devoted tocultural goals represent a very smallpercentage of the resources of theagency as a whole.

The programs of the various land-based agencies do not compete forstate funds; rather, any competition for resources is more likely to occurwithin the agency. (For the more tradi-tional cultural agencies there is alwaysconcern that collaboration will simplydivide the same pie into new, lessfavorable portions.) As a result, thestaff of land-based agencies enjoy thefreedom to collaborate and leverageresources without jeopardizing theirturf. This is perhaps part of the reasonthat collaboration seems to be higheramong the land-based agencies thanamong cultural agencies.

Tourism is a link that concerns mostof the land-based agencies; tourismhas provided a focus for collaborationand, as a result, has encouraged theadoption of a cultural vocabularyamong the players.

In the land-based agencies, which are large and diverse, the pockets of

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Is this link between the work of land-based agencies and the pursuit of culturalgoals unique to Washington? We really donot know. It is imaginable that we mightfind a similar link in states that, likeWashington, have a strong environmentalidentity, especially those in the West andparticularly the Northwest. The fact thatWashington’s very founding in 1889 wasthe result of a land grant that enabled thestate to derive revenue from the land tosupport the development of the state’sinfrastructure may be the foundation ofthis strong link. What we do know is thatin Washington the land-based agencies arebig players in the cultural policies of thestate. The Washington political landscapeis welcoming to policy that links the peo-ple with their landscape—to preserve, toprotect, and to perpetuate a land ethicand appreciation of heritage and culturethat is clearly part of Washington life.

reactively as a result of constituentpressure. And it was in the land-basedagencies that we discovered the mostsophisticated analysis of policyoutcomes.

This attention to policy formulationand analysis and evaluation of policyoutcomes is no doubt facilitated by therelative size of these agencies. As ageneral rule, the land-based agencieshave greater resources at their disposal,and, as a result, may well find it easierto allocate staff and financial resourcesto these tasks (over and above any nat-ural predilection they may have forevidence-based planning and evalua-tion). In the smaller, dedicated culturalagencies staffing and budgetary con-siderations may prove to be bindingconstraints. This is not to argue thatsmaller size should result in lowerexpectations of the smaller agencies,only to suggest that policy formula-tion, analysis, and evaluation arecomplicated by the overall level ofavailable resources.

Balance is a constant struggle for these agencies. Every action has animpact—even inaction has its conse-quences. For instance, at Parks andRecreation, with so many historicstructures on park lands, decisionsmust be made about which buildingsto preserve, and which to let go.Another common example is the needto balance public access and publicdemand with conservation andpreservation.

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Native American Tribes and State Cultural PolicyColleen Grogan

Chapter VII

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(2) increased understanding of tribal cul-ture in the delivery of state-providedsocial services; and (3) state policy thatpromotes the creation of tribal art and/orthe interpretation of tribal culture. Thischapter is organized around these threeareas of significant tribal influence on,and interaction with, state cultural policy.First, however, we provide a briefdescription of the data collection effortsthat we used in our endeavor to under-stand the relationship between NativeAmerican tribes and state cultural policyin Washington. This is important as itaffects the interpretation that one mightgive to the material that follows. We then turn to a brief discussion of theGovernor’s Office of Indian Affairs(GOIA) since this is the main state officedevoted entirely to state-tribal relations.

Information GatheringMethodologyAfter the first round of interviews withthe Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs,Native American cultural organizationssuch as Longhouse at The EvergreenState College, and representatives fromthe land-based state agencies, it becameclear to us that Native Americans had animportant impact on cultural policy inWashington State. Therefore, for the sec-ond round of interviews we attempted totalk to more tribal liaisons from stateagencies and tribal representatives. In theend, we interviewed tribal liaisons fromthree state agencies and tribal representa-tives from four different federally recog-nized Washington tribes. Ideally, to obtaina more complete picture of the influenceof Native Americans on cultural policy inWashington State, we would have talkedto all the tribal liaisons in relevant state

Introduction andBackgroundIn 1989, the State of Washington and thefederally recognized Indian tribes in thestate signed a Centennial Accord. Theaccord’s underlying principle is to respectthe sovereignty of tribal nations throughthe fulfillment of three main goals:(1) to enhance and improve communica-tion; (2) to facilitate resolution of issues;and (3) to improve services to Indian andnon-Indian people. Most tribal liaisonsworking for state agencies, as well as thetribal representatives we interviewedviewed the Centennial Accord as a veryimportant moment in tribal-state relations.In their view, the accord became thecatalyst for putting several procedures inplace. For example, as mandated in theaccord, each state agency in consultationwith the tribes is to establish a procedureby which a government-to-governmentpolicy is implemented. Thirteen stateagencies have Centennial Accord plans inplace. One tribal liaison for a state agencymentioned that she is often asked to pres-ent her Centennial Accord plan in otherstates because Washington’s accord isquite innovative. In 1999, the MillenniumAgreement was signed to reaffirm andclarify the principles and goals of theCentennial Accord.

Largely due to the Centennial Accord and the establishment of official triballiaisons in many state agencies, NativeAmerican tribes play a role in many facetsof cultural policy at the state level inWashington. However, their influenceappears most significant in three areas:(1) cultural resource policy that is playedout through interactions with what wehave termed the “land-based state agencies”;

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immersed in everything we do.” Whenasked about the ways in which GOIA gotinvolved in activities with cultural content,Craven responded:

That is a difficult question to answer because inmany ways everything we do is about “culture.”Under the Centennial Accord, we strive for cross-cultural understanding, in our work with stateagencies we seek to increase cultural educationamong non-Indians, and through our economicdevelopment programs we attempt to figure outhow programs can be culturally relevant.

Implementation of the Centennial Accord

The Centennial Accord mandated eachstate agency to establish a procedure bywhich it would implement its portion ofthe government-to-government policy.Despite this mandate, until relativelyrecently many state agencies had yet todevelop and/or implement a government-to-government policy. Because stateagency approaches to policy developmentdiffer widely, it has been even more diffi-cult for tribes to work across state agen-cies. In response to these issues, in 2000GOIA developed a set of implementationguidelines for state agencies and tribalgovernments to act both as an impetus todevelop government-to-government poli-cies and to encourage continuity acrosstribes and across state agencies. Althoughthirteen state agencies have now devel-oped Centennial Accord plans, theliaisons we talked to indicated that theimplementation of these plans was still inthe early stages. (The views of stateagency liaisons are discussed in moredetail below.)

Enhancing an Understanding of Indian Culture

It is GOIA’s view that state agencies wantto engage and consult with tribes but oftendo not know how. As a result, accordingto Craven, they turn to GOIA for assis-tance and guidance. To fulfill this objec-tive, GOIA offers training across thestate, often for specific agencies. In 2002,GOIA created a new training manual andincreased its advertising to improve atten-dance at these training sessions. The one-day training session covers a tribal

agencies, and to tribal representatives fromall twenty-nine federally recognized tribes.However, given the scope of the currentresearch project, such extensive interview-ing was unfeasible. While significant infor-mation surfaced from our interview datathat warranted this special chapter onNative Americans, it is important to pointout that this chapter is based on a rela-tively limited number of interviews. Whileour findings suggest that NativeAmericans have the greatest impact onstate cultural policy in Washington in thearea of land-based cultural policy (or cul-tural resource policy), this could be anartifact of whom we ended up talking to(and whom we missed).

The Governor’s Office of Indian AffairsThe Office of Indian Affairs was estab-lished in 1969 to function as an advisorycouncil to the governor. Ten years later,in 1979, this council was abolished andreplaced by an assistant for Indian affairsappointed by the governor. At this time,the organization within which theassistant for Indian affairs was locatedwas renamed the Governor’s Office ofIndian Affairs (GOIA). While GOIA’smain purpose has always been to act as aliaison between state and tribal govern-ments, its mission in more recent yearshas been centrally focused on implement-ing the Centennial Accord (1989) and theMillennium Agreement (1999). AsKimberly Craven, the executive directorof GOIA, put it: “our role is threefold:first, to improve government-to-governmentrelations by assuring that we live up to theWashington State Centennial Accord;second, to enhance an understanding ofIndian culture among non-Indians; and,third, to improve economic developmentfor Indians.”

While we describe GOIA’s activitiesaccording to this threefold mission below,it is important to point out that theagency does not have a “cultural policy”per se, nor does it explicitly think aboutitself as getting involved in “culture.”Rather, in Craven’s words, culture “is

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Chapter VII: Native Am

erican Tribes and State Cultural Policy

1 Veronica E. Tiller and RobertA. Chase, EconomicContributions of Indian Tribes tothe Economy of Washington State(Olympia, WA: Governor’sOffice of Indian Affairs,1998), 25.

more importantly, from a perspective ofbuilding on tribal economic strengths.

Another project has focused on develop-ing tribal tourism. GOIA has published abook entitled Tribal Tourism, which detailstourism opportunities and challenges.According to Craven, “Tribal tourism hasthe potential to raise economic resourcesfor the tribes.” At the same time, thisapproach does raise concerns about thepotential to “exploit” cultural resources toenhance economic wellbeing.

GOIA is also involved in job training andeducational activities aimed at increasingfinancial and technological literacy. Forexample, GOIA has received a small grantfrom Washington Mutual Bank to providetechnical assistance to tribes. It has alsodeveloped a culturally relevant curriculumon how to manage money. According toCraven, “It has only recently becomeacceptable to talk about money in Indianculture.”

Areas of SignificantTribal Influence on State Cultural Policy

Cultural Resource Policy andLand-Based State AgenciesDespite the best intentions of theCentennial Accord, many difficult issuesremain with tribal-state relations especiallyin the area of cultural resource policywhere the gulf in perspectives betweenIndians and non-Indians is vast. A mainsource of tension between the tribes andthe State of Washington lies in two verydifferent ideas about the definition of“cultural resources.” To take one example,the Department of Natural Resourcesdefines cultural resources in a culturalpolicy document (under draft DNRProcedure PR 14-004-030) as: “…thelandscape features, places, or objects thatare important to, representative of, orcontain information about a given culture.Cultural resources can be subdivided intotraditional places, historic sites andarchaeological resources.” Although thismay appear to Washingtonians as a fairly

historical perspective, legal issues, tribalsovereignty, and tribal government. Thegoal of this training is to assist stateemployees in furthering their relationshipwith Washington’s twenty-nine federallyrecognized tribes as well as with othertribes that are not so recognized.

Often GOIA enters into inter-agencyagreements through which it is funded tohelp implement a specific agency’s programon an Indian reservation. For example,GOIA has received a grant from theDepartment of Social and Health Servicesto work on fetal alcohol syndrome on thereservations. According to Craven, “theagency needed our cultural expertise tounderstand how to implement such aprogram effectively.”

Economic Development for Indians

One of GOIA’s main goals is to “createreal jobs on Indian reservations.” Despitesubstantial gaming-supported revenuesfor certain tribes in recent years, Indiantribes still face huge economic obstacles.Listed in a GOIA generated report, theseobstacles include: “high unemploymentrates, lack of infrastructure, poor housing,and low levels of educational attainmentin comparison to national averages.”1

GOIA has implemented a number ofdifferent programs to help economicdevelopment. One novel approach wasthe 1997 creation of an Economic StudyGroup to report on the tribes’ contribu-tion to the state’s economy. It is believedto be the first report of its kind in thecountry, with tribes and a state coopera-tively developing a common factual baseof information. The report dispels com-mon misperceptions that Washington’sIndian reservations are merely pockets ofpoverty. Instead, the report shows that in 1997 Washington tribes contributed $1 billion to the state’s overall economy,paid an estimated $51 million in federaland $5 million in state employment/payroll-related taxes, and employed over14,000 Washington citizens full time.This report not only allows the state toapproach tribal economic developmentwith appropriate baseline data but also,

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three. In the beginning, Parks andRecreation primarily focused on recre-ation, then natural resources, and today‘cultural resources’ is emphasized as well.”In contrast, preserving cultural resourceshas been a way of life for Washington’stribes for thousands of years.

Another tribal liaison, in discussing thechallenges of her role, echoed this deepdivide in thinking about what the termcultural resources entails: “In my job, I’msupposed to help increase understandingaround natural and cultural resources forthe DNR. However, for the tribes, thesetwo things are connected—they don’t dis-tinguish. For example, fish are cultural.Non-cultural scientists, such as archaeolo-gists, are fearful of cultural discussions.”When the interviewer mentioned that per-haps salmon could be an area of commonunderstanding since it seems to be a cul-tural icon for Washingtonians as well asNative Americans, she responded:

For tribes, salmon is art, religion, ceremony, a way of life—food is just a small part of that.We have the First Salmon Ceremony where wepray—thanking the salmon, celebrating theharvest—and request them to come back. Wethen return their bones. There is a huge feast inthe village, followed by singing, dancing and drum-ming. All tribes in the Puget Sound area have aFirst Salmon Ceremony. But, besides the cere-mony, there is a whole political context aroundsalmon that makes communication difficult. Wehave the “fish wars” from the 1960s and ’70swhere Billy Frank Jr. had to be arrested 79 timesfor exercising his right to fish.

Although salmon appear to be singled outwithin cultural policy in Washington (aswe have documented in the previouschapter), there is concern among non-Indians as well about the state’s motiva-tion and the degree to which the state caresabout salmon (and watershed) recovery.For example, a representative from theParks and Recreation Commission inter-preted the state’s motivation in salmonrecovery as follows: “The state is notabout saving salmon, but about develop-ing property. Therefore, if the state candeal with the federal Endangered SpeciesList and associated regulations, then it canget back to developing property.”

broad definition of cultural resources, thetribes define cultural resources much morebroadly. According to a tribal member,Native Americans include seven broadcategories in their definition of culturalresources:

Flora and Fauna: plants, animals, fish,shellfish, etc.;

Habitats: riparian streams, floodplains,old growth oak forests;

Ecological Processes: large wooded debris,cool water fish;

Physical Processes: earth, water, air,energy (“Earth is our Mother”);

Geological Land Forms: soils, landslides,valley walls, stream channels;

Sites: archaeological, ceremonial,religious sites; and

Traditional Cultural Properties: additionaluse areas, huckleberry fields, shellfish.

This tribal member went on to say,“When the state defines cultural resourcesso narrowly—mainly, in our view, focus-ing only on the ‘sites’ dimension, which isonly one out of the seven we careabout—how should tribes respond to thestate?” DNR’s 1992 Forest Resource Planillustrates this one-dimensional “sites”perspective quite clearly: “The departmentwill establish a program to identify andinventory historic and archaeological sitesand protect them at a level which at aminimum meets regulatory requirements.”From the tribes’ perspective, the statecannot begin to understand tribal culturalpolicy because “archaeology solves the[issue]…for them; it is all about bones,artifacts, etc….Of course we care aboutthat, but for us it is just one of sevenimportant dimensions.”

Part of the problem is that the wholeconcept of “cultural resources” is rela-tively new to state agencies. As we havealready seen, while representatives fromthe Parks and Recreation Commissiondescribe recreation, natural resources, andcultural resources as the three pillars oftheir agency, they also recognize that “theagency did not always try to balance all

thirty days, or whatever. Sometimes thewindow is too small, and sometimes youdon’t receive the notice until the ninthday…and you have almost no chance torespond.”

According to another tribal representative,the ten-year recalculation for timber har-vesting is another area of timing aroundwhich there is tension. Public notificationis supposed to happen every time a recalcu-lation is done. From the tribes’ perspective,“They were not notified,” and they areconcerned because “there is ten timesmore harvesting allowed this year com-pared to last.”

Second, the numerous rules, regulations,and requests from different state agenciesand levels of government are ultimatelyoverwhelming for any one tribe to keepup with. As one tribal representative put it:

There are 1,400 Forest Practice Applications(FPA) that we are supposed to respond to. (Anyentity that wants to develop land or harvest treeswithin state forests must get a FPA from theDNR.) This is so frustrating. There are multipleagencies (DOT, DNR) and multiple governmen-tal entities (federal, state and local). Some of theprivate landowners are the worst. One took abulldozer and ran over shanook roots. Somelandowners have no regard for DNR regulationsor for tribal concerns. They don’t understand thattheir land is still available for us to access underthe Treaty of 1855. We need more money to dealwith all this, but at some point we have to ask, towhat end? Is it worth it, when they only under-stand one out of seven of our concerns? Ourwhole philosophy is to only take what you needfrom the earth. We pray to the earth and offer herthanks. Land encompasses our whole physical andspiritual being.

A third source of frustration is the lack ofcumulative precedent from one ruling toanother. Tribes feel that they have to fightthe same issue over and over again. Forexample, one very frustrating aspect ofworking with the DNR has to do with therotation of sales and the repeated ForestPractice Applications. The tribes con-stantly have to prove that the same land isimportant to them.

Finally, there is concern about the lack ofany clear cultural resource policy or

Indeed, the state’s Salmon RecoveryProject emerged out of legal pressurefrom Native American tribes starting witha 1974 Supreme Court Ruling (the BoltDecision), which interpreted the TribalTreaties (signed in the 1800s) as entitlingtribes to half of the salmon harvest.Although the tribes won the right to halfof the harvest, the concern now is aboutthe supply of salmon. Obviously, if thereare no fish, this right is meaningless. SoWashington’s tribes and the federal gov-ernment sued the state again, saying thestate needs to protect salmon habitat sothat there will be fish to harvest. (Somerefer to this court case as Bolt DecisionII.) According to the head of the SalmonRecovery Project, the judge said to thetribes that they needed a test case—atangible case with which to sue thestate—and that is where road culvertshave come into the picture. Based on areport (put out by the state itself) thatconcluded that damaged culverts hurt (orruin) salmon habitat, culvert repair becamea focus for the concern about salmon as acultural resource. Eventually, the ModifiedForest Practice Act, which mandated thatall road culverts had to be fixed by 2015,was passed. This example shows thedirect influence of Native Americans onthe state’s cultural resource policies.

In our interviews with tribal liaisons andtribal representatives, there was a com-mon sense of fear and desperation thattheir cultural resources would not be pro-tected. This desperation stems in part fromthe gulf in understanding about “culturalresources,” but it also relates to four mainprocedural problems in dealing with theland-based state agencies (of which DNRis probably the most important). First, therelatively short-time frame for publicnotice to express tribal concern is viewedas particularly problematic. According toone tribal historic preservation officer,legal requirements, such as notificationtimetables, are sometimes used perniciously:“Depending on what it is, you may have aten day notification requirement (withinwhich the tribe must respond to actionstaken by other parties with regard to aproposed project), or twenty days, or 177



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This was supposed to be confidential informa-tion….I get into fights all the time just trying toexercise my right to access land.

As this example suggests, there is a realsense of urgency to save the last of theseunique cultural resources, in part becausethis is not just about saving historicalsites. According to one tribal liaison,“Everyone [non-tribal people] thinks weare talking only about history. But, thereare many current use sites. We are work-ing with living culture—rich, healthy, livingculture. Our treaties reserve the right forus to use state lands for ceremonial pur-poses in perpetuity. For centuries we havebeen using places for meditation and soli-tude—these sites need to be protected.”

Beyond this basic gulf in understandingand the procedural difficulties discussedabove, many external factors also influ-ence state-tribal relations in the attempt topursue some type of cultural resourcepolicy. We discuss the following influentialfactors below: federal policy, state agencyfunding, perspectives on tribal influenceand power, and the role of tribal liaisons.

The Influence of Federal Policy Increasingly, the interactions of the tribeswith the federal government around cul-tural resources have very much shapedhow they approach the issue of culturalresources with the State of Washington.When we asked tribal members aboutcultural resource policy in Washington,they began by talking first about the fed-eral government’s cultural resource policy.

Section 106 is the only real avenuethrough which federal agencies addressthe issue of the management of culturalresources. Whenever a federal action isproposed, Section 106 of the NationalHistoric Preservation Act requires agen-cies to identify all resources that are “cul-turally relevant” within the project’s Areaof Potential Effect. Typically this meansany building or site that is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places. WhileSection 106 was a giant step forward, twotribal members pointed out that only tenof the ninety cultural resources the tribescare about are actually protected under

process to deal with cultural resourceissues. Despite the divide in thinkingabout what cultural resources are, thetribes would at least welcome a clearprocess to deal with cultural resources.One tribal member relayed the followingstory to illustrate the lack of any suchpolicy in the state:

Timber, Fish and Wildlife (TFW) created aCultural Resource Management Committee in1988. Four groups were included on the commit-tee: state agencies, tribes, environmentalists, andlocal government. TFW had an annual review toprotect fish, timber, water, and wildlife. The com-mittee met until 1991. We [the tribes] saw nomajor improvements in understanding or protec-tion during this period. There was a second groupdeveloped in 1994, and then a hiatus until 1998when TFW created the Cultural Committee. In1999, somewhat out of frustration due to lack of state action, the tribes created their own set ofpolicies and processes. At that point the ForestPractice Board (from DNR) created their ownForest Cultural Resource Committee. This com-mittee took the proposal developed by the tribesand merged it with some industry concerns.

Although the tribal members acknowledgethat “this is a work in progress, and thestate is now at least willing to integrateour concerns with private interests,” therewas a clear sense of defeatism when headded: “So, conceptually the state hasprogressed a bit, but practically we don’tsee much difference.”

Another tribal member gave an exampleof the lack of practical, on-the-ground,progress:

Of the 1,400 Forest Practice Applications, 600have encroached on our cultural resources. Thisdirectly affects the Treaty of 1855. We were giventhe right to access non-reservation lands for hunt-ing, religious, and cultural purposes. These appli-cations usually request to develop the land orharvest the forest. We are supposed to respond if our cultural resources are impacted. I wrote aletter indicating the potential impact on our cul-tural resources. One impact was that we had gearstorage on the land under consideration. We had1,000-year-old ceremonial masks hidden in a tree(this is our gear storage area). The culturalresource policy (and our Treaty) says I don’t haveto “show” them this cultural resource, but thestate said, “You have to show us.” Unfortunately,after I showed them, the gear storage was looted.

2 Washington StateDepartment of NaturalResources, “Diverse Agency,Diverse Resources,”brochure, February 2, 1999.

avoided altogether, WSDOT needs to use“cultural mitigation” measures.

Dan Meatte, archaeologist for the Parksand Recreation Commission, mentionedthat his job emerged out of the necessityof complying with federal regulations as well. Because the state must complywith regulations created by the federalgovernment around tribal archaeologicalpreservation, the Parks and RecreationCommission was inundated with work tomake sure the regulations were being fol-lowed correctly. “The position grew outof crisis.” In the 1980s, the commissionconducted a couple of archaeologicalprojects to address federal complianceneeds. It hired an archaeological servicescompany, and one of these projects wentawry. At that point, it was decided thatthe commission needed in-house capacityin this area.

