Whenever the Vermont Legislature ends a session and goes home for the summer, some constituents are happy and others are not. Count the folks over at the Vermont Arts Council in the PDH (pretty damn happy) camp. That’s because, for the first time in 20 years, the council got a raise — a 26 percent increase in its appropriation from the state budget!
The VAC asked the legislature to double its budget and that didn’t happen. But 26 percent is nothing to sneeze at. Better yet, the amount agreed upon by lawmakers was enough to entitle the VAC to a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
As it happens, the NEA handed out a little less money across the board this year, thanks to sequestration, but the overall increase for Vermont with combined state and federal money is roughly $100,000.
I attempted to copy a by-the-numbers explanation from the VAC’s newsletter and it’s not pretty, but still tells the tale. See it below the break:
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