This piece was shared with us by Jay Dick, Senior Director of State and Local Government Affairs at Americans for the Arts, and was originally published on the Americans for the Arts blog.
As we arrive at the roughly half way mark of state legislative activity for 2021, I thought I would take a few minutes to highlight any legislative trends that we are seeing in the various states along with the top arts related topics.
Currently, 42 of the 50 states are in session with eight having already adjourned for the year. Most of the rest of the state legislatures will adjourn by July 2nd with six meeting all year. While a firm number of bills being introduced is not readily available, the number is in the tens of thousands. As of this writing, Americans for the Arts is tracking 841 pieces of legislation across all fifty states. While the vast majority of this legislation will not become law, it is always important to keep a watchful eye to prevent any bad legislation from being signed into law and to support legislation which is helpful.
You might ask, how do we keep track of all this legislative activity? We use a product called BillTrack50, which automatically analyzes each piece of legislation and then reports their status. This is a wonderful feature that Americans for the Arts is able to share with all of our state arts advocacy organizations. You can see which arts related bills are in your state’s legislature by going to our states homepage, select your state, and then scroll down to the bill track box. Click into any bill that you want more information on. Additionally, check out the South Carolina Arts Alliance’s bill track page called The Docket as they do a wonderful job in presenting this information.
National Trends
Let’s begin with overall trends which I have gathered from my own research and in conjunction with the work of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), a partner of Americans for the Arts.
Covid/Pandemic Response: To date, there have been 4,436 bills introduced in relationship to the ongoing pandemic. These bills cover everything from Personal Protective Equipment requirements to rules to re-open the state post pandemic.
Budget: This is closely related to the pandemic as tax collections/state budgets have been heavily impacted by Covid-19. Back in the third quarter of 2020, states were estimating massive budget shortfalls because of Covid-19. Luckily these forecasts have been positively revised with evolving positive economic activity.
Redistricting: Every 10 years following the federal census, states adjust their various political election boundaries. Currently, 35 state legislatures control this redistricting process with the remaining 15 states using an independent commission. With the delay of the 2020 census data, state legislatures are running into a time constraint to develop new maps in time for local or state elections in November.
Voting: Related to redistricting, states have introduced 361 voting bills that restrict voting in some form across 47 states. Granted, most of these bills will not become law, but as of the writing of this blog, five have been signed into law, with another 55 having passed at least one legislative chamber.
Policing: As a result of the events of last summer which unfortunately continue, state legislatures have introduced 1,864 bills to address police activities by providing updated rules for police behavior and accountability. Unfortunately, only eight policing bills have been enacted.
Some other trends in the states include: education, infrastructure, minimum wage, marijuana legalization, immigration and occupational licensing reform.
Arts and Culture Issues
Turning to the Arts and Culture, we are seeing a few trends.
Memorials and Monuments: Many legislatures are trying to augment their state laws to add penalties for vandalizing memorials and monuments and/or making it more difficult to remove them. These laws would add new oversite on the state level that would make it more challenging on the local level to enact change in response to communities who want to address statues and other memorials, specifically those that reference pro-Confederacy or the Lost Cause movement and other Eurocentric or white histories. We have seen this play out by impeding community dialogue and causing additional frustrations to BIPOC and other historically underrepresented peoples in Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. While it is already illegal to damage or deface a memorial or monument no matter if it is public or private property, legislatures are moving to increase penalties (misdemeanors to felonies) and take away local (or even private) control to move memorials and monuments under their own jurisdiction. So far, we have seen 537 bills introduced on this topic but luckily none have been enacted into law – although there are a couple that appear to be headed for approval (Arizona and Indiana). Two things I should note that while most of these bills will not become law this year, they are still eligible for their state legislatures to take action during their 2022 legislative session, but hopefully by then, the focus on these statues will have faded into a distant memory. The second note is that according to a report released in February from the Southern Poverty Law Center, over 160 Confederate symbols were removed in 2020, with Virginia leading the way with 71 removals.
Appropriations: Each year every state appropriates funds to support the work of their state arts agency. Given that state revenues have rebounded, and the excellent advocacy work on the state level, legislatures appear to be restoring some of the funds that they took away in 2020. Additionally, states are currently working to determine how they will allocate their state’s Recovery and Relief Act funds which directly affects the arts as many states will likely designate some of these funds to directly support the arts and culture or make arts non-profits eligible for assistance.
Arts Education: Each year state legislatures introduce a variety of education related legislation which directly or indirectly effects the arts. This year is no exception with over 500 pieces of legislation on education. Bills range from appropriating dollars to arts educations programs, to augmenting graduation requirements to issuing resolutions such as declaring “arts education month” or the importance of a STEAM education.
Economic Development/ Workforce Development: Legislatures are also introducing bills seeking to address economic development and/or workforce development. Often these bills include the arts and culture as one of several ways to successfully develop overall state programs. This topic will become even more important if the proposed $2 trillion federal infrastructure bill is passed which as it currently stands, contains $100 billion for workforce development.
These are just some of the big topics I have noticed, but they certainly are not the sum total of the states’ legislative efforts. Please check out your state legislature’s activities and make sure you let them know if you support or oppose their actions, because if legislators don’t hear from arts supporters, they will either assume everything is ok or that we don’t care what legislation they pass.