Another important federal policy that hastightened the regulatory environment isthe Native American Graves Protectionand Repatriation Act (NAGPRA; P.L.101-601) passed in 1990. Under this actall federal agencies and organizationsreceiving federal money must follow cer-tain procedures to inventory and preserveobjects and items, including humanremains, of cultural patrimony.

The Influence of State Agency Funding

The Department of Natural Resources(DNR) is a major revenue generator forthe State of Washington. The departmentmanages 2.1 million acres of forestland,1.2 million acres of agricultural and rangeland, 75,000 acres of Natural ResourceConservation and Preserves, and 2.4 mil-lion acres of aquatic (submerged) land,all of which are owned by the State ofWashington. In addition, it owns andmanages commercial properties; commu-nication tower sites; mineral, oil and gasleases; mining contracts; and sand, gravel,and rock sales.2 Between 1970 and 1999,trust lands generated $4.7 billion inincome to the trusts to support construc-tion of public facilities (e.g., schools, uni-versities, prisons, state capitol buildings.)This revenue-producing function was

Section 106. There is no process to dealwith the other eighty. If artifacts or placesof cultural significance are not on theNational Register, then there is no processto deal with such things.

Even though tribal members highlightedthese limitations, they were also quick topoint out that although this federal law isimperfect, it is a lot better than the statesystem. In their view, “The state has nocultural resource policy. There is no clearprocess to deal with places and objects of cultural significance.” So, despite itsimperfections, the tribes would like to seethe state move closer to something likeSection 106, but applied more broadly atthe state level. The federal government isfar from an ideal model for the tribes, butat least they can point to federal regula-tions as a direction in which the statemight move.

Federal regulation certainly impacts thestate perspective as well. The Departmentof Natural Resource’s cultural policy doc-ument (discussed below) states, “Culturalresource issues are becoming more criticalto the department. Tribes and other stake-holders are insisting that the departmentdo more, particularly on state lands. TheNational Marine Fisheries Service and theU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may begindelegating Section 106 obligations in thenear future…. [T]hey are currentlyinvolved in precedent-setting consulta-tions that may result in their transferringSection 106 obligations to applicants aspart of future habitat conservation plans,and in salmon recovery efforts.” Thethreat of Section 106 was at least oneimpetus for the creation of this document.

Tribal Liaison Colleen Jollie, from theWashington State Department of Transpor-tation (WSDOT), also mentioned theimportance of Section 106 of the NationalHistoric Preservation Act. Her job emergedout of a need to make sure that her agencywas in compliance with federal regulations.When WSDOT is building roads, forexample, it needs to make sure it is notruining an ancient site. Consistent withSection 106, there should be minimalimpact. And if impact on a site cannot be 179



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In contrast to DNR, the explicit culturalresource policy of the Parks and Recrea-tion Commission goes well beyond theresources important to Native Americantribes. Preserving cultural resources,from the commission’s perspective asevidenced in their written documents andin the interviews, is as much about main-taining a resource for Washingtonians as it is for tribal members. Perhaps this viewderives from the fact that state parkproperty is clearly viewed as state-ownedproperty, and while some of this propertyis revenue generating, this is not seen asits primary purpose.

For the Parks and Recreation Commission,funding is a significant issue for preserv-ing cultural resources. While there is more“moral” support within this agency formaintaining cultural resources, some repre-sentatives suggested that the financialsituation is mixed. For example, interpre-tative services, which help educate andpromote the park’s cultural resources tothe public, were cut in 1990 and have notregained funding since. Recently four stateparks (all in the eastern corner of thestate) were closed. Moreover, rather thancreating a tribal liaison position, as manyother state agencies have done, the statepark archaeologist was asked to play that role:

I also do tribal consultation for the agency. Tribalconsultation is part of the regulation under federallaw, but besides that, it is also good business atthe state level. A whole host of other things getadded on to this list as well. For example, I alsodo public education and outreach and interpretiveprograms. This is important because we cannotconduct archaeology in a public venue, so we mustshare information with the public so they under-stand why it is important. I also conduct trainingfor state parks staff.

Asking one person to play this role part-time sends a mixed message to tribal gov-ernments that the Parks and RecreationCommission—despite its cultural resourcepolicy—is not really devoted to workingwith tribes on the cultural resource issue.As one commission representative said,“What is being funded is compliance.”For example, funding is provided for apart-time person devoted solely to assuring

established when the state was founded:“More than 200 years ago, the federalgovernment had the foresight to granttrust lands to new states to forever sup-port education and other public services.Today, DNR is looking 200 years into thefuture to find the best ways to manage thestate’s trust forest landscapes.”3

This revenue-producing mandate is oftenviewed as being in conflict with the pro-tection of cultural resources. Because thetwenty-nine federally recognized tribeshave, by treaty, the right to access a largeproportion of state lands for hunting,cultural, and ceremonial purposes, DNRis forced to engage with the concept ofcultural resources. Because Washington’stribes are entitled to half of the fish andshellfish catch, DNR needs to protect thehabitat so that half of the catch becomesa sustainable food source for the tribesand not just a token amount.

Because of this fact, DNR is arguably oneof the most important state agencies inthe process of dealing with state-tribalrelations around cultural resources. Yet,ironically, we found no explicit culturalresource policy at DNR in contrast to theother land-based agencies. One DNR rep-resentative suggested to us that theagency’s cultural resource policy is reac-tive—almost appearing to be layered ontop of the agency by a number of exter-nal factors: the tribes, the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,and the federal government. In the wordsof one of our interviewees, for DNR:

“Cultural” equals “tribal.” It is a policy goal tomaintain the lands in ways that are consistentwith tribal interests. It’s part of how we manageour affairs. We are careful to identify and preservearcheologically or culturally significant resources,and it is our responsibility to follow state andfederal laws. We must make sure that culturalresources are not damaged in our forest manage-ment work. The state Office of [Archaeology and]Historic Preservation is our partner for trackingresources. We train our field folks in Indianaffairs, and in the characteristics of potentialarcheological resources. We maintain a staffmember specifically for cultural resources as atribal liaison.


Different Perspectives on Tribal Influence and Power

The example above highlights the gulf inunderstanding between the tribes and manyof the employees at state land-basedagencies. Contributing to this lack ofunderstanding is what has been describedto us as a disconnect between state parkemployees in the central office who wrotethe Cultural Resources Management Policy andhow cultural resources are viewed on theground. None of the state park represen-tatives working in the field knew what thestate park’s “cultural resource policy” was,but the term “cultural resources” hadmeaning to them. One employee said thathe does not see much awareness aboutcultural policy in the field. “Operations isjust trying to stay afloat. It really dependson whether the regional manager is into it.”

Yet, this same employee did mention athree-day cultural resource seminar and afour-day seminar given by the state parkarchaeologist as particularly helpful. In his view, it gave him a much better under-standing about why archaeological excava-tions are important and why they take solong. “It was an eye-opener. I have muchmore sensitivity to Native Americanissues.” He said this understanding isimportant because people in the field getvery frustrated by the slow-down. Thisfrustration was also mentioned in anotherinterview with a representative in thefield. When asked how cultural resourcesaffect the work he does as a regionalplanner, he said:

We try to avoid cultural resources and archaeologi-cal findings as much as possible…because if wefind significant cultural resources, such as NativeAmerican skeletal remains, we need to hire a con-sultant to conduct a full archaeological excavation.That instantly halts our project. It brings us intoa whole regulatory process.

that the commission is in compliance withfederal rules under the Native AmericanGraves Protection and Repatriation Act(NAGPRA). One state park employee hadthe following to say about this position:

Ideally, we would have a curator at each statepark museum, but we don’t. The purpose ofNAGPRA is to figure out what to do withartifacts in museums or from archaeological exca-vations that have significance. So, we have thispart-time staff person who devotes all her time toinventorying all Native American artifacts understate park jurisdiction. She is getting us up to thetwenty-first century in terms of cataloging.

As a result of funding restrictions, stategovernment has been pushing for the Parksand Recreation Commission to find outsidefunding sources for state park projects. Asa result, many individual state parksreceive federal money without quite real-izing that they must now follow federalregulations. As one employee commented,

With federal money comes federal regulation. Weare backing into a federal regulatory environmentthat is far greater than the state regulatory envi-ronment. That extra $50,000 from the federalgovernment now federalizes the project and bringsin thousands of federal regulatory costs. Federalregulation may increase the cost of a project five-fold. Unfortunately, we do not have the expertiseto assess the real value of these monies. Oftentimes,it is a small project totally administered by a localpark ranger. These park rangers are trying to “dogood” cobbling together money to do some interest-ing projects. But, they have no idea what they aregetting into. They lack the expertise, and oftencan’t do what the feds want them to do.

This ongoing monetary crisis createstensions with tribal governments. Parkrangers apply for federal grants withoutrealizing that federal money brings federalregulations largely around issues related topreserving tribal cultural resources. Manypark rangers do not understand the needfor these regulations, and they are oftenresentful that their project has been cir-cumvented or halted. This leads to differ-ent perspectives on the degree of tribalinfluence and power over land and cul-tural resources.

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When you apply for a permit, public notice issupposed to happen, but you have a very shorttime to express a concern. Maybe ten or fifteendays, I’m not sure. So they applied for the permitand got it. Another tribal historic preservationofficer knew of a historic site in the area, whichwas on federal lands off the reservation. But wedidn’t find out about it until the machinery wasall in place and ready to go. We protested, and the project got held up for four years while we wentthrough the process. But we could never reachagreement, and in the end we lost out. From our point of view the site was desecrated.

The Influence of Tribal Liaisons on Increasing Cultural Understanding

There is real concern on the part of tribalmembers that tribal liaisons in state agenciesare only token representatives of theirinterests. One tribal liaison received thefollowing comment from a tribal elderbefore taking her position with the state:“Tribes have seen these roles for a longtime as window dressing. Good peopletake on these roles, but before long theyforget where they came from.” Unfortun-ately, the slowness with which triballiaisons have been able to work with tribalgovernments to develop and implementgovernment-to-government policies, ingeneral, or cultural resource policies, morespecifically, lends some credence to theview that they have token roles.

But, according to one tribal liaison, theCentennial Accord has made a big differ-ence. “It was a huge step for state andtribal governments to agree to worktogether as sovereign nations. However,the principles of the accord have neitherbeen fully implemented nor institutional-ized within state agencies. That is whatI’m trying to do,” said one tribal liaison.For example, although DNR has had atribal liaison since 1990, it was not until2000 that a DNR-commissioned reportissued recommendations for a compre-hensive cultural resource policy. Again,rather than an internal impetus stemmingfrom a recognition that a cultural resourcepolicy is intrinsically related to the agency’smission, the reasons that were cited forgenerating a cultural resource policy were all based on external forces: federal

When we asked how the field staff avoidscultural resources, he presented the fol-lowing example:

We change the plan or redesign the development to avoid the site. For example, at Kanasket-Palmer State Park we had a $150,000 capitalplan. After we started, we found significantcultural resources. We met with our state parkarchaeologist and consultants to discuss options.Two main options surfaced: (1) formal investiga-tion, and (2) avoid the site by hiring a firm anddefining limits so we can decide where the siteends. We chose the latter option. After surveyingthe area, we altered the design around it to avoidcultural resources altogether. We still had to con-tact the tribes. Tribes have a tremendous amountof influence about how we proceed. We must waitfor them to respond. In this case, three or fourtribes were claiming that this site was culturallysignificant.

This frustration and the temptation foravoidance may contribute to greaterstereotyping and misunderstanding oftribal issues as the following quote from afield representative suggests. When refer-ring to the tribes’ interest in state park’sarchaeological surveys, he said, “Somehowthe tribes are able to use the archaeologi-cal findings to broaden their geographicboundaries. It benefits them to expandtheir area of influence—to expand therange of their homelands.”

While many of the state employees wetalked to view the tribes as having signifi-cant influence over the process and hav-ing the power to halt progress, the tribesview their power as significantly limited.We heard over and over again from tribalmembers that while they may be success-ful in slowing the process of land devel-opment, the state always has the final sayand it is often not in their favor. Forexample, the state’s Forestry Practices Actrequires that a county permit be obtainedwhenever fifteen or more trees are to becut down in a single project. A tribalhistoric preservation officer relayed thefollowing account of a logging project inwhich the permitting process failed toprotect what he defined as the tribe’sinterests and values:

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erican Tribes and State Cultural PolicyI recently stepped in on an issue with SpokaneCounty and a tribe. At first the county thoughtthe tribe was just against building the road,period. When I came in, I was able to convey anunderstanding that the tribe wasn’t opposing theplan, but wanted the county to move the road outa bit so that it would not run right over a signifi-cant cultural site. The county couldn’t move theroad as far out as the tribe would have liked.However, in talking with the tribe and countyofficials, we were able to negotiate a deal where thecounty would give the tribe $40,000 to create avideo documenting the significance of the site intheir native language and in English to educateand sensitize non-Indians as well.

The historic preservation officer for theSpokane Tribe gave a similar account ofthis positive resolution:

The Washington State Department ofTransportation developed a plan to extend a statehighway along the northern corridor, on SpokaneTribal lands. They didn’t have a contract for ityet. Construction hadn’t started. But they con-tacted us, and I went out with the tribal archeolo-gist and found a gravesite there. So we all talkedabout it, and we all agreed that the plan would bemodified to route the road around the site. Wedidn’t go through any procedure. We settled it onthe spot.

Another WSDOT example concerned theWashington State Ferries. The ferry sys-tem had a plan to implement a ferry routeright through the middle of a protectedfishing area. The tribes were against theplan. Washington State Ferries thoughtthe tribes were being unreasonable. As aresult, this project had been on hold forfive years. Jollie, as the new tribal liaison,was able to come in and show the statethat, in fact, the tribes did have fishingrights to the area under the treaty. “So westarted a mitigation process. The ferrysystem agreed to move the route over abit so it wasn’t right in the middle, and inreturn for still some impact, the state agreedto replant 20 acres of eel grass (whichhelps tribes) on one side of the vortex.”

Cultural Training. Training is also viewed asan important mechanism to increaseunderstanding. DNR collaborates with theGovernor’s Office of Indian Affairs toprovide training seminars to sensitizeagency staff to Native American culture

regulations and improving relationshipswith tribes and the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation.

Nonetheless, based on this recommenda-tion, DNR—with significant input fromthe tribal liaison—wrote an explicit cul-tural resource policy; however, it was neverimplemented because “when the reportwas finished in October 2000, a newadministration came on and they have not been willing to adopt this policy.”Such delays may help contribute to thepessimistic view among some tribal mem-bers that tribal liaisons in state agenciesdo not make much of a difference. Whenasked whether tribal liaisons help improvecommunication, one tribal member said,“No. They try, but oftentimes the triballiaison doesn’t really know what is goingon either.”

Despite these concerns about playing atoken role mentioned by some, othersindicated that tribal liaisons seem to havehad a positive impact through two mainmechanisms: cultural mitigation and cul-tural training.

Cultural Mitigation. The tribal liaison at theDepartment for Natural Resources, KyleTaylor Lucas, described the main part ofher job as helping work through theForest Practice Applications. DNRemployees looked toward Lucas to betterunderstand a given situation, and sheattempted to convey to tribal representa-tives the agency situation. Lucas said,“DNR oftentimes is not hearing whattribal reps are saying. And the tribes oftenassume we have authority over a situationthat we don’t have. So, I try to help peo-ple to sit down and talk. To defuse theconflict on very sensitive issues.”

Colleen Jollie, the tribal liaison for theWashington State Department of Trans-portation, feels that she has been able tohelp the tribes and WSDOT throughcultural mitigation measures and makingsome real progress on what were per-ceived to be difficult, stagnating issues.

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To help fulfill this objective, IPSS hasestablished a number of administrativeprocedures. First, it has placed triballiaisons in each of its six regions. Second,each of DSHS’s six main administrativeunits—aging and adult services, children’sservices, economic services, health andrehabilitative services, juvenile rehabilita-tion services, and medical assistance—isrequired to develop a biennial service planfor Native American tribes. The plan issuppose to be submitted to the directorof IPSS in April of every even-numberedyear. By April of the odd-numbered years,each administration is supposed to submitto IPSS an updated report on the statusof the division’s plan. The purpose ofthese administrative procedures is toassure that DSHS continues to moveforward in its relationship with the tribesand to assure that services are delivered in a culturally sensitive and culturallyappropriate manner.

When asked about the effectiveness ofthese plans, one tribal liaison noted thatDSHS has only recently actually held unitsaccountable for writing these plans. “It isdifficult because most units don’t havetheir own tribal liaison….[T]he job isfolded into someone’s job description.Sometimes, this role only accounts for tenpercent of their work effort.” Nonetheless,the tribal liaisons within IPSS viewed thisformal procedural policy as useful becausethey can at least account for whether unitsare engaging with the tribes. There has beensome concern, however, that this formalengagement has not translated into signifi-cant differences in the delivery of services.“Actually, service provision to NativeIndians is poor, and not improving much.”

Three reasons were offered for why cul-turally appropriate service delivery is notimproving much for Native Americans.First, according to the tribal liaisons, thedecentralized structure of service deliveryis problematic: “The state relies heavily oncounty government to deliver services,and most county governments do nothave a good working relationship with thetribes.” Second, tribes have very fewopportunities to participate in service

and to help them identify and record cul-tural resources on the ground. The triballiaison at DNR also works with the tribesto get them to understand various state-based remedies, such as lobbying theLegislature, attending DNR board meet-ings, and using communication techniques(call, write, e-mail) to let board membersknow what their needs and concerns are.As mentioned above, the Parks andRecreation Commission offers a three-daycultural resource seminar and a four-dayseminar conducted by the state parksarchaeologist.

In summary, a faculty member from TheEvergreen State College had the followingto say about current state of tribal-staterelations: “There are lots of problemsbetween state agencies and the tribes—tension, lots of negotiation—but it isbetter than it ever was.”

Increased Tribal CulturalUnderstanding in the Delivery of Social ServicesThe state’s goal in this area, which is simi-lar to the mission of the Governor’sOffice of Indian Affairs, is to increasecultural understanding through improve-ments to the state’s delivery of social andhealth services. In this area, the state isnot in the business of trying to enhanceNative American culture for culture’s sake.Rather the state is attempting to increasecultural understanding to assure that pro-grams and service delivery are understoodin the context of a different culturalframework and implemented in a cultur-ally appropriate manner.

As a result of the 1989 Centennial Accord,the Department of Social and HealthServices (DSHS) created the Office ofIndian Policy and Support Services (IPSS).IPSS is charged with the “overall coordi-nation, monitoring, and assessment ofdepartment relationships with AmericanIndian governments, communities andparticipants.” The department is supposedto provide “necessary and appropriatesocial and health services to native people.”

Creating the baskets is very expensive andtime consuming because all of the materi-als come from nature. Indeed, a concernamong basket weavers is the impact ofenvironmental pollution on the raw mate-rials for their art. Because tribal elders usesaliva to moisten the grasses for weaving,the pesticides on grasses have made thispractice harmful to their health and manyyounger native basket weavers have givenup the practice. But, abandoning the prac-tice is a loss to the culture since part ofthe traditional weaving process was toobtain the special medicinal effects frommoistening the grasses. Urban develop-ment is another cultural concern, as itmay impinge on the areas that have tradi-tionally been the source of these naturalmaterials.

Despite these continuing concerns, theBasketweavers Association has remainedquite active, and there is confidence thatthe art will survive. For example, theyrecently contracted with a local historymuseum to show an exhibit on the ancientbasket weaving trading route amongneighboring tribes in the Northwest. Theexhibit will teach about historical tech-niques and also display contemporarywork from the group.

The basket weavers also have art casesdisplaying their work in a hospital inYakima. They hoped to help with thehealing process by putting together thisexhibit. According to Jollie, these exhibitshave created important linkages to thecommunity. For example, a group of non-Indian women, calling themselves theDitch Women because they gather grassesin roadside ditches, are now very involved in basket weaving. The Native Americanbasket weavers are also attempting tocreate an international gathering ofindigenous basket weavers from aroundthe globe. The organization has made aneconomic difference for basket weavers.“At the annual gathering, there is always a business element. We discuss advertis-ing, brochure design, and pricing ofbaskets. The baskets are expensive, about$1,000, so we have to figure out how tomarket them.”

delivery decisions. For example, in themental health system, the tribes wouldlike their own tribal medical doctors to beable to make referrals. Currently, that isnot allowed. Finally, similar to the prob-lem of being overwhelmed by the quan-tity of Forest Practice Applicationsdescribed above, there are numerous workorders and regulations that govern themany different types of social services.All the policies and procedures are over-whelming to the tribes.

State Policy thatPromotes the Creation of Tribal Art and/or the Interpretation of Tribal CultureFinally, several explicit efforts by the statesupport the expression or interpretationof tribal culture. The purpose here appearsto be twofold: While the state is interestedin enhancing tribal culture for culture’ssake, the state also hopes that the produc-tion of tribal art will have a positive impactthrough increased tourism and perhapseven economic development. Below is abrief description of some of theseefforts. Some of them have already beendiscussed in more detail in other chapters.

The Folk Arts Program at the WashingtonState Arts Commission (WSAC) has prob-ably been the most important source ofstate funding for Native American art,even though its scale has been limited.WSAC facilitated an initial gathering ofNative American basket weavers at theLonghouse at The Evergreen State College.After meeting together for three yearswith WSAC support, the basket weaversincorporated the Northwest NativeAmerican Basketweavers Association as aprivate nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.They also received a small United StatesDepartment of Agriculture developmentgrant. Most grant money, according toColleen Jollie, a previous leader of thegroup, is used to create the infrastructurenecessary to practice basket weaving. 185



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artist, “does incredible work of nationalsignificance.” The state has also providedcapital funding through the Building forthe Arts Program (see Chapter III) forthe Makah Cultural and Research Centerin Neah Bay and the Steilacoom TribalCultural Center.

One final initiative deserves special men-tion in a chapter on the linkages betweenthe Native American tribes and state cul-tural policy. The Evergreen State College,part of the Washington State Universitysystem, has particularly close ties to thetribes of the state. The college actuallysits on reservation land that belongs tothe Squaxin Island Tribe, and it is thestate college that has the most formal tiesto the tribes. The college houses a NativeAmerican and World Indigenous PeoplesStudies Program, it runs a ReservationBased/Community-Determined Programwith approximately 120 students who arestudying off-campus in their tribal com-munities, and it currently offers on anexperimental basis a concentration intribal governance in its Masters in PublicAdministration program.

