CLEVELAND, Ohio — The embattled board of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, which distributes cigarette tax revenue for the arts, concluded a chaotic three-and-a-half hour meeting Wednesday with rapid fire votes approving financial matters, including a $12.5 million budget for 2024.

But most of the meeting centered on arguments over how CAC could heal widening rifts in Cleveland’s cultural community over how it manages tax revenues that have declined 50% since the tax began in 2007 because fewer people are smoking, and whether it can build public support for a levy increase before the tax expires.

County voters first approved a 10-year, 30-cents-a-pack excise tax in cigarettes in 2006 to support the arts, which provided roughly $20 million a year starting in 2007. The tax was renewed in 2015 for another decade ending January 2027. But revenues have steadily declined, putting pressure on the CAC board to satisfy growing demands for funding while its money is dwindling.

The arguments have pitted the needs of roughly 70 established cultural nonprofits that receive General Operating Support grants of more than $10 million a year — the biggest grant category — against recipients of smaller grants in newer programs created by CAC.

The agency has created grant programs in recent years for special projects, community-based programs, and cultural heritage programs to satisfy growing demands for social and racial equity in its spending.

The strife has raised questions over whether the arts community can coalesce around a proposal under consideration by CAC to seek permission from Cuyahoga County Council to put an issue on the November ballot to increase the cigarette tax.

Individual artist grants

The troubled history of how the agency makes grants to individual artists remains a key sticking point. Because of restrictions in the state law that established CAC as a political subdivision with the authority to tax and spend, it may only make grants to nonprofits.

Grants to individual artists, totaling $400,000 a year, have been distributed through nonprofit intermediaries hired by CAC for a number of years. The program was interrupted in 2018 and 2019 when CAC was re-evaluating the program, and no grants were made. Grants in other years fell short of $400,000.

Artists feel they are still owed the money they claim they were guaranteed. CAC has said no such guarantees were ever made, and the agency doesn’t “roll over” unspent money from one year to another. It simply reallocates money from one category to another.

Board chair Nancy Mendez kicked off the meeting at the Cleveland Public Library’s downtown branch by reading a public apology to artists in response to complaints over the issue.

The apology followed a report completed last month for CAC by the nonprofit Assembly for the Arts, which formed in 2021 under arts leader Jeremy Johnson as Greater Cleveland’s arts council. CAC paid Assembly $20,000 earlier this year to survey artists over their feelings toward CAC and how it could make amends.

The report said that artists “expressed a range of emotions including anger, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, and sadness related to the deep perception of disrespect shown to them by CAC.” The report said that “deep distrust overrides interpretations of CAC programmatic and funding choices.”

Apology rejected

Mendez, who said she was speaking for herself and CAC Executive Director Jill Paulsen, said in her apology that “we are sorry that relations between too many of our local artists and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture have become strained.’’ She said the apology was “an honest attempt to help repair relationships that are far too important to give up on.’’

But the Mendez statement appeared to do little to heal divisions over how the five-member CAC board, whose members are appointed by the Cuyahoga County executive and approved by County Council, is doing business.

During a public comment period, Liz Maugans, an outspoken advocate for individual artists, said she wasn’t satisfied by the apology.

“CAC has chosen authority over accountability and cronyism over an authentic willingness to support working class artists here in Cuyahoga County,” she said. She added that without a change in leadership at the agency, she would urge artists against voting for a new levy.

Mendez appeared to struggle throughout the afternoon meeting to keep the meeting under control. At one point, she allowed artists M. Carmen Lane and Donald Black, Jr., to speak out of order at length from the audience.

“To circle around the drain to try to problem solve is not the answer,” Lane said. She added that artists in the community are “being engaged with in a way that’s infantilizing us.”

After the meeting, Mendez said, “I thought if I stop them, it’s going to create more distrust. I’m trying to do my best in finding a balance of allowing people to speak but not letting it go to total chaos.”

Pitting groups against each other

In the end, the CAC board voted to award Assembly for the Arts $500,000 to devise an individual artist grant program in 2024. The meeting’s agenda included a proposal to give Assembly $400,000 for the program, but Mendez allowed a discussion over ways to increase the amount, finally settling on $100,000.

However, CAC staff pointed out that the $100,000 was over the amount originally budgeted for 2024 and would have to be funded, possibly, through a reduction in 2025 spending or other means including delaying payouts on certain grants.

The discussion over those cuts then focused whether CAC should trim its operating budget or cut General Operating Support for the city’s four biggest cultural organizations — Playhouse Square, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Some trustees used the phrase “the four bigs” as a pejorative term implying wealth and elitism.

Board member Charna Sherman instead advocated cutting line items from CAC’s operating budget including “public relations and strategy,” $58,306, “visual identity,” $12,500, “professional development,” $11,985, and “other professional/contract svc [services].”

Trustee Karolyn Isenhart said the cuts proposed by Sherman would “gut” CAC. “It’s disrespectful to people of Cuyahoga county to continue to try and gut CAC. Let’s look at where we can move some money from the top of the thing, which is the bigs, into the hands of artists.”

Trustee Michele Scott Taylor said that if money from the four large organizations is cut “then we won’t have a campaign, because all the bigs are mad at us, because we’re cutting our funding, and they’re the reason why we even have a levy. That has been said in our community.”

Mendez said she didn’t want such conversations to exacerbate community divisions.

“I do not want to pit any organizations against any other area,’’ she said. “Let’s work together to figure this out because all aspects of art are critical, critical. I don’t want to start to have that conversation where one group is against another.”

Campaign on pause

Turbulence at the meeting reflected a decision last month by Assembly for Action, the nonprofit political action committee affiliated with Assembly for the Arts, to pause its effort to raise $1.5 million to $1.6 million to support a possible levy vote in November 2024.

Philanthropist Fred Bidwell, who chairs Assembly for Action, said last month in an op-ed published by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that the group is dismayed because the CAC board is “losing the confidence and trust of the sector it serves.”

Bidwell later said in an interview that local foundations, individuals and leaders of the city’s top arts organizations that they would not donate toward a levy campaign until unspecified changes were made at CAC.

Directors of the four biggest cultural organizations did not respond to queries from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer in November about CAC funding and the issues over the levy campaign

Several CAC board members appeared disgruntled at Wednesday’s meeting over Bidwell’s statements in his op-ed article and subsequent interview in November.

Trustee Daniel Blakemore said he wanted to hear publicly from Bidwell and the Assembly for Action board that the pause on fundraising for a CAC levy campaign was over.

Addressing the board at the end of the meeting, Johnson, the director of Assembly for the Arts, tried to focus the discussion on solutions rather than anger and division. He referred to Assembly’s name as synonymous with its mission of unification, but he acknowledged that “that’s a tall order for our arts community” now.

Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that the arts sector could rally around a levy campaign, despite the current pause in fundraising.

“The levy will move forward,” he said. “The levy will happen and it’s going to take work. Success is our only option.”