What began as a request to the Legislaturefor “classroom space” for these NativeAmerican programs ended up with thecreation of the Longhouse Education andCultural Center at Evergreen. A NativeAmerican architect was hired, and hedesigned a cultural center inspired by atribal longhouse. The Burke Museumcontributed indigenous materials andarchitectural elements for its construction.The Quinault Tribe gave cedar. Wovencedar mats and welcome figurines, fundedthrough a combination of student feesand the state’s Art in Public Places pro-gram, were commissioned from NativeAmerican artists. It was intentionally sitedto provide a connection between thereservation and the college.

The mission of the Longhouse is tobridge between the college and the NativeAmerican communities of Washington.Evergreen has a strong tradition of publicservice, and the Longhouse working incollaboration with the Northwest IndianApplied Research Institute is considered

Because WSAC views the basket weaverproject as successful, its Folk Arts Programhas launched a second project, based onthe same idea, to convene Native Americanwoodcarvers. There is an interest amongwoodcarvers in preserving traditions, pre-serving copyrights, and preventing piracy.

Master Apprenticeships are anotherimportant project funded through WSAC’sFolk Arts Program. These grants offerbetween $2,500-3,000 to a master teacherand an apprentice. The master teaches forapproximately 100 hours over a year at$25/hour. Each year this program receivestwenty to thirty-five applications andmakes ten awards. According to the pro-gram manager, the program has becometrusted by Native American cultural lead-ers, and quite a few unsolicited applica-tions come from Native Americans.

The Folk Arts Program has been workingin collaboration with the Heritage CorridorsProgram (discussed in Chapter VI) todevelop Heritage Tours which showcasetribal culture, and WSAC has also pro-vided funding for a traveling exhibit,“Beyond Blue Mountains,” which exhibitedwork from Native American people in theNorthwest.

A number of other programs under theumbrella of WSAC’s Folk Arts Programmight, in any given year, provide supportfor Native American art. The total grantsbudget of the Folk Arts Program was$105,100 in fiscal year 2002, but of coursethis money is not only tapped for NativeAmerican projects. Folk arts only com-prise about 2 percent of WSAC’s budget.To some this is surprising, given thatapproximately 8 percent of the budget for the National Endowment for the Artsgoes to funding folk arts and, if anything,one would expect that there would bemore emphasis on local, indigenous artists at the state level than at the federal level.

Humanities Washington provides somefunding to tribal museums and to exhibitsof tribal art. For example, the Wing LukeAsian Museum has received such fundingand, according to one Native American

devoted entirely to state-tribal relationsand its main purpose is to implement theCentennial Accord (1989) and theMillennium Agreement (1999), it isimportant to point out that this officedoes not have a “cultural policy” per se,nor does it explicitly think about itself asgetting involved in “culture.” Rather, in itsdirector’s words, culture “is immersed ineverything we do.” GOIA does notappear to have much of a direct or stronginfluence on state cultural policy. Rather, itis through the state agencies charged withimplementing legislative mandates or spe-cific state-funded programs that NativeAmerican tribes seem to have the greatestinfluence on state cultural policy.

Despite the best intentions of theCentennial Accord, many difficult issuesremain with tribal-state relations especiallyin the area of cultural resource policy inwhich the gulf in perspectives betweenNative Americans and non-NativeAmericans remains large. A main sourceof tension between the tribes and theState of Washington lies in two very dif-ferent ideas about the definition of “cul-tural resources.” Perhaps because thewhole concept of “cultural resources” isrelatively new to state agencies, the statetends to have a very one-dimensionalview of what cultural resources entail,especially as compared to the NativeAmerican perspective.

Tribal liaisons and tribal representativesrelayed a common sense of fear and des-peration that their cultural resourceswould not be protected. This desperationstems in part from the gulf in under-standing about “cultural resources,” but isalso related to four main procedural prob-lems in dealing with the land-based stateagencies: (1) the relatively short-timeframe for public notice to express tribalconcern; (2) the numerous rules, regula-tions, and requests from different stateagencies and levels of government, whichare ultimately overwhelming for any onetribe to keep up with; (3) the lack ofcumulative precedent from one ruling toanother so that tribes feel they have tofight the same issue over and over again;

to be one of five public service centerson campus. It also serves as a welcominghome for Native American students.

The cultural programs and projects thathave been mounted by the Longhousehave been especially important to NativeAmericans. Beyond its use as collegeclassroom space, the Longhouse has alsobecome a facility for promoting arts andcultural education, cultural preservation,and arts-centered economic developmentfor Native American artists and tribes inthe Northwest. Therefore, its programsinclude art sales, artists in residence, andvarious symposia and exhibitions on North-west Native American arts. The directorhas worked closely with the WesternIndigenous Artists Network, looking foraccess to natural materials and dealingwith questions of cultural appropriation.Longhouse programs are funded from avariety of sources including the Legislature(which has paid for staffing and the origi-nal construction), the Northwest AreaFoundation, the National Endowment forthe Arts, the Washington State ArtsCommission, and the tribes themselves.

Observations andConclusionsLargely due to the Centennial Accord andthe establishment of official tribal liaisonsin a wide range of state agencies, NativeAmerican tribes play a role in many facetsof cultural policy at the state level in Wash-ington. However, their influence appearsmost significant in three areas: (1) culturalresource policy that is played out throughinteractions with what we have termed the“land-based state agencies”; (2) increasedunderstanding of tribal culture in thedelivery of state-provided social services;and (3) state policy that promotes the cre-ation of tribal art and/or the interpreta-tion of tribal culture. Our findings suggestthat in Washington Native Americanshave the greatest impact on state culturalpolicy in the area of land-based culturalpolicy (or cultural resource policy).

While the Governor’s Office of IndianAffairs (GOIA) is the main state office 187



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that it is only recently that DSHS hasactually held units accountable for writingthese plans. Moreover, there is concernthat this formal engagement has not beentranslated into significant differences inthe delivery of services. Nonetheless,there was hope that DSHS is on the righttrack; that greater accountability will leadto more engagement, and more engage-ment—with training—will lead to greatercross-cultural understanding, and ulti-mately to improved services for NativeAmericans.

Finally, several explicit efforts by the statesupport the expression or interpretationof tribal culture. The purpose hereappears to be twofold: while the state isinterested in enhancing Native Americanculture for culture’s sake, the state alsohopes that the production of tribal artwill have a positive impact throughincreased tourism and perhaps even eco-nomic development.

It is in this latter realm that the mostinnovation seems to be occurring and theleast amount of conflict appears to exist.Perhaps a fruitful avenue for futureendeavors might be to tie state supportedexpression or interpretation of tribal cul-ture with contentious issues in the land-based agencies or in the delivery of socialservices. For example, tying state fundingfor the expression of traditional tribalsalmon culture to contemporary water-shed recovery efforts could help increaseawareness of this contemporary policyissue in Washington and improve cross-cultural understanding.

and (4) the lack of any clear culturalresource policy or process to deal withcultural resource issues.

Important external factors also influencestate-tribal relations in an attempt to pursuesome type of cultural resource policy.First, and perhaps most notably, the federalgovernment’s regulatory policy embodiedin Section 106 of the National HistoricPreservation Act has a significant impacton how the state pursues its protection ofcultural resources. Second, state agencyefforts to raise their own funding levelsaffect how they perceive the need to pre-serve cultural resources. Third, a set ofsocial and political contextual factors withlong historical precedent impact perspec-tives on tribal influence and power vis-à-vis the state. Finally, tribal liaisons, as aninstitutional mechanism of the state, pro-duce both positive and negative dynamicsfor tribal-state relations. The main nega-tive dynamic emerges around concernsthat the liaisons are simply playing a tokenrole and that the tribes have no “real”representation. However, tribal liaisonsseem to have had a positive impactthrough two main mechanisms: culturalmitigation measures and cultural training.

The second main area in which NativeAmerican tribes have impacted culturalpolicy in the State of Washington isthrough the state’s efforts to increasetribal cultural understanding in the deliv-ery of social services. In this area, thestate is not in the business of trying toenhance Native American culture for cul-ture’s sake. Rather the state is attemptingto increase cultural understanding toassure that programs and service deliveryare understood in the context of a differ-ent cultural framework and implementedin a culturally appropriate manner.

The 1989 Centennial Accord played ahuge role in creating administrative proce-dures within the Department of Socialand Health Services (DSHS) to improvetribal cultural understanding. While triballiaisons within DSHS viewed the formalprocedural policy as useful because theycan at least account for whether units areengaging with the tribes, they acknowledged

Behind the ScenesJ. Mark Schuster and Steven Rathgeb Smith

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have not considered such private organi-zations in this inquiry, but so many of ourinterviewees spoke of the palpable impactof this organization, that it seemedappropriate to discuss it here as anotherimportant influence on state culturalpolicy—operating, to a significant degree,“behind the scenes.”

The Washington StateDepartment of RevenueOne might expect cultural policy to bepromulgated and administered within easilyidentifiable “cultural” agencies. But cul-tural policy is often indirect, involvingneither direct transfers of money nordirect programs. Much indirect culturalpolicy is embedded in tax law, and this isno less true in Washington than else-where. Cultural policy shows up in tax lawin one of two forms: (1) tax exemptionprovisions that reduce costs to the sector,and (2) special dedicated taxes that pro-vide revenues to the sector.

Tax ExemptionsAs researchers, we found ourselves in afortunate position with respect to taxexemptions in Washington. Every fouryears the Research Division of theWashington State Department ofRevenue publishes a report on the taxexemptions currently available in statelaw.1 This report provides considerableinformation on each exemption: adescription, a discussion of its purpose orintent, the year in which the statute wasoriginally adopted, an identification of itsprimary intended beneficiaries, a discus-sion of whether it can be seen to be inconflict with other programs, an estimateof the tax savings, and a discussion of

Constructing an accurate and comprehen-sive map of a state’s cultural policy requiresmore than simply identifying the state’skey cultural agencies and the cultural pro-grams of its non-cultural agencies. Onemust also identify and describe those indi-rect but nevertheless significant influencesthat affect a state’s cultural institutionsand organizations and bear on the natureand degree of activity occurring withinthe cultural realm. These influences andtheir impact are the subject of this chapter.

Foremost among these is the influence oftax legislation, which comes in two forms:(1) tax exemptions that differentially affectcultural institutions and activities, often—though not always—providing incentivesfor desired behaviors, and (2) speciallydedicated taxes that provide streams offunding for cultural policy activities. Thus,this chapter begins with a discussion ofthe Washington State Department ofRevenue and its oversight over tax matters.

Another way in which states influence thefortunes of the nonprofit cultural sectoris by authorizing an institution to issuetax-exempt bonds and use the proceeds tofinance below-market rate loans for pre-ferred uses. In Washington, the NonprofitFacilities Program of the WashingtonState Housing Finance Corporation can,and does, provide such below-market rateloans to arts and cultural organizations. It,too, is discussed here.

Finally, this chapter turns to a rather dif-ferent sort of entity: the Corporate Councilfor the Arts/ArtsFund. It is neither astate agency nor is it directly involved instate cultural policy; rather, this privatenonprofit organization raises and redis-tributes money to arts groups in King andPierce counties. Generally speaking, we

1 Research Division, Washing-ton State Department ofRevenue (Don Taylor, ed.),Tax Exemptions—2000: AStudy of Tax Exemptions,Exclusions, Deductions, Deferrals,Differential Rates and Credits forMajor State and Local Taxes inWashington (Olympia, WA:Research Division, Washing-ton State Department ofRevenue, January, 2000).Previously this report wasprepared biennially.

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exemptions for nonprofit arts and culturalorganizations are a relatively minor matter(even though their value is considerablyhigher to the arts and cultural organiza-tions that receive them than the value oftheir main sources of direct support).

But the five exemptions that are restrictedto nonprofit arts and cultural organizationsare only part of the story. Many moreexemptions—by our count some twenty-one—come into play when we includebroader categories into which the arts andculture might fall, when we add in her-itage properties and heritage-linked openspace, and when we include special incen-tives offered to the cultural industries. It is important to survey this broader set ofexemptions to understand the extent towhich cultural policy is actually embeddedin exemptions to Washington’s tax code.

Another important point is that inWashington the way in which nonprofitorganizations qualify for tax exemptionsvaries across the various taxes; they donot qualify simply by virtue of their fed-eral 501(c)(3) charitable status.4 Nonprofitorganizations have to apply for propertytax exemption, and, if qualified, they mustthen renew their application on a regularbasis. In the words of one of our inter-viewees, 501(c)(3) status “gets you in thedoor, but then you have to prove more to the state.”

With respect to excise taxes, most impor-tantly the Retail Sales and Use Tax andthe Business and Occupation (B&O) Tax,Washington relies on a voluntary report-ing system. Thus, the responsibility forknowing whether or not and under whatconditions they might be exempt fromthese taxes falls on businesses themselves.(The Department of Revenue provides aconsiderable amount of information tohelp explain these exemptions, and, ofcourse, firms learn through the auditprocess if they have done somethingimproperly.) With respect to sales tax onpurchases by nonprofits, the organizationis expected to know if their purchasesqualify for exemption or not. If so, theyfill out an exemption certificate and givethis to the vendor, who retains the

the likely shift in tax burden if the pro-gram were to be repealed.

Exemptions that are provided by the State of Washington are of two types:direct (named as going directly to a partic-ular institution or class of institution) andindirect (passed through to the eventualbeneficiary). Indirect exemptions oftenpertain to the use of public halls or audi-toriums by other tenants.

By the Department of Revenue’s count,during the 1999-01 biennium some 431tax exemptions were offered by the Stateof Washington. Five of these were directexemptions, targeted specifically to non-profit organizations in the arts or culture.These five exemptions alone triggered$23.6 million in tax savings over this two-year period, roughly $12 million per year.2This is a considerable amount of money,particularly when compared to directsources such as the grants budgets ofthe various agencies involved directly incultural affairs. (Currently underway, the2004 study of tax exemptions in Washing-ton has identified some 520 different taxexemptions, a 25 percent increase in thenumber of different incentives offered.)

Understanding the significance of thesefigures requires that we place them withinseveral contexts. First, in the words of theDepartment of Revenue, “[I]t is impor-tant to emphasize that the estimated rev-enue impacts reflect savings to taxpayers[or taxpaying organizations] and do notnecessarily indicate the potential revenuewhich might accrue to governmentaljurisdictions in the absence of the exemp-tions.” 3 Constitutional prohibitions ontaxing certain activities (e.g., churches),property tax limits passed by referenda,and likely changes in taxpayer behavior inthe absence of the exemptions would alllimit the actual revenue that would berealized. Second, it is important to realizethat the exemptions granted explicitly tononprofit arts and cultural organizationscomprise an infinitesimal portion—approximately 0.05 percent—of the totalvalue of exemptions offered by the lawsof the State of Washington. Thus, seenfrom the state’s perspective specific

2 Note the phrase “tax savings”used here. While it would betempting to describe these as“taxes foregone,” the pictureis much more complicatedbecause some of theseexemptions result in theshifting of tax burden ratherthan in overall tax relief. Inthe case of property taxexemptions, for example, theimpact is virtually all shiftedto other taxpayers. Thus,taxes saved by the targetedbeneficiaries of these exemp-tions are not necessarily taxesforegone by the state. Notealso that because local taxesare authorized by the state,exemptions from local taxesare also authorized by statetax policy and by virtue oftheir target become a part of state cultural policy.

3 Research Division, Washing-ton State Department ofRevenue, Tax Exemptions—2000, 1.

4 This discussion relies heavilyon e-mail correspondencewith Don Taylor, revenueanalysis manager, ResearchDivision, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue,July 30, 2003 and August 28,2003.

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5 Putnam Barber, “AThousand Points ofContention: Property-TaxExemptions for Nonprofitsin the United States,” July 29,2002, The Evergreen StateSociety, http://www.tess.org/ON/020729ON.htm, 2.

Washington does not have a state incometax, so the tax environment faced by thearts and culture is somewhat differentfrom what might be encountered in mostother states. Moreover, in the tight revenuesituation created by the combination ofcitizen-passed tax-limit referenda anddeclines in state revenue emanating froman overall economic decline, the Legis-lature is now turning its attention backtoward the exemptions that it has grantedrelatively freely in the past. Thus, it is possible that revenue policy may lead to scaling back some of the exemptionsthat have been favorable to the arts andculture.

Property Tax and Leasehold Tax Exemptions

We turn first to property tax and relatedexemptions. The first tax exemptions inWashington were granted in 1854 in con-junction with the imposition of propertytaxes only one year after the establishmentof the territorial government. One of thefirst blanket exemptions from propertytaxes was a cultural one offered to non-profit libraries. According to PutnamBarber, “Art and history museums…wereadded to the list after passage of the fed-eral tax code made the distinction betweennonprofit and for-profit corporationsmore salient.”5 Others followed.

Table VIII.1 summarizes the exemptionsfrom property tax and the related lease-hold excise tax that affect the arts andculture, broadly defined, in Washington.Note the dates on which these variousprovisions were enacted. One might gainthe impression that a property tax exemp-tion is a well-determined and stable factof organizations’ lives, but it turns outthat exemptions are being added fromtime to time, some of them quite recently.This may reveal a changing view of whatit means to support the arts and culture, orit may reveal an ongoing search to arriveat a consensus concerning the appropriatebase on which the property (and lease-hold) tax ought to be assessed, but perhapsa more plausible interpretation is that itsimply reveals the influence of special

document in case of a future audit.Similarly, nonprofit organizations shouldbe aware as to whether a particular activityis subject to B&O tax and whether a spe-cific deduction or exemption applies.

In most instances, eligibility of nonprofitorganizations for sales or B&O tax exemp-tions and deductions do not hinge uponwhether the entity qualifies for federal501(c)(3) status. Instead, the state statutesspecify specific activities for which aparticular nonprofit organization does or does not qualify.

The other side of this coin is that consid-erable use is made of exemptions that aretargeted at a single or a small number ofintended beneficiaries. The way in whichthis appears to play out is that an organi-zation in the state wants to do somethingbut discovers that this action might wellincur a tax liability. The organization thenlobbies the Legislature for the creation of an exemption crafted to its particularsituation that will pave the way (and lowerthe cost) for whatever it is that it wishesto do.

The State of Washington makes use ofthree broad categories of taxes (in addi-tion to a broad set of selective taxes thatapply to particular items or activities):

Real and personal property taxes onland, buildings and equipment;

Gross receipts taxes (called the“Business and Occupation” [B&O]tax) collected by the State and inde-pendently by many cities;

Sales taxes collected by the state on itsown behalf and on the behalf of localand county governments and othergovernmental entities (e.g., transitdistricts, public facility districts, etc.)and use taxes collected by the statewhen sales taxes have not been paid(typically when items are purchasedoutside the state or from a non-business seller).

Each has its own set of exemptions.

Perhaps what is most important aboutthis list is what it does not include. Continued on page 194

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Table VIII.1: Property Tax and Leasehold Excise Tax Exemptions Affecting the Arts and CultureState of Washington, 1999-2001 Biennium

Taxpayer Savings Taxpayer SavingsRevised Code from State Tax from Local Taxof Washington Exemption Date 1999-2001 1999-2001

PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTIONS

§84.36.040 1854 $11,000 $37,000Nonprofit LibrariesThe real property (buildings) and personal property (collections) of nonprofitorganizations that operate libraries that are open to the public without chargeare exempt from property tax. The purpose is apparently to provide equal treat-ment with public owned libraries and to support the social benefits that non-profit libraries provide. Approximately fourteen nonprofit organizations benefitfrom this exemption.

§84.36.060 1915 $1,978,000 $6,622,000Museums and Art and Historical CollectionsThe real property (buildings) and personal property (collections) of art, scien-tific, and historical collections owned by nonprofit organizations are exempt ifthe collections are available to the public. This is intended to assist such organi-zations and their programs. This exemption applies to approximately 171 parcels.

§84.36.060 1981 $2,629,000 $8,805,000Performing ArtsThe real property (buildings) and personal property (sets, costumes, instruments,etc.) owned by or leased to nonprofit organizations that produce musical, dance,artistic, dramatic or literary performances is exempt from tax. This is intended toassist such organizations and recognize the educational and artistic contributionthey make to society. Many beneficiaries.

§84.26.070 1985 $2,073,000 $6,483,000Historic PropertyProperty that is registered on a national or local register of historic places is eli-gible for special valuation upon application by the owner. The cost of rehabilita-tion of these buildings, if it equals at least 25 percent of the existing assessedvaluation of the building, is exempted from assessment by not being added tothe value of the property for tax purposes for up to ten years.a Many propertiesthroughout the state are eligible, though the majority are in King County.

§84.36.080(2) 1986 $24,000 $75,000Historic VesselsVessels listed on the state or federal registers of historic places are exempt fromproperty tax. This is intended to encourage retention and restoration of historicships and vessels. Owners of approximately twenty vessels have received thisexemption.

§35.21.755§35.82.210

198419871993

$970,000* $3,037,000*Public CorporationsPublic corporations, commissions, or authorities are liable for an in-lieu tax pay-ment equal to the property tax payment that would be due if it were in privateownership. The state exempts from the in-lieu tax property owned by publiccorporations that (1) is located in a special review district that was established bymunicipal ordinance prior to January 1, 1987; (2) is used for low income hous-ing, a convention center, a performing arts center, a public assembly hall ormeeting place; (3) is used as a public esplanade, street, public way, public openspace, public utility corridor or view corridor; or (4) is blighted propertyacquired for remediation/redevelopment purposes. The exemption for specialreview districts apparently provides equivalent tax treatment with private prop-erty enrolled on federal or state historic registers and seems to apply particularlyto the International District in Seattle. No performing arts center seems to becurrently exempt under this provision.

§84.36.037 1981 $123,000* $412,000*Public Assembly Halls or Meeting PlacesPublic assembly halls or meeting places owned and operated by a nonprofitentity and made available to all organizations are exempt from the property tax.The property must be used exclusively for public gatherings, though the organi-zation can use the property for up to seven days per year to promote sales.Approximately 254 public meeting/assembly facilities have qualified for thisexemption, among them cultural facilities, town halls, and grange halls.

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Chapter VIII: Behind the ScenesTable VIII.1: Property Tax and Leasehold Excise Tax Exemptions Affecting the Arts and Culture State of Washington, 1999-2001 Biennium(continued)


PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTIONS (continued)

§83.36.047 1977 $66,000 $221,000Nonprofit Radio and TV Transmission StationsThe real and personal property of nonprofit organizations that is used for trans-mission or reception of radio or television signals originally broadcast by gov-ernmental agencies is exempt from property tax. This applies to one beneficiary.

§84.36.480 1975 $10,000 $34,000Nonprofit Fair AssociationsNonprofit fair associations that use county fairgrounds and receive pari-mutueltax revenues from the state are exempt from property taxation. Approximatelyeight applicants benefit from this exemption.

§84.36.550 1993 $39,000* $100,000*Nonprofit Fund-RaisingThe real and personal property of nonprofit organizations used for solicitationor collection of gifts, donations or grants is exempt from property tax. The pri-mary beneficiary of this exemption is the United Way, though, presumably, othersuch organizations might benefit also.

§84.34.060 1970 $4,407,000* $13,785,000*Current Use Valuation: Open Space/Timber LandThis provision provides for valuing certain types of open space on the basis oftheir current use and not their potential use. Among the forms of open spacethat can qualify for current use valuation are historic landmarks, archaeologicalsites, sites with preservation easements, and sites that serve as buffers to desig-nated historic landmarks or archaeological sites. County and local governmentsare authorized to adopt this exemption. If they do so, they put in place a PublicBenefit Rating System, which classifies the open space resource under considera-tion by a priority point system and links the tax reduction to the rating.Reductions in property valuation can be as large as 90 percent.

§84.36.570 1999 $2,000* $4,000*Demonstration FarmsThe real and personal property owned by a nonprofit organization and used by aresearch and education program of a state university, which is used to provide ademonstration farm with research and extension facilities, a public agriculturalmuseum and an educational tour site, is exempt from property tax. This provi-sion was designed to benefit a demonstration cranberry farm in Pacific County.

§35.21.755 1977 $331,000* $291,000*Public Historical SitesLeased property that is on a federal or state historic register and that is ownedby a public corporation that was in existence before 1987 or is located in a spe-cial review district that was established by ordinance prior to 1976 is exemptfrom the leasehold excise tax. Approximately ten properties have qualified forthe exemption under this statute, the most important is apparently property thatis associated with Pike Place Market.

LEASEHOLD EXCISE TAX EXEMPTIONSb

§82.29A.130(16) 1999 $71,000* $61,000*Public Facility DistrictsThis is a blanket exemption from leasehold excise tax for all leases of propertyowned by a public facility district. This includes convention centers, conferencecenters, sports facilities, or special events centers, e.g. rodeo arenas, particularlyin smaller communities.

Source: Research Division, Washington State Department of Revenue (Don Taylor, ed.), TaxExemptions—2000: A Study of Tax Exemptions, Exclusions, Deductions, Deferrals, DifferentialRates and Credits for Major State and Local Taxes in Washington (Olympia, WA: ResearchDivision, Washington State Department of Revenue, January, 2000); and personal interviews.

Notes: For each form of taxation the main exemptions for the arts and culture are listed first.

No attempt has been made to list large-scale blanket exemptions such as the exemption from property tax of assets such as cash, deposits, loans, and securities.

This table does not separately identify tax exemptions that might extend to cultural facilities owned by governments (e.g. facilities that are part of state colleges and universities) or by private, nonprofit schools and colleges.

Estimates of taxpayer savings for 1999-2001 are based on data from fiscal year 1999.

* Some of the figures in this table are reported in italics. This device is used to indicate that the taxsavings for certain exemptions are only partially attributable to cultural policy and that no attempthas been made to estimate that portion.

a This is a statewide ordinance that has to be adopted and applied locally. The Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation estimates that twenty to twenty-five local jurisdictions actually offer thisspecial valuation. In exchange for this frozen assessment, the property owner has to assure that thehistoric aspects of the property are accessible to public view one day a year unless the property is visiblefrom a public right of way.

b The leasehold excise tax is a tax that is imposed to prevent organizations who lease governmentproperty from unduly benefiting from that government’s property tax exemption. The leasehold tax isassessed in lieu of property tax in such cases. There are, however, exemptions from the leaseholdexcise tax as well.

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Whether this outcome is what was intendedby the original law—that spatially segregateduses could be treated differently, but thattemporally segregated uses would betreated the same—is somehow beside thepoint. The threat of complete loss of theproperty exemption provided a verystrong disincentive for cultural institutionsto engage in activities that would attractadditional resources—the leasing out oftheir premises for private occasions, forexample. It would be one thing to attrib-ute some level of payment in lieu of prop-erty taxes to such activities, but quiteanother to remove the entire exemption.

With the recent boom in museum con-struction, this became a particularly salientissue in Tacoma. The Museum of Glass:International Center for ContemporaryArt has opened in a striking new building,the new building for the Tacoma ArtMuseum has also been completed, andseveral other museums are in variousstages of planning. They join the recentWashington State History Museum, whichhas been in place in Tacoma for severalyears. Because of their new facilities theMuseum of Glass and the Tacoma ArtMuseum were particularly looking for-ward to the possibility of renting out theirfacilities for various private events, buthad to be careful not to lose their prop-erty tax exemption as a result. The StateHistory Museum, on the other hand,because it occupies state property, did notneed to worry about losing its propertytax exemption, which placed it in anadvantageous position with respect to therental market.

These unintended consequences were notrestricted to Tacoma, of course. We weretold of cultural organizations around thestate—museums in particular—that con-cluded that they had to concoct variousways to circumvent this problem. Onethat was mentioned to us was signingcontracts with private renters stipulatingthat the museum would be open to thepublic during the event while agreeingthat that fact would not be advertised.

This problem was also mirrored in theleasehold excise tax. The leasehold excise

interest lobbying in obtaining certainexemptions.

According to a report issued by The Ever-green State Society, some 7,855 parcels inthe State of Washington were exempt fromproperty tax in 1999.6 The report esti-mates the number of exempted parcelsoccupied by cultural institutions as 255(fifteen libraries, one radio/TV station,166 art and history museums, and seventy-three performing arts organizations), butthere may be some cultural uses classifiedelsewhere, for example among the 254public assembly halls and ten fairs that areexempted from property tax.

It was at the heart of the property taxthat we found an active policy debate con-cerning the granting of exemptions. Thisdebate has revolved around the conceptof “exclusive use.” The original legislationauthorizing the exemption was clear, atleast on one point. If a nonprofit organi-zation were to lease out a portion of itspremises for a purpose that did not qual-ify in its own right for property-taxexemption—typically the case when thelessee is a profit-making entity—that por-tion of the premises being leased wouldbe taxable, and the taxes would be calcu-lated in terms of the relative use of thefacility by the exempt and the non-exemptactivities. But this rule was spatial ratherthan temporal. If a non-exempt entitywere to lease some (or all) of the spacesome of the time and the nonprofit wereto use it the rest of the time, the exclusiveuse test would not be met and the non-profit organization could lose its entireproperty tax exemption. To make surethat we understood these implicationscorrectly, we checked with the Departmentof Revenue, which confirmed that underthis law the entire property tax exemptioncould have been removed. As a result ofthis application of the law, The EvergreenState Society pointed out that nonprofitsoften chose “to forego revenue opportu-nities such as shared use with a for-profitenterprise because of the property tax lia-bilities that would result.” 7

6 Putnam Barber, Nonprofits inWashington, 1999 (Seattle: TheEvergreen State Society,1999), 10.

7 Barber, Nonprofits inWashington, 1999, 16.


8 At the time there was onesuch exception already inplace in Washington. Theproperty tax exemption forpublic assembly halls exemp-tion (RCW §84.36.037), forexample allowed the prop-erty to be used by organiza-tions for “pecuniary gain”for up to seven days eachyear without incurring aproperty tax liability.

9 For an example from NorthDakota, see Janne Gallagher,“The Legal Structure ofProperty-Tax Exemption,”in Evelyn Brody, ed.,Property-Tax Exemptions forCharities: Mapping the Battle-field (Washington, D.C.: TheUrban Institute Press, 2002).

10 House Bill 1905, Chapter121, Laws of 2003, signedinto law July 27, 2003.

tion might be simply offered across theboard, though in a tax-limited environ-ment that outcome might be less likely.9

A bill to rectify this situation was finallypassed by the Legislature in 2003.10 Thisbill allows nonprofit performing artsorganizations and museums to rent orlease their facility without jeopardizingtheir tax exemption to entities that are noteligible for tax exemption for productions,performances, community gatherings orassemblies, or meetings for up to twenty-five days per year with the twin stipula-tions that the property may be used forincome-generating activities for no morethan seven of these twenty-five days andthat the rent charged or any donationreceived must be reasonably in line withmaintenance and operation expenses.While this bill may not fully satisfy all ofthe arts organizations and museums thatmight be affected—they would undoubt-edly have preferred longer time periodsand fewer restrictions on levels ofincome—it does go some distance toward rectifying the earlier problem.

Business and Occupation Tax ExemptionsThe business and occupation tax is a taxon gross receipts, which is paid by allbusinesses that engaged in business withinthe state; for-profit and nonprofit organi-zations alike are subject to the B&O taxon all of their income. (In addition, someforty-four of the 290 Washington citieslevy local businesses taxes. These takemany different forms.) Businesses have awide variety of income streams, and, inprincipal, each of these income streams is taxable under the B&O tax unlessexplicitly exempted.

A variety of tax reduction measures are built into the B&O tax, however.Such reductions can take one of severaldifferent forms: exemptions, deductions,differential tax rates, or tax credits.

Nonprofit arts and cultural organizationsreceive a wide variety of income streams:museums operate gift shops; performingarts organizations sell tickets and refresh-ments; both may charge for parking; theyreceive private donations; and they may

tax is intended to prohibit non-tax-exemptentities from taking advantage of theproperty tax exemptions that pertain tononprofit or government buildings. If anon-tax-exempt entity were to lease apublicly owned theatre from a local gov-ernment, for example, it would have topay the leasehold excise tax over theperiod of its lease. This became morecomplicated when a non-tax-exemptentity leased from a tax-exempt entity,which, in turn, was leasing from the gov-ernment. A recent case in Olympia illus-trates the point nicely. The WashingtonCenter for the Performing Arts leases acity-owned building. It is a non-profitentity, exempt from the leasehold tax (justas it would be exempt from the propertytax if it owned the building). From timeto time it sublets the theatre to profit-making entrepreneurs who present theirown performing arts events in the space.When this was discovered by the Depart-ment of Revenue, it called into questionthe center’s exemption, and DOR deter-mined that the center owed some$300,000 in back taxes. This was finallyresolved when the supplemental budgetfor 2002 passed the Legislature. A lineitem of $300,000 was slipped into thebudget of the Department of Community,Trade and Economic Development to paythese back taxes, in essence creating aninternal transfer within the state’s budget,which allowed the property tax exemptionto stand.

This was clearly not a solution that couldbe applied time and time again, since moreand more cultural organizations wouldinevitably try to take advantage of it. Itwould have been far better either (1) toestablish a principle of temporal exclusiveuse and prorate property tax paymentsaccordingly or (2) to protect the propertytax exemption of an exempt organizationthat receives limited revenue from non-exempt uses. To be considered exemptsuch revenues might be limited by a ceil-ing or a percentage or a number of daysof non-exempt usage,8 or the tax mightbe prorated by the ratio of non-exempt toexempt usage (much as spatial separationof uses has been treated), or the exemp- 195


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11 Barber, Nonprofits inWashington, 1999, 16.

12 In this section, we rely heav-ily on Barber, Nonprofits inWashington, 1999.

offer exemptions that may differ fromthose applying to the state’s portion ofB&O taxes. To take but one example inthe cultural field, the City of Seattleassesses B&O taxes on retailing activitiesand parking fees collected by artistic andcultural organizations, forms of revenuethat are not taxable at the state level forthese same organizations. This illustrateshow important it is for a cultural organi-zation in Washington to monitor carefullythe impact of the various state (and local)taxes and to seek out and apply for thosevarious exemptions for which it is eligible.

Retail Sales and Use Tax Exemptions12

The sales tax applies to purchasers of tan-gible personal property (and some serv-ices) by persons or businesses who are thefinal consumers of these items (i.e., notfor resale). When nonprofit organizationsbuy things for their own use, they areusually subject to Washington’s sales tax.When they sell items, they are typicallyrequired to collect sales taxes and forwardthe receipts to the state. Sales taxes includethe state sales tax, local sales taxes in eachof the cities of the state, and a variety ofadditional local sales taxes that have beenlevied by other types of local jurisdictions(counties, transit districts, public facilitiesdistricts, etc.).

Important exemptions are granted forsome of the activities of nonprofit artsand cultural organizations, however. Whenarts and cultural organizations purchaseobjects for their collections or to be usedin presentations and performances, nosales tax is due. Exemptions also affectfundraising: Auctions and other sorts ofsales during special events by organiza-tions that do not usually collect sales taxesare exempted; they are allowed to takeplace without collecting sales tax from the buyers.

Whenever an item on which sales taxwould normally be due is purchased foruse in Washington without paying thesales tax, a use tax, calculated at the samerate as the sales tax, is due. For example,organizations are often liable for use taxon magazine subscriptions and other

receive grants from government agencies,corporations, or private foundations. Ingeneral, nonprofit arts and cultural organ-izations are exempt from B&O taxes onmost or all revenues. But other B&O taxprovisions may have an identifiableimpact on cultural policy more broadlyconceived.

Table VIII.2 summarizes the exemptionsfrom the business and occupation tax thataffect or may affect the cultural sphere.

Within the purview of the B&O tax,several points have engendered debate.One has been the clarification of ruleswith respect to membership paymentspaid to cultural organizations. To beexempt these payments cannot entitlemembers to significant goods or servicesin return. The rules have been relaxed tothe extent that some membership benefitsare allowed without causing membershipdues to become taxable, e.g., reducedprice or free admission to museums.

The flip side of this debate comes intoplay when donors to cultural organizations,particularly foundations or other grant-making organizations, expect somethingin return for their support. This hasengendered a debate about the differencebetween a grant, which is often made withstipulations attached, and a gift or dona-tion, which is most often seen as beingmade without restriction. The concernwas that grants would be construed as apurchase of a service, which would attractB&O tax, rather than as a gift, which wouldnot. It was not until 1995 that theLegislature finally clarified its intention:

When the recipient is a nonprofit organizationand the donor receives no significant goods, servicesor benefits from activities that fulfill charitablepurposes parallel to the provisions of federal tax-code section 501(c)(3), then the donor may restrictthe uses of the funds and insist on reports onactivities and progress without creating a tax lia-bility for the recipient. Further, such grants maybe acknowledged in the usual ways—in programs,announcements and other materials—withoutcompromising their tax-exempt status.11

To make matters more complicated, thethirty-five cities that impose B&O taxesuse definitions of taxable activities and

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§82.04.4322§82.04.4324§82.04.4326§82.04.4327

1981198119811985

$2,667,000 $0Arts OrganizationsGovernment Grants TuitionManufactured Items Business Income

Four separate statutes provide that nonprofit arts organizations candeduct government grants, tuition received for classes, items manufac-tured for their own use, and all business income (e.g., charges for admis-sion) from their revenes before calculating any liability to B&O tax.The nonprofit arts organizations covered by this provision include:performing arts organizations (music, theater, dance), art exhibitions,arts education courses, and historical collections.

§82.04.600 1979 $7,000 $0Printing by LibrariesPrinting by libraries is exempt if it is printed in their own facilities fortheir own purposes. All libraries and library districts are beneficiaries.

§82.04.335 1965 $270,000* $0Agricultural FairsDuring the time that an agricultural fair is open to the public, the nonprofitorganization operating the fair is exempt. This exemption applies primarilyto gate and parking receipts. The beneficiaries include the thirty-sevencounty fairs and the thirty-nine nonprofit fair associations in the state.

§82.04.3651 1998 $49,000* $0Nonprofit Fund-raisingNonprofit organizations are exempt from B&O tax on fund-raisingreceipts. This exemption applies to direct solicitation of funds but notto the operation of a bookstore, thrift shop, or restaurant.

§82.04.280(6) 1935 $1,262,000 $0Radio and TV BroadcastingRadio and television broadcasters are allowed to deduct income receivedfrom network, national, and regional advertising and that portion ofrevenue represented by their out-of-state audience from their revenuesbefore calculation of the B&O tax. About fifty-eight firms utilize thisdeduction. (This exemption is derived from constitutional prohibitionson restricting interstate commerce and should not be viewed as anincentive for these cultural industries.)

§82.04.4282 1935 $6,447,000* $0Contributions and DonationsAny organization that receives contributions, donations, or endowmentfunds can deduct those sources of revenue from total revenue beforecalculating the B&O tax.

§82.04.4451 1994 $49,271,000*,a $0Small Business CreditThis provision provides a credit of up to $35 per month against B&Otax that would otherwise be due. The benefit declines and phases outcompletely when the monthly tax liability reaches $70.

Source: Research Division, Washington State Department of Revenue (Don Taylor, ed.), Tax Exemptions—2000: A Study of Tax Exemptions, Exclusions, Deductions, Deferrals,Differential Rates and Credits for Major State and Local Taxes in Washington (Olympia, WA: Research Division, Washington State Department of Revenue, January, 2000);and personal interviews.

Notes: The main exemptions for the arts and culture are listed first.

No attempt has been made to list large-scale blanket exemptions.


* Some of the figures in this table are reported in italics. This device is used to indicate that the tax savings for certain exemptions are only partially attributable to culturalpolicy and that no attempt has been made to estimate that portion.

a The goal of this provision is to promote economic development through small businesses. An estimated 107,000 small businesses pay no B&O tax as a result of the credit,and an additional 34,000 have their B&O tax reduced. Some (small) portion of these businesses may well be in the cultural sector, though not necessarily the nonprofitcultural sector.

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amendments. In the discussion that fol-lows, we have tried to identify the mainhighlights of how, when, and where thearts and culture are impacted by the possi-bility of dedicated tax revenues. A muchcloser reading would be required to givesubstantive and competent tax advice.

Retail Sales and Use Taxes

Generally speaking, in Washington thededicated taxes that affect the arts andculture arise in the form of special localtaxes authorized under the umbrella ofthe retail sales and use tax. The retail salestax is applied to the selling price of tangiblepersonal property and certain servicespurchased at retail. The use tax applies toitems used in Washington, the acquisitionof which was not subject to Washingtonretail sales tax. State legislation authorizesa sales and use tax, which is currently setat 6.5 percent, but it also authorizes fif-teen different local sales and use taxesthat can be adopted by local or countygovernment in various combinations.15

As a result, combined sales tax rates cur-rently range from 7.0 to 8.9 percent invarious parts of the state.

One of the authorized local sales and usetaxes plays a direct role in cultural policy,and two others may play an indirect role.16

The first, a 1999 provision that benefitsthe zoo and aquarium at Point DefiancePark in Tacoma and the Northwest Trekfacility operated by the Pierce CountyMetropolitan Park District with the rev-enues from a 0.1 percent addition to thesales tax, illustrates the extent to whichlegislators will go to craft special rules forspecific projects (RCW §82.14.400):

1. Upon the joint request of a metropolitan parkdistrict, a city with a population of more thanone hundred fifty thousand, and a county legisla-tive authority in a county with a national parkand a population of more than five hundredthousand and less than one million five hundredthousand, the county shall submit an authoriz-ing proposition to the county voters, fixing andimposing a sales and use tax in accordance withthis chapter for the purposes designated in sub-section (4) of this section and identified in thejoint request. Such proposition must be placedon a ballot for a special or general election to be

items that have been purchased from outof state vendors who did not collectWashington taxes. (Of course, if no salestax were due, then no use tax would bedue either.) In certain cases a seller maynot be required to collect the sales tax,but the buyer may still be obligated to paya use tax on the purchase price of itemsor certain services.13

Exemptions from sales and use taxes thataffect the arts are summarized in TableVIII.3. Note that the largest such exemp-tion is one that affects the profit-makingside of the arts and culture, the video andfilm production industry. Note also thatwhile more generous to arts and culturalorganizations than to other types of non-profit organizations, these exemptions areless comprehensive than they are in manyother states. In certain circumstances, thefinancial effect of sales taxes can be quitesubstantial. This becomes clearest inconstruction projects. Rod Bigelow, finan-cial officer of the Tacoma Art Museum,estimates that the museum is payingapproximately $1.2 million in sales taxeson the construction of its new museum.Such payments do make it easier to makethe argument that whatever capital grantshave been provided directly by the statefor construction projects, it recoups asubstantial portion of the grant almostimmediately through the sales tax onconstruction.

Dedicated Taxes and Revenues for DistributionAnother method to pursue cultural policywithin the general framework of the col-lection of state revenues is to implementor carve out dedicated tax revenuestreams. While the dedication of state taxrevenue streams to the arts and culture isfar less dramatic than in some other states(e.g., the early dedication of state lotteryrevenues to the arts and culture inMassachusetts), there are, nevertheless,some significant ways in which this hap-pens in Washington.14

As is normally the case with tax law,Washington state law includes a numberof special provisions and technical

13 This would happen, forexample, if the seller werenot regularly engaged in busi-ness, e.g., if you purchased aused car from your neighbor.

14 Research Division, Washing-ton State Department ofRevenue (Don Taylor, ed.),Tax Reference Manual:Information on State and LocalTaxes in Washington State(Olympia, WA: ResearchDivision, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue,January, 2002).

15 A 0.5 percent “basic” tax for cities and counties; an“optional” tax of up to 0.5percent for cities and coun-ties; a tax that ranges from0.1 to a maximum of 0.9percent for transit purposes;a tax of up to 1.0 percent to fund high capacity trans-portation; separate taxes of0.1 percent each for criminaljustice, public facilities,county correctional facilitiesand zoos; two state-creditedtaxes to finance professionalsports stadiums; two state-credited taxes to supportrural counties and regionalcenters; a local sales tax of0.5 percent on prepared foodand beverages in KingCounty; a 0.1 percent tax foremergency communicationssystems; and a tax of 0.5 per-cent for financing regionaltransportation improvements.

16 If one enlarges the boundaryof cultural policy to includesport, the special taxes forthe construction of a KingCounty Baseball Stadium(RCW §82.14.0485) and forthe construction of a KingCounty Football Stadium(RCW §82.14.0494) wouldhave to be included. Neitherof these taxes is an additionaltax for consumers; they arecredited against the statewide6.5 percent sales tax, reduc-ing the amount of sales taxpaid to the state by the localcommunity and thereforeshifting the burden to thestate’s general fund.

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§82.08.0315§82.12.0315

19951997

$1,042,000 $272,000Film and Video Production EquipmentFilm and video production businesses are exempt from sales and usetaxes on equipment, film, and related services that they use in theirbusinesses. This exemption was extended to all vehicles used solely forproduction purposes. The intent of this provision is clearly to promotefilm production in the state and it was passed as an economicdevelopment measure.

§82.08.031§82.12.031

1981 $706,000 $164,000Arts and Cultural OrganizationsNonprofit arts and cultural organizations are exempt from sales and usetaxes on the purchase of goods that are acquired for the purpose ofexhibition or presentation to the general public. This includes works of art, sets, costumes, etc.

§82.12.02595 1995 $252,000* $62,000*Donations to Nonprofits and GovernmentNonprofit charitable organizations and state and local governments donot have to pay use tax on any tangible personal property that isdonated to them.

§82.08.02573 1998a $694,000* $174,000*Fundraising by Nonprofit OrganizationsNonprofit organizations that receive revenues via fundraising activitiesare exempt from retail sales tax if the funds received are used to supportthe purposes of the organization. However, this exemption does notextend to the regular operation of a bookstore, thrift shop, or restaurant.

§82.08.830 1997 $275,000* $68,000*Nonprofit Camps and Conference CentersNonprofit organizations that sell or supply items at camps or confer-ences on property that is exempt from property tax are also exemptfrom retail sales and use taxes. This is limited to items available only toparticipants at such camps or conferences.

Source: Research Division, Washington State Department of Revenue (Don Taylor, ed.), Tax Exemptions—2000: A Study of Tax Exemptions, Exclusions, Deductions, Deferrals,Differential Rates and Credits for Major State and Local Taxes in Washington (Olympia, WA: Research Division, Washington State Department of Revenue, January, 2000);and personal interviews.

Notes: The main exemptions for the arts and culture are listed first.


* Some of the figures in this table are reported in italics. This device is used to indicate that the tax savings for certain exemptions are only partially attributable to culturalpolicy and that no attempt has been made to estimate that portion.

a This comprehensive exemption replaced a more limited exemption that applied to bazaars, rummage sales, and auctions.

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17 This use of local taxes thatare creditable against statesales taxes in this way is, atleast in part, a response totax limitation initiatives thathave been passed in Wash-ington. By allowing theseearmarked taxes to be cred-ited against taxes owed to the state, the Legislatureessentially allows local com-munities to earmark theseportions of the sales tax totheir own particular localneeds. The result is less rev-enue received by the staterather than an increase in taxrevenues flowing to the stateand then reimbursed to localcommunities.

18 Except in King County withrespect to Bellevue and inYakima County with respectto Yakima where “doubledipping” is allowed and boththe county and a city withinthe county impose the basictax, the county must allow acredit for the city tax.

2002. This provision might be used tohelp fund meeting halls, performing artscenters, boxing rings, sports facilities, orthe like. However, because this sourcewould not be sufficient to pay off what-ever construction bonds might be neces-sary, an additional revenue stream wouldbe needed, so a multipurpose perform-ance hall would be the most likely facilityfor which a community might choose toadopt this dedicated tax.

Finally, a similar provision allows for alocal sales or use tax of up to 0.033 per-cent to finance “regional centers,” whichare defined to include convention, confer-ence, and special events centers and theirrelated facilities. This tax is structured sothat it does not add an additional tax bur-den on consumers. Rather, it is creditableagainst the 6.5 percent state sales tax,thereby shifting the burden to the state’sgeneral fund.17 The result is the functionalequivalent of allowing a local or countygovernment the power to earmark a por-tion of the sales taxes raised locally. As ofJanuary 2002, some nine projects werebeing financed under this provision; byJanuary 2003 that number had increasedto sixteen. We are not sure whether any ofthese include cultural elements. The adop-tion of this provision to fund all of theseprojects combined resulted in $3,629,000in locally retained tax revenues in 2001and $9,495,214 in 2002.

Selective Sales Taxes

In addition to the more general sales anduse taxes discussed above, the State ofWashington imposes a number of selec-tive sales taxes on specific items. Revenuesfrom these selective sales taxes are oftendedicated to particular uses, some ofthem in the arts and culture.

For the arts and culture, the primarypotential revenue source among selectivesales taxes is the local hotel-motel tax.The hotel-motel tax has two portions, the“basic” (state-shared) portion and anadditional (locally borne) portion. Statelaw authorizes all cities and counties toimpose a state-shared local hotel-moteltax of up to 2.0 percent.18 This state-shared

held no later than one year after the date of thejoint request.

2. The proposition is approved if it receives the votesof a majority of those voting on the proposition.

3. The tax authorized in this section is in additionto any other taxes authorized by law and shallbe collected from those persons who are taxableby the state under chapters 82.08 and 82.12RCW upon the occurrence of any taxable eventwithin the county. The rate of tax shall equalno more than one-tenth of one percent of theselling price in the case of a sales tax, or valueof the article used, in the case of a use tax.

4. Moneys received from any tax imposed underthis section shall be used solely for the purpose of providing funds for:

Costs associated with financing, design,acquisition, construction, equipping, operat-ing, maintaining, remodeling, repairing,reequipping, or improvement of zoo, aquar-ium, and wildlife preservation and displayfacilities that are currently accredited by theAmerican zoo and aquarium association; or

Those costs associated with (a) of this subsec-tion and costs related to parks located withina county described in subsection (1) ofthis section.

The legislation goes on to stipulate otherprovisions such as matching requirementsand a payment to the Department ofCommunity, Trade and Economic Develop-ment in lieu of a Department of Revenueadministrative fee.

Though the percentages seem small, theimpact can be quite large. In 2001, thisadditional sales tax in Pierce Countyreturned $7,269,000 for zoo, aquarium,and wildlife facilities as well as for parks;in 2002, it returned $9,196,089.

A second provision provides for an addi-tional 0.2 percent local sales and use taxfor acquisition, construction and operationof public facilities such as sports andentertainment facilities. This tax is leviedby the board of a public facilities district.To our knowledge, it has only been imposedin Spokane County (at a rate of 0.1 per-cent) to finance the Spokane Arena. Thisprovision resulted in tax revenue of$5,957,000 in 2001 and $6,014,477 in

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19 Research Division, Washing-ton State Department ofRevenue, Tax ReferenceManual, 70.

20 In certain circumstances anexception is allowed and upto 3.0 percent can be levied.On the other hand, this addi-tional tax may be limited byan overall cap on the totalpercentage of sales taxallowed. The result is thatmost cities in King Countymay only levy a 1 percentadditional tax and Seattlecannot levy any additionalhotel-motel tax at all(because its convention cen-ter tax already lifts the salestax to 15.2 percent). Even so, some cities are allowed to exceed these limitations.Association of WashingtonCities, “Tax Facts: WhatCities and Legislators Needto Know about the Hotel-Motel Tax,” May 1998.

have led to local expenditures on the artsand culture that otherwise would not havetaken place if they had been reliant ondirect allocation out of non-dedicatedlocal tax revenues.

These taxes are generally semi-dedicated,but the choice is up to the individual cityor county. The specific uses to whichhotel-motel taxes are put have been quitebroad. They might include signage, maps,brochures, and publicity campaigns, butthey might also include grants to localmuseums and performing arts organiza-tions, construction and maintenance ofpublic restroom facilities or interpretationcenters, preservation of historic buildings,the construction of replicas of historicboats, or the construction of local con-vention centers.

Currently there is some debate as to howremoving the arts and culture as specifiedrecipients will, in the long run, affect theflow of hotel-motel tax revenues to thesector. It is clear that the original intent ofseparating off this source of revenue wasto isolate and protect these recipients tosome degree from the vagaries of statepolitics and perhaps even to provide aprecedent for local support. TheDepartment of Revenue, itself, states,“This tax represents a means for the stateto provide financial assistance for localfacilities and tourist promotion effortswithout going through the budgetaryprocess and with no additional tax burdenfor hotel-motel customers.”19

An additional 2.0 percent “special” localhotel-motel tax is also authorized by statelaw.20 But this additional tax cannot becredited toward state taxes, so its adoptionwould raise the local sales tax rate. Thisadditional hotel-motel tax has beenadopted by ninety-one cities and eighteencounties. The parameters for the distribu-tion of this additional tax are much thesame as those discussed above.

Other Dedicated Revenue StreamsSome states have experimented withdedicating all or a portion of various statefees to the arts and culture. In Washing-ton, there are two such provisions of

portion is deducted from the state retailsales tax so that the tax is not an additionaltax for the customer but rather representsa dedication of that portion of the statesales tax revenues on the purchase of over-night accommodations. Throughout thestate 134 cities and thirty-three countiesimpose this tax, all at the maximum rate.

This tax was originally authorized in 1967for King County to provide funding forthe King County Stadium (the Kingdome).It was later broadened to Tacoma andSpokane, and then again to any city orcounty. A variety of expanded uses werethen added to the tax: convention centers(1973), arts facilities and tourism promo-tion (1979), capital improvements instadiums (1985), tourism strategies in dis-tressed areas of the state and tall ships inGrays Harbor County (1986), agriculturalpromotion (1987), and steam railroads(1988). Additional uses were addedbetween 1991 and 1997, when all specifi-cations as to the use of hotel-motel taxrevenues were repealed by the Legislature,which instead allowed these tax revenuesto be devoted to any tourism-relatedpurpose.

It is clear that culture-related uses havefigured prominently in this list, and thehotel-motel tax remains an importantsource for local and county funding forthe arts and culture in various parts ofthe state. The Cultural DevelopmentAuthority of King County, for example,relies quite substantially on hotel-moteltaxes to fund its programs. To takeanother example, the City of Vancouverreceives approximately $170,000 annuallyfrom the hotel-motel tax in this way.During the 1995 and 1996 budget cyclesthe local distribution of this moneyincluded an annual contract with theGreater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce(approximately $67,000) for tourism mar-keting, funding for the historic MarshallHouse ($35,000) and the Office of HeritageServices ($46,000), and grants to the Tearsof Joy Puppet Theater ($10,000) and theFarmer’s Market ($3,000-$4,000). Theseexamples suggest that the policy to offer arebate of dedicated taxes in this way may

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21 This formula allocates half of the revenues beingdistributed to each of thethirty-nine counties in equalamounts and the other half according to relativepopulation.

Harbor Historical Seaport and theSteamer Virginia V Foundation.

It is clear that this provision is a highlytargeted one, intended in this case forprojects to restore (or replicate) historicvessels that are of significance to Washing-ton. We have been unable to documentthe amount of money that this provisiongenerates on an annual basis. Presumablyit is modest. But this example does raisethe questions of how such specializedpieces of legislation find their way toadoption and why some are chosen tobenefit while many are not.

One should be careful not to concludetoo much from these small and relativelyinvisible programs, but they do illustratewell how clever legislation can be used tofavor certain groups within the sector,presumably with little sense of how eachsuch provision fits within the overallframework of Washington’s cultural policy.

Nonprofit Facilities ProgramWashington StateHousing FinanceCommissionThe Washington State Housing FinanceCommission (WSHFC) is a commissionauthorized by the Legislature to act as afinancial conduit that can issue nonre-course revenue bonds and participate infederal, state, and local housing programsand thereby make additional funds avail-able at affordable rates to help providehousing throughout the state. WSHFCdoes not use public funds or lend thecredit of the state or local governments. It isself-supporting and publicly accountable.

In 1990 the Nonprofit Facilities Program(NFP) was created within WSHFC inorder to issue bonds to nonprofit organi-zations that were not in the higher educa-tion or healthcare fields. Dan Grimm, thestate treasurer at the time, wanted theissuing of bonds to 501(c)(3) organiza-tions to be handled by one state agencyrather than many local agencies.

which we are aware. These two examplesillustrate nicely how specially targetedprovisions can be used to provide rev-enues to one or another segment of thecultural field.

Surcharge for Preservation of Historical Docu-ments: This provision established a specialfee to assist in the preservation of histori-cal documents. Each time an individualrecords a document or requests a copy of an official document from a county,an additional fee of $2.00 is charged. Onehalf of this fee is retained by the countyand is dedicated to an operation andmaintenance fund that provides for ongo-ing preservation of historical documentsof all county offices and departments.The other half is collected by the stateand deposited in a special account, thestate auditor’s Centennial DocumentPreservation and Modernization Account.These revenues are then redistributedback to the counties by a formula.21 Thismoney is also dedicated to be used forongoing preservation of historical docu-ments of all county offices and depart-ments. Thus, the redistributed portionmay not be added to the county’s currentexpense budget. Presumably this assuresthat at least half of the revenues fromthis provision are dedicated to funding anincrease in such preservation activities.

In fiscal 2001 this provision channeled$1,649,612 into the Centennial DocumentPreservation and Modernization Accountand from there back to the counties.(Presumably, it also collected an equalsum that was left with the counties inwhich the fees were collected.)

Maritime Historic Restoration Donations: Aspart of the process of registering a boat,individuals are offered the opportunity tomake a voluntary donation on top oftheir registration fees for maritime historicpreservation and conservation activities(RCW §88.02.052). Donations that arecollected by the state as a result of thismechanism are placed in a MaritimeHistoric Restoration and PreservationAccount; the accumulated donations arethen split equally between the Grays

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Chapter VIII: Behind the Scenesmanagement tool.” NFP offered technicalassistance and workshops to educate non-profits. By all reports, arts organizationsare beginning to consider NFP as a sourceof financing for their capital projects.

Under NFP nonprofit organizations canquality for capital loans at below-marketrates for performance halls, theaters,museums, interpretive centers, or exhibits.In fiscal year 2001-2002, for example,NFP issued bonds totaling $10,000,000 to finance the construction of the newbuilding for the Tacoma Art Museum,$538,750 to refinance the rehabilitation ofHarlequin Productions’ State Theater inOlympia, and $350,000 to finance theacquisition of a commercial condo-minium unit to be used by Artist Trustfor its administrative offices in Seattle.

The second challenge was that the hightransaction costs for bond issuances dis-couraged borrowers. In the early 1990s,to reduce transaction costs NFP created a structure distinct from the simple publicsale of bonds to many players: the bondis placed with a bank that already has arelationship with the nonprofit—indeed,the sexiest organizations get below-mar-ket-rate loans anyway from banks whowant their names attached to their presti-gious projects—and NFP then buys theloan from the bank, assigning it back assecurity. This allows the bank to loan themoney interest free to the nonprofit.

In NFP’s view, foundations are not pursu-ing an intelligent policy toward nonprofitswhen they refuse to give grants thatwould help an organization pay back debt.If foundations would do this, it argues,organizations would have more flexibilityin cash management and could buildreserves for lean times. As it is, nonprofitsare forced to wait longer to build, raisingthe ultimate cost of their facilities.

This component to state cultural policy is an institutional creation that allowsspecified nonprofit organizations withinthe state to take advantage of federal taxincentives for capital borrowing purposes.WSHFC serves as an intermediary,allowing nonprofits to take advantage

The Nonprofit Facilities Program servesas a conduit issuer: it does not and cannotprovide state money directly, but rather itstands between the state and federal gov-ernments and the borrowing nonprofit. Itprovides a tax exemption on the interestearned by the bondholder for the bondmoney being loaned to nonprofits by pri-vate investors. This permits nonprofits toget a lower than market interest rate ontheir borrowed money. Note that the taxexemption at stake here is an exemptionfrom federal tax; it is the federal govern-ment, not the state government, that fore-goes the tax revenue. The State ofWashington does not even pay for theadministration of the Nonprofit FacilitiesProgram; it charges a 1 percent fee (plus a0.25 percent annual fee). Projects under$2.5 million generally end up costing NFPmoney, so the larger projects have tocross-subsidize the administrative costs ofthe smaller ones.

Public hearings are required for any bondapproval, and some people have com-plained that dollars are being drainedfrom other social investments, but theNonprofit Facilities Program believes thatthe banks that are lending to cultural non-profits would have done so anyway. Thereis always, of course, the danger of adefault, which the state must then refundto the bank. This has happened once, withthe Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center.

To qualify for an exemption, projects haveto be able to support the proposed debt,which usually requires projecting earnedrevenues for the project under considera-tion. It is the private sector that determineswhether a project is feasible through itswillingness to purchase the bonds that arebeing issued.

At its inception, the Nonprofit FacilitiesProgram faced two challenges. First, it waslocated within a “Housing Commission”and had no contacts in the arts commu-nity. It marketed itself in particular tosmaller cultural organizations, workingwith the former Washington Commissionfor the Humanities and the WashingtonState Arts Commission, in order to make the point that “debt can be a cash-

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arts organizations, including the SeattleSymphony, the Seattle Art Museum, theSeattle Repertory Theatre, and the SeattleOpera. The first campaign had a target of$600,000 but only raised $200,000. Theseoriginal organizations were not necessarilythrilled with UAC, because UAC—like theUnited Way—placed severe restrictions onthe ability of the member organizationsto conduct their own fundraising cam-paigns, especially from the donor corpora-tions giving to UAC.22 Typical was theSeattle Repertory Theatre, which was veryconcerned that UAC and its stringentpolicies would actually hinder theRepertory’s fundraising.

In 1976, the name of the organization waschanged from the United Arts Council of Puget Sound to the Corporate Councilfor the Arts, recognizing the centrality ofcorporate support for its funding. Thecurrent president of Corporate Council of the Arts/ArtsFund, Peter Donnelly,was appointed in 1989. Donnelly had beenthe managing director of the SeattleRepertory Theatre.

Today, in order to qualify for a grant fromCCA, an arts organization must be a non-profit with a three-year operating trackrecord,23 have at least one paid employee,and have a budget of at least $100,000 inSeattle, $50,000 in King County outsideof Seattle, or $50,000 in Pierce County.

Beneficiaries of CCA funding are dividedinto two categories, somewhat confusinglynamed “Sustaining Groups” and “Discre-tionary Groups.” Sustaining Groups arelarge arts organizations who have beenprequalified to receive predictable, annual,unrestricted operating grants from CCA.As of CCA’s 2001 Annual Report, twenty-three arts organizations were categorizedas Sustaining Groups. Approximately 85 percent of the grant is prorated by therelative budget size of the recipientorganization; the remaining 15 percent isbased on the allocation committee’sassessment of managerial excellence. Thisresults in substantial differences in grantamount across recipient groups. TheSeattle Opera, for example, received$359,000 in 2001 while fourteen of the

of borrowing opportunities that wouldotherwise be unavailable to them. Non-profit cultural organizations would, ofcourse, prefer outright capital grants fromthe Building for the Arts program or theCapital Projects Fund for Washington’sHeritage, but a below-market-rate loancan also be an attractive option. Statelegislation makes access to this optionpossible.

Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFundOne final key player in cultural policy inWashington is the Corporate Council forthe Arts, which in May 2003 renamed andrepositioned itself as ArtsFund. SeveralSeattle area civic-minded community lead-ers founded this organization in 1969 asthe United Arts Council of Puget Sound(UAC). The key member of this groupwas Ned Skinner, a director of Boeing.The goal was to provide corporationswith an opportunity to make a singleannual contribution to many arts organi-zations through an intermediary organiza-tion that could assist in decision makingand to offer arts organizations grants inthe form of unrestricted discretionarydollars. UAC managed the corporate cam-paign and distributed its annual receipts toarts organizations that were members ofUAC. Its giving was restricted to King andPierce counties.

UAC deliberately did not use payrolldeductions to raise funds, as many UnitedArts Funds have done. Instead, it reliedon individual donations from corporateexecutives or direct donations from majorcorporations such as Boeing. UAC chosenot to establish an endowment, so that allof the money raised each year was distrib-uted; thus, it began each new year at zero.

The corporate leaders involved with UAChoped it would enhance the efficiency ofthe funding environment and allow cor-porations to minimize the demands madeupon them by shifting the burden ofmanaging the grant-making process to UAC.

The six original recipient organizationswere the largest and most prestigious

22 This is a universal problemwith such coordinatedfundraising structures.Arts organizations quicklybegin to suspect that corpo-rations are using the interme-diary structure and itsdistribution rules to con-tribute less than they mightotherwise if they did nothave an institutional structureto hide behind. The Germanexperience with Kulturkreis(the “Culture Circle” of cor-porate donors) has beenmuch the same, with artsorganizations suspecting thatthe organization is implicitlyintended to limit corporatedonors’ contributions—“We already gave throughKulturkreis.”—rather than to encourage them.

23 Organizations that are intheir first two years ofoperation are free toapproach corporate donorsto CCA on an individualbasis, but arts organizationsthat are in their third year ofoperation, will be referred by CCA’s corporate donorsto CCA/ArtsFund.

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Chapter VIII: Behind the ScenesCCA expects that arts organizations willbe held accountable for the money theyreceive, so grantees are expected to providedetailed information on their programs,including audience data and ticket sales.

The budget of CCA was about $4.5 millionin 2002, roughly equal to the WashingtonState Arts Commission’s biennial budget orthe biennial budget of the Building for theArts program, but its focus is only on artsorganizations in King and Pierce counties.Of this total budget, about $3 millionrepresents corporate donations withabout $500,000 from individual and work-place giving and $700,000 in income fromrestricted endowment funds. The organi-zation also has substantial earned income aswell. A few years ago, the KreielsheimerFoundation, a local foundation that hadbeen a long-time supporter of the arts,reached the end of its intended life. (Itwas part of the original incorporationpapers that at a certain point it had togive all of its money away.) The founda-tion deeded its building to CCA; thebuilding is now fully leased with CCAearning revenue from the rent. CCA alsoreceives revenue from the building’s fifty-five parking spaces. In addition, CCA is aone-third owner of KING-FM, a for-profit, classical radio station. The SeattleOpera and the Seattle Symphony own theother two-thirds. The station is profitable,and CCA uses its share of the profits forgrants to classical music groups otherthan the opera and the symphony.

The size and influence of CCA do notcome without controversy. Many of theindividuals with whom we spoke worriedabout CCA’s relative influence. Theyexpressed concern that because of therelative centralization of corporate contri-butions in one place it was difficult tolaunch worthy initiatives without CCA’sblessing. The director of one arts organi-zation voiced the view that she could notstart any new initiative unless she was ableto convince CCA that it had been CCA’sidea. Another interviewee from a smallorganization told us the story of the orga-nization’s first few years. During its firsttwo years of operation, a period during

twenty-three Sustaining Groups receivedless than $75,000 (four of these, all inTacoma, received less than $25,000). Thisis a reflection of the fact that the totalbudgets of all of the arts groups that CCAfunds in Pierce County are less than halfof the budget of the Seattle Opera alone.

Discretionary Groups are small and mid-size organizations that receive discre-tionary grants in each year’s round offunding. Typical grants in this categoryare about $5,000, though they might go ashigh as $20,000-$23,000. Some thirty toforty organizations receive money fromthis category each year.

CCA support comes with certain restric-tions. Sustaining Groups are not allowedto seek separate grants for unrestrictedoperating support from corporations whoare donors to Corporate Council for theArts. This restriction does not apply toDiscretionary Groups. But other fundingrestrictions on both groups have beeneased substantially. Both groups, forexample, can now approach CCA mem-ber corporations separately for projectand special event funding.

Grant applications are reviewed by anallocation panel comprised of twelve tofourteen community leaders, corporateexecutives, and philanthropists who agreeto give the equivalent of eight full days totheir duties on the panel. The allocationprocess requires arts organizations tomake detailed presentations on their pro-grams to the allocation panel on anannual basis. The idea is that this willbring arts organizations into a “conversa-tion” with major funders since the alloca-tion panel includes both corporations andindividual philanthropists. This conversa-tion affords arts organizations the oppor-tunity to discuss their organizationsbefore a body of grant makers who mayalso choose to fund their organizationsdirectly and affords the committee mem-bers the opportunity to gain in-depthknowledge about the field, informationthat may well assist them in their othergrant-making activities.

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wealthy local philanthropists independentof corporate giving were launched. Thisshift resulted in the creation of an endow-ment, which now stands at over $6 mil-lion. Recently “ArtsFund” became theofficial name for the entire organization;the “Corporate Council for the Arts”moniker has been retired.

This shift has not been without its owncontroversy. Arts funding agencies arebecoming much more entrepreneurial inseeking out funding sources beyond theirtraditional ones. As ArtsFund turnedmore toward individual donations as asource of funding support, the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resourcesannounced its plan to reconfigure itself asa public development authority, theCultural Development Authority of KingCounty (CDAKC). Part of the justifica-tion for this reconfiguration was that itwould open up a variety of fundingsources not previously tapped by thisoffice, including corporate and individualdonations. Not surprisingly, the twoorganizations have become wary of oneanother. CCA took the view that thecounty organization should not become apublic development agency with the moreflexible fundraising opportunities that thatwould entail, and should continue,instead, to rely on county funds and makeit its goal to put as much pressure oncounty funding as possible. CDAKC tookthe view that in an era of limited publicresources it needed to look elsewhere foradditional resources that it felt were nec-essary to maintain a certain degree offlexibility and dynamism in its operations.Each viewed the changes in the other as a possible threat to its own fundraisingplans.

Of course, the ultimate financial effect ofhaving multiple organizations engaged infundraising over the same geographic areadepends on their relative effectiveness aswell as on their ability to make clear dis-tinctions between their respective activi-ties. The artistic effect depends on thedifferent decision-making mechanismsthat might be put into place to distributewhatever resources become available.

which CCA will not fund organizations,it had had success in going directly toMicrosoft for operating support. In thethird year it was informed, presumably byMicrosoft, that it would have to apply toCCA. The result was a grant that was quitea bit lower than the grants it had receivedduring the first two years. This may havebeen a good decision given the relativepriorities of CCA, the relative needs of itsother applicants, the priorities of Microsoft,and/or the merit of this applicant, but itis clear that this applicant was left withthe perception that CCA was a way oflimiting corporate contributions to thearts rather than encouraging them.

Of course, such feelings of “entitlement”pervade any arts funding system, whetherprivate or public, but that does not meanthat those feelings should become thebasis on which decisions are made. Yet,this anecdote points to two very differentconceptualizations of the role that anorganization such as CCA plays. On theone hand will be organizations that feelthat a relatively centralized corporatefunding system, such as that operated byCCA, can become a way for corporationsto put a fence around their support forthe arts. It becomes much easier for themto say, “We have already given—throughCCA.” These organizations are left feelingthat the aggregate of corporate support islower than it would be in the absence ofsuch a fund. On the other hand will bethose who note the increasing amount ofmoney raised by CCA (doubling between1989 and 2000) and the increasing num-ber of organizations supported (fromtwenty-two in 1989 to seventy-one in 2003).They believe that CCA has had an impor-tant influence in encouraging donationsthat otherwise would not have taken place.

The origins of CCA were with leadingcorporations in the Puget Sound area andtheir executives. Increasingly though, CCAhas been tapping individual donors forfunds in addition to corporations. Severalyears ago, CCA named this part of itsfundraising ArtsFund. Payroll deductioncampaigns as well as concerted campaignsto attract individual donations from

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Chapter VIII: Behind the ScenesCCA is driving the agenda, which means that theagenda is driven by western Washington. CCAmakes quality, fiscally responsible, safe invest-ments—think of them as having a conservativeportfolio of assets….They have pull...and influ-ence through corporate people. Their word is law,not that that is necessarily a bad thing…[but] theresult is corporate heads battling state governmentfor policy direction.

Thus, the actual impact of CCA/ArtsFundon cultural policy in King and Piercecounties continues to be a matter ofconsiderable debate in which one’s viewdepends in large part on one’s vantagepoint. The perspective of some smaller or “edgier” arts organizations is that thepreference of CCA/ArtsFund for thelarger, more prestigious organizationsfavored by corporate donors makes iteven more difficult for them to receiveongoing operating support, thereby “forc-ing” them to always operate at the margin.But the larger organizations argue thatthey have a unique role in the local artscommunity and point to the substantialgrowth in the number of smaller organi-zations as evidence of the ability of theseorganizations to raise funds elsewhere.

There are those who fear—and thosewho hope—that ArtsFund will favor themajor, established, mainline organizations,skewing artistic production in certaindirections. There are also those who fearthat individual donors to ArtsFund, muchlike corporate donors to CCA, will beginto say to arts organizations that they havealready given to the arts through ArtsFundand that they must seek their donationsthere.

CCA’s participation in the Building for theArts program, discussed earlier in ChapterIII, has also raised some eyebrows amongarts organizations and the state’s culturalagencies, fueling the fear of a privatelocus of influence in matters of culturalpolicy that many feel should be the sub-ject of public cultural policy.

Nevertheless, CCA/ArtsFund has becomethe largest arts funding organization inthe state—albeit with a limited geographicfocus—with resources that significantlyexceed those of the Washington StateArts Commission (WSAC). The impact ofCCA/ArtsFund on cultural policy in Kingand Pierce counties as compared to theimpact of WSAC is further magnified bythe distribution of WSAC funding. WSAC,as a statewide organization, has to beattentive to the geographic distribution offunding, so it spreads its grants through-out the state; thus, the amount of moneyavailable for organizations in King andPierce counties is relatively modest. Thesame is true of the Building for the Artsprogram, though capital facilities in thearts tend to be concentrated west of theCascades, particularly in the two countiesserved by CCA.

The relative influence of CCA/ArtsFundattracted a lot of attention in our inter-views. One of our interviewees put it thisway: “The state was once considered thepolicy setter. But CCA is now the primarystate arts policy maker given its importancein funding in King and Pierce countiesand its influence over other issuesstatewide (e.g., Building for the Arts).”Another articulated it in the followingmanner:

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Observations and Theory—The Future of State Cultural PolicySteven Rathgeb Smith

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and its regulatory capacity in partnershipwith state and local governments andcommunity-based organizations, can alsobe traced to the influence of the ColdWar and a humanistic response to theadvance of (Soviet) technology. Congressquickly became interested in supportingstate cultural efforts, rewarding thecreation of state arts agencies and encour-aging (unsuccessfully) the establishmentwithin government of state humanitiescouncils through formula-fundedmatching grants.

Since the 1970s, many scholars haveargued that a fundamental transformationof state policy and politics, in part due tothe new federal initiatives, has occurred.Carl Van Horn called attention to what hetermed a “tidal wave of reform” thatswept through state governments.2 In par-ticular, he noted that U. S. Supreme Courtrulings had forced state governments andlegislatures to be more representative andmore responsive to their citizens. And heobserved that state government hadbecome significantly more modern andprofessional, resulting in state govern-ments that were more efficient, effective,and adept at addressing public issues andconcerns. During the 1980s and 1990s,state governments added to their work-forces and rewrote their state constitu-tions and charters to increase the scope oftheir responsibilities and to update theirprocedures and laws. Timothy Conlan hasobserved that during this period state andlocal government revenues as a percent-age of all government revenues had beenincreasing, contributing to the continuedmodernization of state government.3

Scholars and policy makers from acrossthe political spectrum put forth an addi-tional powerful argument that the states

The previous chapters in this report con-stitute a map of the cultural policy of theState of Washington. We consciouslywent into the field with few assumptionsas to what we would find, and we havewritten up these chapters in a manner thatattempts to capture the freshness and theimmediacy of those interviews.

But there are literatures on state policyand politics, in general, and, to a lesserdegree, on state cultural policy, whichattempt to theorize about these areas andto explain and predict changes in state(cultural) policy. To what extent do theseliteratures correspond with what weactually observed in the field? That is thequestion to which we turn in this con-cluding chapter.

State policy and politics have a very longhistory as an object of study among polit-ical scientists. But throughout most of themid to late twentieth century, states werethe subject of scorn and criticism. Mostpolitical scientists including Harold Laski,Duane Lockard, V. O. Key and many oth-ers regarded state politics as plagued bycorruption, inefficiency, ineptness, hostilityto minorities, favoritism to elite businessinterests, and unprofessionalism.1 Thiswide-ranging critique served to providepart of the intellectual foundation for thegreatly increased role of the federal gov-ernment in public policy during the 1970s,yet the realpolitik of the federal govern-ment in this era also emphasized revenue-sharing as a key instrument acrossprogram areas.

The creation of the National Endowmentfor the Arts and the National Endowmentfor the Humanities, while influenced bythis vision of an increased role for thefederal government employing its resources

1 Harold Laski, “The Obsoles-cence of Federalism,” TheNew Republic, 3 May 1939,367; Duane Lockard,The Perverted Priorities ofAmerican Politics (New York:Macmillan, 1971); V. O. Key,Southern Politics (New York:Vintage, 1949).

2 Carl Van Horn, ed., The State of the States, 2nd edition (Washington, D.C.:Congressional Quarterly,1996).

3 Timothy Conlan, “TheFuture of Reform,” inLaurence J. O’Toole, ed.,American IntergovernmentalRelations: Foundations,Perspectives, and Issues, 3rdedition (Washington, D.C.:Congressional Quarterly,2000), 386-397.

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cultural policy in Washington have evenlooser ties to state government per se.

Based upon the research on state govern-ment in other policy fields and thecharacteristics of Washington politicalinstitutions, one might reasonably postu-late several hypotheses about its statecultural policy:

The federal government would play acentral role in the establishment of aformal state cultural program.

The State of Washington wouldrespond to the stimulative role of thefederal government with additionalappropriations over time and theinstitutionalization of a state culturalprogram.

State cultural policy would be markedby innovation and experimentationand reflect the unique characteristicsof the arts in the state.

The modernization of state legisla-tures would mean greater attention toarts and culture by state legislators.

State cultural policy would bedispersed among many differentagencies and departments.

A governor would be unlikely toprovide ongoing leadership in the arts because of the fragmentation of state cultural policy.

Our study was not intended to directlytest these hypotheses. Nonetheless, ourstudy does offer what we feel is com-pelling information and analysis on theformation of state cultural policy inWashington. Accordingly, in the nextsection we turn to a more in-depth analysisof the factors responsible for the devel-opment of state cultural policy inWashington and the implications for thearts and cultural institutions and the citi-zens of the state. But note that becausethe research literature on state culturalpolicy has, to date, focused almost exclu-sively on state arts policies and mostparticularly on state arts agencies, muchof the analysis in this chapter makes morereference to state arts policy than to state

(and localities) were more innovative thanthe federal government; that they were“laboratories of democracy” where newand more effective programs could be,and were, initiated.4 This perspectivefueled calls for the devolution of federalpolicy to states and localities. States wouldbe given greater discretion over the man-agement of federally funded programs,and they would be encouraged to assumeresponsibilities that had previously beenconsidered federal.

This greatly increased emphasis on stateresponsibility for public programs hasfueled a sharp increase in research onstate policy. But, almost without exception,the research on the transformation ofstate government in the last twenty yearshas focused on the traditional core func-tions of state government: transportation,social welfare, corrections, and education.5

Relatively little attention has been devotedto the arts and cultural policy at the statelevel, despite the profound change in therole of arts and culture in American soci-ety since the 1960s and the recrudescencein interest in state program responsibility.

Thus, a consideration of state culturalpolicy in general as evidenced by the cur-rent study of cultural policy in the Stateof Washington is especially timely, helpingto fill a lacuna in the scholarship on artspolicy and state policy more broadly. Asnoted earlier in this report, the State ofWashington is well suited for an investiga-tion into state cultural policy given itsdemographics and the shift to a moreknowledge-based economy. But, as wehave pointed out, Washington also hasspecific institutional characteristics thataffect the formulation and implementa-tion of policy. In particular, the governoris relatively weak and the power in stategovernment tends to be fragmentedamong many different commissions anddepartments that do not directly report to the governor. Indeed, the WashingtonState Arts Commission (WSAC) is, itself,a good example of this type of independ-ent commission, but, as we have seen,many of the important actors in state

4 David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, ReinventingGovernment (New York:Plume, 1992).

5 See Laurence J. O’Toole,American IntergovernmentalRelations; Carl Van Horn,The State of the States; JeffreyR. Henig, Public Policy andFederalism: Issues in State andLocal Politics (New York: St.Martin’s, 1985); Virginia Grayand Peter Eisinger, AmericanStates and Cities (New York:HarperCollins, 1991);Thad L. Beyle, ed., State and Local Government: 2002-2003 (Washington, D.C.:Congressional QuarterlyPress, 2002); and VirginiaGray, Russell Hanson, andHerbert Jacobs, eds., Politics in the American States: AComparative Analysis, 7thedition (Washington, D.C.:Congressional QuarterlyPress, 1999).

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Chapter IX: Observations and Theory--The Future of State Cultural Policy

6 Melinda Bargeen. “NEAAwards 30 Grants in State,” The Seattle Times, May 13, 2003.

sense that only a very small part of itsbudget is truly available for new awards ornew programmatic initiatives in line withchanging policy in any given year. Conse-quently, program innovation can onlyoccur through new state funding (whichhas generally not been available), new fed-eral funding, or private foundation grants.

The recent round of grant announce-ments from the NEA in May 2003 alsounderscores the continued relevance andvital role of the federal government. TheNEA awarded over $1.2 million in grantsto thirty arts organizations in Washing-ton.6 This amount is almost as much asthe $1.4 million that WSAC awarded toarts organizations in 2002.

The Politics of StateCultural Policy and its ImplicationsOur research highlights a number of keyfactors that shape the development andimplementation of cultural policy in theState of Washington. First, the Legis-lature—despite important changes in itscomposition in the last forty years—remains relatively disinterested in culturalpolicy. Occasionally, individual legislatorswill carve out a niche in the Legislature incultural policy, but in general few legisla-tors actively take a leadership role in pro-moting state support for the arts orculture more broadly construed. And,as noted, in Washington the governor’spowers are quite restricted by the plethoraof independent agencies and commissions.

Second, in the absence of strong leader-ship from the Legislature or the governor,cultural policy tends to be shaped by pow-erful existing interests and the entrepre-neurial leadership of public and privateleaders in the arts. This situation is partic-ularly reflected in the following character-istics of state cultural policy:

Individual state agencies are more important than coordinated policy.

cultural policy, more broadly construed.Further discussion awaits the develop-ment of a richer foundation of state-levelcultural policy research.

The Enduring Influenceof Federal PolicyQuite predictably, the roots of WSACwere in the 1960s, although WSAC actu-ally predates the creation of the NationalEndowment for the Arts (NEA).However, the real surprise is the enduringcentral role of the federal government inshaping cultural policy in the state, notonly within WSAC but also within a widerange of the state’s cultural agencies.Evidence of this continuing role abounds.

The State of Washington’s component of WSAC’s budget is surprisingly modestwith considerable funding originating withthe federal government, notably NEA.WSAC’s budget has declined in real termsover the last twenty years as the state hasfailed to increase its funding support.The Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation was established following thepassage of the federal National HistoricPreservation Act (NHPA) and remainsdependent upon federal funding. Andnew program initiatives tend to be drivenby changes in federal cultural policy (andto a lesser extent the priorities of majornational private foundations).

The importance of federal policy inregards to innovation reflects in part therealities of state politics and the relativescarcity of funding. Taking WSAC onceagain as an example, it is a state agencywith a statewide constituency. The agencyhas a modest staff with oversight from acommission comprised of civic leadersfrom throughout the state. Despite a lim-ited budget, WSAC is in the position ofhaving to distribute its modest fundingthroughout the state. The result is manysmall grants to many local arts organiza-tions. And once a grant is awarded, thepolitics of funding make it very difficultfor WSAC to discontinue funding even ifthe grant is only for $2,000 (or less). Thus,WSAC’s funding is mostly restricted in the

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Whether or not dedicated sources ofsupport are more stable and more reliablein the long run is a matter of debate.There is evidence in both directions. Ingood budgetary times, dedicated fundingstreams have been beneficial to the artsand culture, which have always had troublecompeting for general revenue dollars, butin times of scarcity, dedicated fundingstreams are just as vulnerable to raiding(perhaps even more so). Still, despite thefact that dedicated funding sources maybe vulnerable, they may also offer theopportunity to craft a funding stream thatmore closely matches societal benefitswith costs by bringing those who pay andthose who benefit more closely in linewith one another. Of course, some dedi-cated funding streams, e.g., user fees, aremore likely to accomplish this than others,e.g., dedicated lottery revenues (whichhave been widely criticized for their distri-butional consequences).

Entrepreneurship is rewarded.

Without firm state direction from thecenter, cultural policy is greatly influencedby entrepreneurial individuals in the cul-tural community such as David Nicandriat the Washington State Historical Societyor Peter Donnelly at Corporate Councilfor the Arts/ArtsFund, individuals whoare able to build a coalition of supportersfor particular state and/or local projects.The same holds true for influential politi-cians; many of the people we interviewedspoke about the commitment of formerSecretary of State Ralph Munro, particu-larly to initiatives within the heritage andhistoric preservation areas of state cul-tural policy.

The relationship betweeneconomic development andtourism is a missed opportunity.

The relative absence of strong state sup-port for the arts and culture means thatthe State of Washington has faced greatdifficulty taking advantage of the naturalrelationship between culture, tourism, andeconomic development. In many states,state support for cultural projects is linkedmuch more explicitly with economic

Without a centrally coordinated policy,individual state agencies become involvedin cultural policy based upon their ownparticular perspectives. Thus, the secretaryof state’s office is involved in cultural pol-icy because it is interested in documentpreservation. The Washington State Parksand Recreation Commission is interestedin preserving the historic properties andcultural resources that have come into itsownership. The Washington State Depart-ment of Transportation is focused on itsHeritage Corridors projects. But inevitablythese projects are not an integral part ofthe programs of these state agencies andtend to be “add-ons” that often experi-ence difficulty obtaining visibility andongoing support at the level necessary tosustain them in anything more than aminimal manner.

Capital projects are popular.

Given the lack of support for supportingculture as culture, capital projects areinevitably much more attractive for policymakers. Examples include the Building forthe Arts program and the Capital ProjectsFund for Washington’s Heritage, as well asline item capital expenditures for theWashington State Historical Museum inTacoma and the Northwest Museum ofArts and Culture in Tacoma.

Dedicated funding support is a more important factor at thestate level than at other levels of government.

In an environment of scarce resources,arts advocates have searched for dedicatedfunding streams to support cultural policy.This has been particularly true at the statelevel. In Washington, a variety of dedicatedtaxes provide support to one or anotherpart of the cultural policy infrastructure(see Chapter VIII), and the structure ofthe Building for the Arts program and theCapital Grants for Washington’s Heritagehas allowed them to function as relativelyautonomous sources of support. In theirown indirect manner, the many tax exemp-tions offered by the State of Washingtonalso provide streams of dedicated support.

The distributional consequencesare complicated.

Understanding the distributional conse-quences of state cultural policy is a bitcomplicated given the multiplicity ofpublic and nonprofit agencies receivingfunding and the many different fundingsources supporting the arts. Nonetheless,the pattern of state support for the artsdoes have certain implications:

The state has helped support countlesssmall local public and nonprofit organ-izations with small grants. These smallarts organizations, such as The JazzProject in Bellingham or the NorthwestChildren’s Theatre in La Conner, arenot very attractive to established pri-vate national or local foundations orother donors (because they are sosmall and/or new). These organiza-tions are sometimes able to use what-ever state grants they do receive toleverage other (local) funding sourcesfor additional grants.

By supporting new and small organiza-tions, which, by their nature, may beless attractive to private fundingsources, the state—especially WSAC—has also contributed to a substantialincrease in the number of nonprofitarts and cultural organizations in thestate in the last twenty years.

But the small size of these grants also means that many of the smallerrecipient organizations are alwaysoperating on the edge of survival andare highly dependent upon ticket rev-enues for that survival. These organi-zations often operate with just a fewstaff and relatively few volunteers.(Indeed, it is typically the large organi-zations such as the Seattle Symphonythat can count on a significant cadre ofvolunteers.) Thus, the structure offunding tends to keep administrativestaff very lean, making it difficult forthese organizations to develop a diver-sified base of support that wouldenhance their prospects for sustain-ability, especially in the current leanfunding environment.

development and tourism, helping to builda broad coalition of public and privatebackers. But in the State of Washington, ithas been difficult to build this coalitiondue to the divisive political culture includ-ing sharp ideological differences betweenRepublicans and Democrats that roughlymirror the divide between the PugetSound area and the rest of the state.

Localism is very important.

Local funding organizations and donorsloom very large as backers of arts andcultural policy. Corporate Council for theArts/ArtsFund and the Cultural Develop-ment Authority of King County (thesemi-privatized successor to the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources)both have bigger budgets than the keystate cultural agencies. Wealthy philan-thropists and local foundations also play akey role especially in support of capitalprojects. But ongoing philanthropic sup-port for operating expenses is difficult tofind, creating a situation in which manyarts organizations become more highlydependent than they would like uponticket revenue for their ongoing support.

Interestingly though, the connectionbetween economic development, tourismand culture seems to be stronger at thelocal level in the State of Washington. Forexample, many places such as Bellingham,Mt. Vernon, and King County supportarts organizations from their hotel-moteltax revenues. Particularly in smaller com-munities, the ability of arts organizationsto obtain local governmental supporthinges on their ability to sell the eco-nomic benefits of their programs. In asense, the argument employed by theseorganizations is that support from thehotel-motel tax will generate “culturaltourism,” which in turn will generateadditional revenues for the town. (Thiseconomic argument is also employed atthe state level with capital projects sincethe projects produce additional tax rev-enue and economic activity.)

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tend to be complicated and tied to theagencies’ agendas rather than to thecultural priorities of particular tribes.)As in other aspects of cultural policy,the federal government also remainsimportant as a direct funder of tribalcultural programs.

Attention must be paid to thecultural infrastructure.

WSAC directly supports the cultural infra-structure through its ongoing support tocultural organizations and artists, althoughthe funding is often very modest. But ithas provided a crucial legitimacy for manyartists and cultural organizations thatthese organizations have been able toleverage for additional funding.

WSAC also plays a crucial, more indirectrole in the development of the infrastruc-ture supporting the arts community in the state through a variety of initiatives.For many years, WSAC has supported Artist Trust with a major grant of over$65,000. Artist Trust provides directgrants to artists as well as assistance inlanding additional grants. It also offersinformation and referral services forartists and help with practical problemssuch as health insurance and pensions.

While Artist Trust supports workingartists, the Washington State Arts Allianceand the Arts Network of WashingtonState have been important in helping cul-tural organizations. The Arts Alliance wascreated in the 1980s as a membershiporganization comprised of arts organiza-tions. The Arts Network was “spun-off ”from the Arts Alliance shortly thereafterand focused on providing technical assis-tance to local arts organizations. It alsosponsored an annual “Cultural Congress,”a conference offering workshops for artsorganizations on a variety of importantconcerns such as board development andfundraising.

The Arts Alliance has tended to focus onadvocacy throughout its history. Recentlythe Arts Network and Arts Alliance haveagreed to join forces again, so after ashort transition period, Arts Network willcease to exist and the technical assistance

Perhaps not surprisingly, state supportof culture tends to steer clear of“edgier” or controversial organizationsor programs. In general, “edgier” arttends to be supported either by localfunding sources such as the SeattleOffice of Arts & Cultural Affairs oron a completely fee-based, ticket basis.Thus, state cultural programs tend tobe “mainstream,” a reflection of thepreference for formal nonprofit orpublic organizations and of the politi-cal divisions within the state, whichmake supporting controversial culturalprograms a risky political move.

But the State of Washington does playa key redistributional role in channel-ing at least some public funding to themany small communities around thestate. Many arts organizations in thesecommunities would not have anymoney save their state grants.

Financial support for neighborhood orethnic associations involved in the artstends to be from local funders such asthe Seattle Office of Arts & CulturalAffairs, national foundations such asthe Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds orthe Ford Foundation, or the federalgovernment. (Recently, for example,NEA awarded $25,000 to WSAC for aLatino Infrastructure Initiative.)

WSAC has played a notably importantrole in supporting Washington artists.Through programs such as Art inPublic Places and Arts in Educationand through its grant to Artist Trustfor fellowships, WSAC directly sup-ports artists. And the grants alsoprovide artists with a legitimacy andcachet that they can use to obtainmore financial support.

Native American tribes present aspecial case within the state’s overallcultural policy. In general, the state hasnot provided extensive and/or ongo-ing support for tribal cultural projects.The exceptions have been the FolkArts Program of WSAC and the cul-tural resource projects of the land-based agencies. (But even the latter

7 See for example, NinaKressner Cobb, “The NewPhilanthropy: Its Impact on Funding Arts andCulture,” The Journal of ArtsManagement, Law and Society,Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer2002, 125-143.

8 Margaret Wyszomirski, “Artsand Culture,” in Lester M.Salamon, ed., The State of theNonprofit Sector, (Washington,D.C.: Brookings, 2002), 213.

9 Margaret Wyszomirski,“Federal Cultural Support:Toward a New Paradigm,”The Journal of Arts Manage-ment, Law, and Society, Vol. 25,No. 1, Spring 1995, 69-83;Wyszomirski, “Arts andCulture,” 187-217.

10 Kevin V. Mulcahy, “The StateArts Agency: An Overviewof Cultural Federalism in theUnited States,” The Journal ofArts Management, Law, andSociety, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2002,67-80.

11 See Mulcahy, 2002. Anotherinteresting discussion of thelast two bullets in particularcan be found in Stephen E.Weil, Making Museums Matter (Washington, D.C.:Smithsonian InstitutionPress, 2002), Chapter 17,“Reduced to Art,” 175-176.

12 Wyzsomirski, “FederalCultural Support,” 1995.

was predicated upon the centrality of theNational Endowment for the Arts (NEA)as the prime mover in cultural policy mak-ing in the United States.10 The centralityof NEA in this respect was undergirdedby four key assumptions:

“Culture is good for you.”

The public accepts and values theimportance of the arts in people’slives.

Through its advisory panels NEA isable to reward excellence in art.

NEA grants help certify excellence in arts.11

Arguably, our study emphasizes the closeassociation between NEA and WSACsince WSAC has until recently also beenunderpinned by these assumptions: it hasrelentlessly advocated for the importanceof the arts, it focuses on artistic excel-lence, and it has worked extensivelythrough advisory panels to certify artistsand artistic organizations.

Significantly, the old paradigm wascharacterized by other key assumptionsthat were also reflected in both NEA and WSAC policies:

The role of a public cultural agencywas to support nonprofit and publicarts organizations. One of the implica-tions of this was that it was seen asinappropriate for cultural agencies tolaunch their own programs or projectsor, indeed, to pursue any policy thatcould be interpreted as being anythingother than reactive to what was alreadygoing on in the field. Another implica-tion was that cultural policy becamedisdainful—or at least skeptical—ofthe mixing of art and commerce. As aresult, a sharp distinction was madebetween art and entertainment,12 andno substantial policy with respect tothe cultural industries has emerged inthe United States as it has elsewhere.A third implication was that a distinc-tion was also established between thearts and the humanities, which wasreflected in the creation of both theNEA and NEH—a structure then

programs will be subsumed under theArts Alliance.

The partnership between WSAC and the reconfigured Washington State ArtsAlliance is a very important one andreflects, in part, the funding constraintsfaced by WSAC. But the partnership is aconstraining one as well since WSAC hashad to work through the Arts Networkand the Arts Alliance both to implementits programs and to gain political supportfor its work. Thus, WSAC faces restric-tions to its ability to quickly respond—viatechnical assistance—to emergent issuesin arts policy such as entrepreneurship,earned income, earmarked taxes, culturaldistricts, venture philanthropy,7 endow-ment campaigns, and the integration ofthe arts with social services.8 In short,many cultural organizations face tremen-dous pressure to develop earned incomerevenue streams that go beyond sellingtickets, but many cultural organizationsare ill equipped to move in this direction.WSAC could play a role in helping theseorganizations achieve this transformation,but their ability to directly respond ishampered by the indirectness of technicalassistance funding.

Beyond the arts agencies, the state'sinvestment in the cultural infrastructurehas been primarily limited to the capitalgrants available through the Building forthe Arts program and the Capital ProjectsFund for Washington's Heritage, as wellas to occasional line-item appropriationsin the capital budget. Some infrastructurefunding is provided through the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation'slimited grant programs, but they are morebeholden to federal than to state funding.

Lessons Learned forNational and StateCultural PolicyAs Margaret Wyszomirski has noted,we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in cultural policy.9 While the cultural sec-tor is extraordinarily diverse, it is nonethe-less possible to delineate the outlines ofthe old paradigm, which, to a large extent, 215


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greater innovation and efficiency at thelower levels of government.14 With spe-cific reference to the arts, some haveargued that NEA (and the old paradigm)tended to impose a form of “elitist” arton the country, especially through itsimplicit process of “certification.”15 KevinMulcahy, for one, has argued that a dimin-ished NEA and a more decentralized cul-tural policy might promote more “culturaldemocracy” and hence less elitism.16 Thiswould in turn spur greater innovation inthe arts and perhaps break down tradi-tional barriers between the arts and thecommunity. In Mulcahy’s view, in adevolved cultural world state arts agencieswould assume two key functions: (1) insti-tutional subsidy for basic operational andmaintenance costs of cultural organiza-tions, especially those with strong publicmissions; and (2) arts education. Localarts agencies would focus on workingwith artists and cultural organizationsespecially as that work relates to under-represented art forms and culturaltraditions.17

But, this vision for state arts agencies ispredicated in large measure on some ofthe underlying political assumptions notedat the beginning of this chapter. Sustainedfunding of the arts and culture at thestate level, and of state arts agencies inparticular, hinges on a transformed statepolicy and politics that would include themodernization of state legislatures andthe rise of a new political culture thatviews the arts as integral to the experienceof the state’s citizens.

As far as the State of Washington isconcerned, one might be skeptical aboutthe likelihood of a transformed politicalculture or of the ability of the state tosupport state arts agencies in the mannerand to the extent suggested by Mulcahy’svision. Despite the support of many lead-ing civic leaders in the state, its culturalagencies still remain heavily dependentupon federal funding for their budgets,and this support is often non-discre-tionary. Other state agencies support thearts and culture only to the extent thatthey are tied directly to one of their core

replicated at the state level as reflectedin the State of Washington.

NEA and WSAC were created to servethe interests of arts organizations notother types of organizations such associal service agencies that might alsobe interested in the arts or in culturemore broadly.

The notions of philanthropy that were used in policies and programswere traditional ones in the sense that NEA and WSAC expected artsorganizations to raise additional fundsthrough philanthropic channels (such as Corporate Council for theArts/ArtsFund or local arts organiza-tions such as the Seattle Office of Arts& Cultural Affairs) or from individualdonors.

The arts and culture in the United Statesare clearly in a transition period to a newparadigm, and this is reflected in what wehave seen in Washington State. NEAappears to be in an irreversible declinewith respect to its ability to serve as theagenda-setter for cultural policy in theUnited States, though recent initiatives byDana Gioia, current chairman of NEA,signal a possible move back in this direc-tion through developing programs andinitiatives of its own (much to the pre-dictable dismay of individual arts organi-zations).13 This shift then is anothercompelling reason to pay attention to anystudy of cultural policy at the state level:to the extent that we are in a new eracharacterized by more decentralized cul-tural policy, it is vital to understand whatare currently the prime drivers of culturalpolicy at the state level and what they arelikely to be in the future. The State ofWashington—due to its demographic andpolitical characteristics—offers a highlyuseful window on our understanding ofthe present and future of a more decen-tralized cultural policy.

Many justifications are offered fordecentralization. As noted earlier in thischapter, the more general political argu-ments for decentralization and devolutionpertain to the hoped-for benefits of

13 For a discussion of theincreasing importance ofstate cultural policy vis-à-visfederal cultural policy, see J.Mark Schuster, “Sub-National Cultural Policy—Where the Action is?Mapping State CulturalPolicy in the United States,”International Journal ofCultural Policy, Vol. 8,No. 2, 2002, 181-196.

14 For a further discussion ofdecentralization, devolution,and related trends in culturalpolicy, see J. Mark Schuster,“Deconstructing a Tower of Babel: Privatization,Decentralization, Devolution,and Other Ideas in GoodCurrency in Cultural Policy,”Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Non-ProfitOrganisations, Vol. 8, No. 3,1997, 261-282.

15 Lawrence D. Mankin, ShellyCohn, Ronald W. Perry, N.Joseph Cayer. “The NationalGovernment and the Arts:Impressions from the Stateand Jurisdictional ArtsAgencies,” The Journal ofArts Management, Law, andSociety, Vol. 31, No. 3, Fall2001, 184-197; Mulcahy,2002; Wyszomirski, 1995.

16 Mulcahy, “The State ArtsAgency,” 2002.

17 Mulcahy, “The State ArtsAgency,” 2002.

management practices. As Vera Zolbergrecently commented, the entire concep-tion of how the arts relate to communitybuilding is changing, so a leading role forWSAC (and other state arts agencies)could be very transformative for artists,arts organizations, and localities.18 WSAC’smove toward Community ConsortiumGrants in its Arts in Education programis a case in point.

The problem with this strategy is funda-mentally a political one. As Paul DiMaggiohas noted, state arts agencies are facedwith two pressing political imperatives:(1) they must spread their money aroundto many large and small organizationsthroughout the state, and (2) they mustdevelop a diverse set of supporters (partlythrough a broad-based, allocation strat-egy).19 But they must also be prepared torespond sufficiently to the politically well-connected major arts organizations. (Inthe case of WSAC, these political impera-tives are even more urgent because of theWSAC governance structure—a commis-sion comprised of important civic leadersfrom around the state.) These politicalimperatives constrain the ability of statearts agencies to push innovation andreach out—on an extensive basis—to newconstituencies. Moreover, recent budgetcuts and the prospect of additional cutsfurther limit the political options of theseimportant state arts agencies.

In short, the old paradigm of culturalpolicy appears to be in sharp decline.But a new paradigm, led by a cooperatingconsortium of state cultural agencies, hasbeen elusive. Perhaps an agency thatreported directly to the governor—asmany state arts agencies and some,broader cultural agencies do—would befreer to experiment with new paradigmsand arrangements, but perhaps not. Suchan arrangement might not enjoy thebroad-based political support that the cur-rent, more independent agencies enjoy oras much assistance from a healthy privatenonprofit sector. Yet, it is possible toenvision a new role for state culturalagencies that would shift from the oldparadigm to a new paradigm in which

ongoing programs. (And even many ofthese projects receive federal support.)

Indeed, one could argue that funding andpolicy roles have been reversed in surpris-ing ways: local arts funders such asCorporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFundand the Cultural Development Authorityof King County (formerly the KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources)have been central to providing ongoingsupport for local arts organizations and toarts education (although the Seattle Officeof Arts & Cultural Affairs recentlydecided to eliminate its funding for artseducation). These funding sources, forexample, have provided much moreextensive support for operations than hasWSAC. But WSAC has lately returned tothe forefront in providing incentives tolocal arts organizations to serve under-represented populations. To be sure, someof this targeting is driven by the new pri-orities of NEA and the Wallace-Reader’sDigest Funds, which are funding WSAC’sprogram. Nonetheless, the state has pro-vided incentives for arts organizations toincrease their programming for under-represented groups. And, arguably, theresearch presented in this report suggeststhat this may be a preferable policy rolefor state arts agencies.

Marian Godfrey of The Pew CharitableTrusts has made this point in a moregeneral form: “It is easier to make thepolitical case for ongoing support thecloser you are to organizations and themore ability you have to see their embed-ded role in the community. At a greaterdistance, at least in the ‘new paradigm,’there is more pressure to justify publicpolicies that support the arts when theyare about social change or economicbenefit, not what could be perceived as an entitlement.”

Given their modest budgets, Washington’scultural agencies are structurally unsuitedto be major sustaining supporters of thevarious manifestations of the arts andculture in Washington. But these agenciescould be very important in pushing artsand cultural organizations to serve newcommunities and to adopt innovative 217


18 Vera L. Zolberg. “CurrentChallenges for CulturalPolicy,” The Journal of ArtsManagement, Law, and Society,Vol. 32, No. 4, 2003,295-307.

19 Paul DiMaggio, “Decentrali-zation of Arts Funding fromthe Federal Government to the States,” in StephenBenedict, ed., Public Moneyand the Muse: Essays onGovernment Funding of the Arts (New York: W. W.Norton and Company,1991), 228-229.

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20 See, for example, Wyszo-mirski, “Federal CulturalSupport,” 1995. For a localexample, consider the newbuilding of the NorthwestMuseum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. Thisfacility is a testimony to thecapacity of an arts institutionto promote civic life throughits design and programs, fac-tors whose contribution tocommunity life go wellbeyond the actual (tempo-rary) jobs created by theconstruction project.

ple, is sold partly on this basis. Anothernotable example is Corporate Council forthe Arts/ArtsFund, which has for manyyears published a periodic report on theeconomic benefits of the capital invest-ment in the arts in King and Pierce coun-ties. WSAC has continually searched forways to make the economic benefitsargument credible in the belief that thegovernor and the state Legislature areinclined to pay more attention to thisargument than to others.

But the emergent paradigm in arts fund-ing—incorporating new conceptions ofthe community—would seem to suggest amove away from direct economic benefitsas the compelling raison d’être to a morecomplex and comprehensive view of thecontributions of the arts to communityvitality, civic life and social capital.20 Jobsare, after all, transitory, while the contri-butions to civic life of cultural policiescan endure for generations. In the end,there is little substitute for clearly articu-lated, well-designed policies.

they would still support local arts and cul-tural initiatives throughout the state butwould also focus on becoming catalystsfor innovation and experimentation in thearts and culture including pushing localnon-governmental funding sources to bemore receptive to new approaches to artand culture.

This catalyst role would also suggest agradual move away from two importantaspects of current state arts policy and, toa lesser extent, current local arts policy.First, agencies such as WSAC still tend tooperate through an individual grantmodel. But in a new era of arts and cul-tural policy, this approach is becomingincreasingly problematic for two reasons:(1) the dramatic growth in the arts andcultural sector (an estimated $1 billioninvestment in capital construction for artsorganizations in King and Pierce countiesin the last twenty years) means that grantsto individual organizations involved in allsectors of cultural policy are almostridiculously out of proportion to whatthese organizations perceive as their“need,” and (2) the focus on individualgrants and projects tends to produce afragmentation and atomization in the sup-port of cultural policy. In place of theindividual grant model, WSAC, as well asthe other state and local agencies involvedin cultural policy, would be well-advisedto consider using the very modest fundsavailable to encourage new forms of col-laboration, community participation andbuy-in, and public-private partnershipssuch as business-nonprofit alliances takingadvantage of both in-kind and cash con-tributions. WSAC has already initiated aprogram along these lines in their Arts inEducation program with its CommunityConsortium Grants. Given the enthusi-asm generated by these grants, it appearsclear that this type of grant fits with theemerging “new paradigm” of arts andcultural policy and could serve as a modelfor other similar initiatives.

Second, a tendency exists at both the stateand local levels in Washington to focus onthe economic benefits of arts policy. TheBuilding for the Arts program, for exam-

Postlude

219

For the most part, we were outsiders tothe State of Washington. We were notcommissioned by the state, nor by any ofits agencies. Rather, with the support ofThe Pew Charitable Trusts, we were ableto bring an opportunity to the culturalpolicy table of the State of Washington:the opportunity to have the cultural policyof the state—both direct and indirect,both explicit and implicit—documentedand analyzed from an outsider’s view-point. We hope that we have demon-strated that there is considerable value insuch an approach.

We have looked at one state and havefocused, for the most part, on one pointin time—the present. We have con-structed a “map,” which is but one repre-sentation of the cultural policy terrain. Wetrust it will turn out to be a useful map tothose who are concerned with one oranother aspect of the cultural policy ofWashington; but only the most fortunateof cartographers knows exactly what theuse of the map he is about to craft willbe. Through our map, perhaps some willsee their place in the cultural policy ecol-ogy more clearly; perhaps others will findthat some aspect of the policy system thatthey have found particularly perplexinghas been clarified; perhaps we havepointed to opportunities that some havenot perceived before; and perhaps wehave highlighted aspects that others willfeel ought to be improved.

Yet, we also understand that any map islimited in its ability to clarify the terrain.The value of this work would be greatlyenhanced with the completion of similarmapping projects in other states, particu-larly states whose institutional ecologiesdiffer from Washington’s. This would

In closing, let us return to the thoughtwith which we began: State level supportfor the arts, humanities, heritage, andallied forms of culture has, for some time,been an important source of direct gov-ernment support to these endeavors inthe United States. Moreover, it is nowwidely recognized that not only legislation,but also the projects, programs, and poli-cies of a broad set of state-level agencieshave an important impact on the culturallife of a state. State cultural agencies, andtheir grant-making programs in particular,provide the most visible support for cul-ture, but the combination of policies andprograms across state government is amuch better indicator of a state’s culturalvitality and its commitment to developingthe cultural life of its citizens.

The State of Washington is a case in point.

We have demonstrated that cultural policy,whether or not it is articulated as such,permeates many corners of a state’sbureaucracy. Exploring those corners inWashington, we have come upon surprises,but we have also come upon programsand projects that are pretty much whatone might have expected. We have comeupon disappointments and lost opportu-nities, but we have also come upon strik-ing successes and opportunities that havebeen fully embraced. We have foundinnovation, and we have found standardoperating procedures. Washington hasturned out to be particularly interestingbecause of the variety of institutionalforms embodied in the main cultural policyagencies; they illustrate well the advan-tages and disadvantages of these variousforms. In short, the ecology of state cul-tural policy in Washington turned out tobe rich, complex, and instructive.

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facilitate comparison, and only with suchinformation would one be fully able togive an accurate account of the determi-nants of effective state cultural policy.

The Council of Europe through itsProgram of Reviews of National CulturalPolicies afforded the opportunity for awide-ranging conversation on the natureand future of national cultural policy inEurope. It is our hope that our work,modeled on this precedent, has taken thefirst small step toward the same type ofconversation at the state level in theUnited States.

Appendices

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Benjii Bittle, Arts Manager, Culture andTourism Division, Tacoma EconomicDevelopment Department

Margaret Ann Bollmeier, President andCEO, Washington Commission for theHumanities

Rick Bonino, Entertainment Editor, TheSpokesman-Review

Phoebe Bosche, Managing Director/Co-Publisher, The Raven Chronicles

Allyson Brooks, State Historic PreservationOfficer, Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, Office ofCommunity Development

Teresa Brum, Director, Spokane HistoricPreservation Department

Steve Burns, Executive Director, WashingtonWine Commission

Lyall Bush, Program Director, WashingtonCommission for the Humanities

Rita Calabro, Director of Facilities andOperations, Meany Hall for thePerforming Arts, University ofWashington

Josi irene Callan, Director, Museum ofGlass/International Center forContemporary Art

Robert Carriker, Professor, Department ofHistory, Gonzaga University

Sharon Case, LobbyistKristine Castleman, Acting Executive

Director and Chief Financial Officer,Seattle Arts Commission

Ron Chew, Director, Wing Luke AsianMuseum

Rick Cooper, Policy Director, Department ofNatural Resources

Barbara Courtney, Executive Director,Artist Trust

Kimberly Craven, Executive Director,Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs

Brooke Creswell, Music Director, YakimaSymphony Orchestra

Reidun Crowley, Market Development, Non-Profit Facilities Financing, HousingFinance Commission

InterviewsWe are particularly grateful to the manyindividuals who agreed to be interviewedor who provided us with information rel-evant to this project. The job titles thatare given below are the individuals’ titlesat the time of our primary conversationswith them.Daniel Aarthun, Capital Projects Manager,

Building for the Arts Program, Office ofCommunity Development

Randy Abrahamson, Assistant HistoricPreservation Officer, Spokane Tribe ofIndians

David Allen, Founding Director, ExecutiveCouncil for a Greater Tacoma

Richard Andrews, Managing Director, HenryArts Gallery, University of Washington

Peter Antolin, Senior Budget Assistant to theGovernor, Budget Division, Office ofFinancial Management

William Arntz, Executive Director, SeattleAquarium

Eli Ashley, Director, The Broadway Centerfor the Performing Arts

Toni Aspin, Managing Director, RichardHugo House

Putnam Barber, President, The EvergreenSociety

Katherine Baril, Chair, Jefferson County,Washington State University CooperativeExtension Service

Miriam Barnett, Chair, Washington StateArts Commission

Harriet Beale, Outreach and ImplementationManager, Puget Sound Water QualityAction Team, Office of the Governor

Linda Bellon-Fisher, Manager, Arts inEducation Programs, Washington StateArts Commission

Bitsy Bidwell, Community ArtsDevelopment Program Manager,Washington State Arts Commission

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Mary Frye, Awards Program Manager,Grants to Organizations, WashingtonState Arts Commission

Phyllis Gallegos, Chair, Commission onHispanic Affairs

Julia Garnett, Director, Cultural Council ofGreater Tacoma

Chuck Gibilisco, Watchable WildlifeCoordinator, Wildlife Program,Washington Department of Fish andWildlife

Jen Graves, Arts Writer, The News TribuneGreg Griffith, Deputy State Historic

Preservation Officer, Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,Office of Community Development

Michael Groesch, Staff Coordinator,Transportation Committee

Paul Gutierrez, Chair, King County,Washington State University ExtensionService

Regina Hackett, Art Critic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Michael Halleran, Divisional Dean of theCollege of Arts and Sciences, Universityof Washington

Karen Hanan, Executive Director, ArtsNorthwest

Jerry Handfield, State ArchivistPeter Herzog, Parks Planner, Washington

State Parks and Recreation CommissionMichael Houser, Architectural Historian,

National and State Register ProgramDirector, Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, Office ofCommunity Development

Helen Howell, Deputy Chief of Staff, Officeof the Governor

Susan Howson, Fiscal Analyst, CapitalBudget Committee, House ofRepresentatives

Stella Ireland, Executive Director, NorthWest Children’s Theatre

Donna James, Director, Seattle Film andVideo Office

Leann Johnson, Cultural Services Manager,City of Vancouver Cultural Services

Gretchen Johnston, Executive Director,Washington State Arts Alliance

Colleen Jollie, Tribal Liaison, WashingtonState Department of Transportation

Bill Jolly, Environmental Program Manager,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Carol Jolly, Deputy Director, Governor’sExecutive Policy Office

Walt Crowley, President and ExecutiveDirector, HistoryLink

Margit Dimenti, Associate Director, SimpsonCenter for the Humanities, University ofWashington

Peter Donnelly, Executive Director,Corporate Council for the Arts

Darlene Doyle, Art Teacher, Oroville SchoolDistrict

Lorin Doyle, Collections Manager (ProgramManager), Art in Public Places Program,Washington State Arts Commission

David Edwards, President, Board ofTrustees, Washington State HistoricalSociety

Tom Edwards, Jr., “Xwomiksten,” ResourcesProtection, Lummi Nation NaturalResources Department

Bruce Eldredge, Executive Director,Eastern Washington State HistoricalSociety/Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture

Jim Ellis, Parks Planner, Washington StateParks and Recreation Commission

Josie Emmons, Manager, Culture andTourism Division, Tacoma EconomicDevelopment Department

Steve Excell, Chief of Staff, Office of theSecretary of State

Jack Faris, Vice President for UniversityRelations, University of Washington, andChair, Washington Commission for theHumanities

Jim Farmer, Park Manager, Fort WordenState Park

David Fenton, Executive Director, ClarkCounty Historical Museum

Robert Fimbel, Chief, Resource Stewardship,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Amanda Swain Floan, Assistant Director,Washington Commission for theHumanities

Ann Focke, Executive Director, Grantmakersin the Arts

Jim Fox, Special Assistant to the Director,Interagency Committee for OutdoorRecreation

Adeline Fredin, Historic PreservationOfficer, Confederated Tribes of theColville Reservation

David Freece, Executive Director, CowlitzCounty Historical Museum

Nancy Frey, Executive Director, BainbridgeArts and Humanities Council

223

AppendicesStephen Mathison, Historical Architect and

Tax Act Program Director, Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,Office of Community Development

Gina May, President, Alliance for ArtsEducation

Peter McMillin, Director, Business andTourism Development, Office of Tradeand Economic Development

Dan Meatte, State Park Archaeologist,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Karen Mobley, Executive Director, SpokaneArts Commission

Carol Monroe, Executive Director,PONCHO (Patrons of Northwest Civic,Cultural and Charitable Organizations)

Ben Moore, Managing Director, SeattleRepertory Company

Noelle Moxley, Development Director,Yakima Symphony Orchestra

Karen Munro, former staff member,Washington Commission for theHumanities

Ralph Munro, former Secretary of StateAnne Murphy, Executive Director, Port

Townsend Marine Science CenterJamie Tobias Neely, Features Editor, former

Entertainment Editor. The Spokesman-Review

David Nicandri, Executive Director,Washington State Historical Society

Martha Nichols, CREATE and “Artists ofthe Pend Oreille”; Commissioner,Washington State Arts Commission

Val Ogden, State RepresentativeMike O’Malley, Program Manager, Watchable

Wildlife, Wildlife Program, WashingtonDepartment of Fish and Wildlife

Tony Orange, Executive Director,Commission on African-AmericanAffairs

Cathy Palmer, Education Director, SeattleInternational Children’s Festival

Pat Patton, Producing Artistic Director,Tacoma Actors Guild

Nancy Pearl, Director, Washington Centerfor the Book

Tia Peycheff, Director, Non-Profit FacilitiesFinancing, Housing Finance Commission

Cleve Pinnix, Director, Washington StateParks and Recreation Commission

Charlie Rathbun, Associate Director, KingCounty Arts Commission, King CountyOffice of Cultural Resources

AnnRené Joseph, Program Supervisor, Arts,Curriculum and Instruction, Office ofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction

Suzy Kellett, Director, Washington StateFilm Office

Jim Kelly, Manager, King County Office ofCultural Resources

Megan Kelly, Certified Local GovernmentCoordinator, Office of Archaeology andHistoric Preservation, Office ofCommunity Development

Susan Kempf, Downtown RevitalizationProgram (Main Street Program), Officeof Trade and Economic Development

Jennifer Khow, Northwest Indian AppliedResearch Institute, The Evergreen StateCollege

Michael Killoren, Director of CulturalTourism for Seattle Convention andVisitor’s Bureau, incoming ExecutiveDirector, Seattle Arts Commission

Robert Kirkwood, Engineer, SouthwestRegional Office, Washington State Parksand Recreation Commission

Julie Koler, Historic Preservation Officer,Landmarks and Heritage Program, KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources

Al Kowitz, Stevens County CooperativeExtension Service

Matthew Krashan, Director of UW WorldSeries, Meany Hall for the PerformingArts, University of Washington

Tina Kuckkahn, Director, LonghouseEducation and Cultural Center, TheEvergreen State College

Mickey Venn Lahmann, AssistantSuperintendent, Curriculum andInstruction, Office of the Superintendentof Public Instruction

David Lamb, Past President, Board ofTrustees, Washington State HistoricalSociety

Jean M. Leonard, LobbyistJudith S. Lorenzo, Manager, Heritage

Corridors Program, Highways and LocalPrograms Division, Washington StateDepartment of Transportation

Kyle Taylor Lucas, Tribal Liaison,Department of Natural Resources

M. L. Lyke, Lifestyles, Seattle Post-IntelligencerGeorge MacDonald, Director, Burke

Museum of Natural History and Culture,University of Washington

Heather MacIntosh, Deputy Director,Historic Seattle

Trudy Marcellay, Tribal Liaison, Departmentof Health

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Jim Thomas, Legislation Manager,Legislation and Policy Division,Department of Revenue

Mary Thompson, President, WashingtonTrust for Historic Preservation

Richard Thompson, Director ofGovernment Relations, University ofWashington

B. J. Thurlby, President, Washington FruitCommission

Gail Tremblay, Member of the Faculty inExpressive Arts, The Evergreen StateCollege; Commissioner, WashingtonCommission for the Humanities

Mayumi Tsutakawa, Wallace ArtsParticipation Initiative, Washington StateArts Commission

Kris Tucker, Executive Director, WashingtonState Arts Commission

Janeanne Upp, Director, Tacoma ArtMuseum

Paul Valcarce, Regional Planner, PugetSound Regional Office, Washington StateParks and Recreation Commission

Derek Valley, Director, Washington StateCapital Museum

Vita Villa, Executive Assistant, Commissionon Hispanic Affairs

Dr. Thuy Vu, Interim Director, WashingtonState Commission on Asian PacificAmerican Affairs

Steve Wang, Chief, Interpretive Services,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Gail Weiss, Arts Coordinator, Mt. BakerSchool District and consortium organizerfor Allied Arts of Whatcom County

Jeff Wheeler, Park Ranger, Cama Beach,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Rob Whitlam, State Archaeologist, Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,Office of Community Development

Jack Williams, Chair, State Advisory Councilon Historic Preservation

Shirley Winsley, State Senator andCommissioner, Washington State ArtsCommission

Kathleen Woodward, Director, SimpsonCenter for the Humanities, University ofWashington

Louie J. Wynne, Historic PreservationOfficer, Spokane Tribe of Indians

Mary J. Yadon, Administration Manager,Washington State Arts Commission

Andrea Reidell, Program Manager, Centerfor Columbia River History

Marsha Reilly, Research Analyst, StateGovernment Committee, House ofRepresentatives

Rob Rice, Program Coordinator, TaxpayerAccount Division, Department ofRevenue

Bill Robinson, Staff Coordinator,Appropriations Committee, House ofRepresentatives

Sandra Romero, State RepresentativeWelcome Sauer, President, Washington State

Apple CommissionGeorge H. Sharp, Rural Tourism

Development Manager, Business andTourism Development, Office of Tradeand Economic Development

Nabiel Shawa, City Administrator, City ofLong Beach

Gilda Sheppard, Member of the Faculty,Sociology, Cultural, and Media Studies,The Evergreen State College, Tacoma

Jud Sherwood, Director, The Jazz ProjectCarol Shiffman, Director, CentrumDale Smith, Community Investment

Manager — Arts, Culture, Civic andEnvironment and Puget SoundCommunity Relations, Boeing

Willie Smyth, Folk Arts Program Manager,Washington State Arts Commission

Helen Sommers, State Representative andChair, Appropriations Committee

Kit Spicer, Dean, School of the Arts, PacificLutheran University, and acting ExecutiveDirector, The Arts Network

Paul Stasch, Salmon Recovery Program,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Charlie Sundberg, Preservation Planner,King County Office of CulturalResources

Joe Taller, former Chair, Governor’s BlueRibbon Taskforce on the State ArtsCommission; Commissioner, WashingtonState Parks and Recreation Commission;Board Member, Washington StateHistorical Society

Don Taylor, Revenue Analysis Manager,Department of Revenue

Gerry Tays, Preservation Planner,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission

Jeffrey Thomas, ICRAG Facilitator andPuyallup Tribe Fisheries TFW ProgramManager

225

AppendicesBarber, Putnam, Nonprofits in Washington—

1999 (Seattle: The Evergreen StateSociety, 1999).

Bargeen, Melinda, “NEA Awards 30 Grantsin State,” The Seattle Times, May 13, 2003.

Budget Division, Office of FinancialManagement, State of Washington, “ADescription of Washington State’sBudget Process,” July 2001.

Building for the Arts, Office of CommunityDevelopment, “Building for the ArtsApplication 2003-2005 Biennium.”

City of Bainbridge Island, Comprehensive Plan,“Cultural Element,” June 4, 1998.

City of Tacoma, Planning & DevelopmentServices, Cultural Resources Division, OnSight: A Cultural Plan for Tacoma, January1993.

Condon, Patrick, “State Library could getfresh start with Reed,” The Olympian,March 19, 2002, B1.

Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund,Arts: Enter, 2001 Annual Report, 2001.

Cultural Resources Working Group,Washington State Parks and RecreationCommission, “On the Way to 2010,”Report No. 1, 1998-2000.

Department of Urban and RegionalPlanning, Eastern Washington University,“Coulees and Canyons: State Route 17-155 Heritage Corridor ResourceInventory — Executive Summary,”January 4, 2001

Development Counsellors International,Tacoma-Pierce County Branding & MarketingBlueprint, March 2002.

Egan, Timothy, The Good Rain: Across Timeand Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1991).

The Evergreen State College, Native AmericanPrograms at The Evergreen State College,undated.

Fort Worden State Park Conference Center,briefing document for legislative staff,photocopy, June 2002.

Fox, James R., ed., 2001 Washington StateAlmanac: An Economic & DemographicOverview of Counties & Cities, 15th edition(Sammamish, WA: Electronic HandbookPublishers, 2001).

GMA Research Corporation and Dr. WilliamB. Beyers, An Economic Impact Study ofArts and Cultural Organizations in KingCounty: 1997 (Seattle: Corporate Councilfor the Arts, January 1999).

Governor’s Blue Ribbon Arts Task Force,Investing in the Arts: Recommendations to

Michelle Zahrly, Communications Manager,Washington State Arts Commission

Leslie Zenz, Sustainable AgricultureCoordinator, Department of Agriculture

Nancy Zussy, State Librarian, WashingtonState Library

DocumentsConsulted/Cited

WashingtonIn studying the state cultural policy ofWashington we consulted a wide varietyof brochures, guidelines, applicationforms, press releases, and newsletters ofthe various agencies, programs, andorganizations we visited. We have madeno attempt to summarize all of these doc-uments here.

We also conducted a systematic reading ofthe web sites of all of the state agenciesand programs discussed in this report.Most of these web sites can be accessedeasily through the Access Washingtonweb site: http://access.wa.gov/

Finally, we systematically searched thelaws of the State of Washington, accessingthe Revised Code of Washington througheither Access Washington or the web siteof the Washington State Legislature:http://search.leg.wa.gov/pub/textsearch/default.asp An Action Plan for Arts Education in Washington

State, draft, October 30, 1990.Artist Trust, “Artists Community: Annual

Report 2001.”Artist Trust, Artist Trust Journal, various

issues.Arts Alliance of Washington State,

ARTSPLAN, draft of a comprehensiveplan for the arts in Washington State,1978.

Association of Washington Cities, “Whatcities and legislators need to know aboutthe Hotel-Motel Tax,” Tax Facts, May1998.

Barber, Putnam, “A Thousand Points ofContention: Property-Tax Exemptionsfor Nonprofits in the United States,a review with an eye toward Washington state,” The Evergreen State Society, July 29, 2002.http://www.tess.org/ON/020729ON.htm

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King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “What do FundersWant to See in a Plan?” Technical PaperNo. 54, April 2000.

King County Office of Cultural Resources,Shaping the Future—Feasibility Study Report:A Public Development Authority for Culture,April 26, 2002.

Lyons, Dianne J. Boulerice, WashingtonHandbook (Chico, CA: MoonPublications, 1989).

“Memo of Understanding on CulturalTourism,” signed by nine Washingtonagencies or organizations and the SeattleSupport Office of the National ParkService, United States Department ofInterior, 2001.

Municipal Research & Services Center ofWashington, A Revenue Guide forWashington Cities and Towns, Report No.46, August 1999.

Municipal Research & Services Center ofWashington, A Revenue Guide forWashington Counties, Report No. 53,July 2001.

Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, “2000 State HistoricPreservation Officer’s Report,” 2000.

Office of Archaeology and HistoricPreservation, “Historic PreservationWorking for Washington: The StateHistoric Preservation Plan 2000.”

The Otak Team, Design GuidelinesCommemorating the Bicentennial Anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition inWashington, Final Draft, April 2000.

Payton, Charles, “A Brief Account ofReorganization of Cultural Programs inWashington State, 1982-2002,” KingCounty Office of Cultural Resources,July 8, 2002.

The Public Disclosure Commission, PictorialDirectory of Registered Lobbyists 2001(Olympia, WA: Public DisclosureCommission, 2001).

Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team,“Public Involvement and Education,”Sound Facts, July 2000.

Research Division, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue, “Summary of2000 Tax Legislation,” Research ReportNo. 2000-1, May 2000.

Research Division, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue, “Summary of2001 Tax Legislation,” Research ReportNo. 2001-2, July 2000.

Governor Locke on State Support for the Arts,August 1998.

Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs,“Centennial Accord between theFederally Recognized Indian Tribes inWashington State and the State ofWashington,” August 4, 1989.

Hall, Emily, “The ‘Wow’ Factor,” TheStranger, March 28, 2002, 16-19.

Heritage Corridors Program, WashingtonState Department of Transportation,Defining Washington’s Heritage CorridorsProgram, Report to the Legislature andthe Federal Highway Administration,April 1995.

Herzog, Peter, Report to Washington State Parksand Recreation Commission, November 20,2001.

Interagency Committee for OutdoorRecreation, “Open Space andPreservation of Heritage Values in IACGrant Programs,” March 10, 1999.

Jollie, Colleen, and Green, Liz, Tribal Tourismin Washington State, report prepared forthe Governor’s Office of Indian Affairsand the Washington State Office ofTrade and Economic Development,May 2001.

Katz, Dr. Solomon, Patrons of Northwest Civic,Cultural and Charitable Organizations[PONCHO]: The First Quarter Century1963-1987 (Seattle: PONCHO,December 1992).

King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “ChronologicalOverview of the Office of CulturalResources,” Technical Paper No. 12,revised November 1999.

King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “Defining Cultural &Heritage Disciplines,” Technical PaperNo. 50, revised September 2001.

King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “Incentive Programsfor Landmark Owners,” Technical PaperNo. 26, revised April 2000.

King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “King CountyLandmarks & Heritage Program: Profile,”revised July 8, 2002.

King County Landmarks and HeritageProgram, King County Office ofCultural Resources, “LegislativeInventory,” Technical Paper No. 30,revised September 18, 2001.

227

AppendicesWashington State Arts Commission, The Arts

Work for Washington, five-year plan,June 2000.

Washington State Arts Commission, Report:The Economic Condition of the Arts inWashington State, September 30, 1986.

Washington State Arts Commission,“General Guidelines Policies andProcedures: FY 2003, Awards Program,Grants to Organizations

Washington State Arts Commission,“History of the Washington State ArtsCommission,” undated photocopy.

Washington State Arts Commission, Planningon the Arts: Washington State ArtsCommission’s Strategic Plan Submitted toGovernor Gary Locke, June 2000.

Washington State Arts Commission, “TenQuestions and Answers About theWashington State Arts Commission,”February 1971.

Washington State Arts Commission,“Wallace Arts Participation Initiative:Three-Year Involvement for WashingtonCommunities,” photocopy, 2002.

Washington State Arts Commission,“Washington Arts Report,” December1984.

Washington State Arts Commission, “TheWashington State Arts Commission atYour Service,” November 1970.

Washington State Department of NaturalResources, “Diverse Agency, DiverseResources,” brochure, February 2, 1999.

Washington State Department of NaturalResources, “Sustainable Forestry,”brochure, undated.

Washington State Department of Revenue,“Information on Washington’s TaxStructure: Business and Occupation Tax,”pamphlet, October 2001.

Washington State Department of Revenue,“Information on Washington’s TaxStructure: Nonprofit Organizations,”pamphlet, January 2002.

Washington State Department ofTransportation, Washington’s Scenic BywayDesignation Process Report, 2002.

Washington State Historical Society, AnnualReport, 1998.




Research Division, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue, “Summary of2002 Tax Legislation,” Research ReportNo. 2002-1, April 2000.

Research Division, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue (Don Taylor,ed.), Tax Exemptions – 2000: A Study ofTax Exemptions, Exclusions, Deductions,Deferrals, Differential Rates and Credits forMajor State and Local Taxes in Washington(Olympia: Washington State Departmentof Revenue, January 2000).

Research Division, Washington StateDepartment of Revenue (Don Taylor,ed.), Tax Reference Manual – Information onState and Local Taxes in Washington State(Olympia: Washington State Departmentof Revenue, January 2002).

Seattle Arts Commission, “A History of TheSeattle Arts Commission,” photocopy,undated.

Severeide, Rebecca, “The Washington StateArts Education Community ConsortiaProgram, Year Two Report,” submittedto the Washington State Arts Commis-sion, December 2001.

Spirit of the Northwest: Claiming CommunityIdentity 1998-2000, report of a regionalpartnership project of the IdahoCommission on the Arts, the OregonArts Commission, and the WashingtonState Arts Commission, October 2000.

State of Washington, Agency ActivityInventory System, Agency Activity byAgency, Appropriations Period 2003-2005, on-line.

Study Commission on the Arts in the 21stCentury, Arts in the 21st Century, TheGreater Tacoma Community Foundationand the Cultural Council of GreaterTacoma, April 1999.

Task Force on the Office of Archaeologyand Historic Preservation, “Recommenda-tions of the Task Force on the Office ofArchaeology and Historic Preservation,”January 2001. (This document contains ahistory of OAHP as well as an incomplete“Chronology of Attempts at Reorganiza-tion of Cultural Programs in WashingtonState 1982-2000,” 11-14.)

Washington Commission for the Humanities,“Grant Guidelines and ApplicationMaterials, 2002.”

Washington Commission for the Humanities,“History of WCH,” photocopy, undated.

Washington Commission for the Humanities,Humanities Courier, various issues.

Washington Commission for the Humanities,“the stories of us,” brochure, undated.

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The Cultural Policy Center, TheUniversity of Chicago, April 2001.

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Appendices

Cultural Policy CenterIrving B. Harris Graduate Schoolof Public Policy StudiesThe University of ChicagoCarroll Joynes, Executive Director

Lawrence Rothfield, Faculty Director

Project Advisory BoardEdward ArianAbingdon, PA

Kelly BarsdateNational Assembly of State Arts AgenciesWashington, D.C.

Jonathan KatzNational Assembly of State Arts AgenciesWashington, D.C.

Gail LeftwichPresidentFederation of State Humanities Councils Arlington, VA

Paul MinicucciDirector of ProgramsInstitute for Cultural Policy and PracticeSchool of the ArtsVirginia Polytechnic Institute and StateUniversityBlacksburg, VA

Kevin MulcahyProfessor of Political Science Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA

Anthony RadichExecutive DirectorWestern States Arts FederationDenver, CO

Michael Rushton Associate Professor of PublicAdministration and Urban StudiesAndrew Young School of Policy StudiesGeorgia State UniversityAtlanta, GA

Christopher ZinnExecutive DirectorOregon Council for the HumanitiesPortland, OR

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Zolberg. Vera L., “Current Challenges forCultural Policy,” The Journal of ArtsManagement, Law, and Society, Vol. 32, No.4, 2003, 295-307.

Project StaffJ. Mark Schuster, Principal InvestigatorProfessor of Urban Cultural PolicyDepartment of Urban Studies and PlanningMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCambridge, MA

David KarrakerIndependent ConsultantPortland, ME

Susan BonaiutoIndependent ConsultantNeedham, MA

Colleen GroganAssociate ProfessorSchool of Social Service AdministrationThe University of ChicagoChicago, IL

Lawrence RothfieldAssociate Professor of English andComparative LiteratureThe University of ChicagoChicago, IL

Steven Rathgeb SmithAssociate Professor of Public Affairs andDirector, Non Profit Management ProgramGraduate School of Public AffairsUniversity of WashingtonSeattle, WA

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