DATE: Tuesday, July 15, 1997                TAG: 9707140222

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

STAY THE EXECUTION THE NEA WILL DIE UNLESS THOSE WHO VALUE IT SPEAK NOW TO THEIR CONGRESSMEN.

In the 1990s, two of every five Americans - that works out to about 76 million - attend in a year at least one of seven arts activities: art museums, ballet, classical music, jazz, musicals, opera, plays.

The National Endowment for the Arts does not underwrite all arts events, of course. But grants funded from its 1997 appropriation of $99.5 million in funding flow to every state, into three-quarters of U.S. congressional districts.

U.S. Rep. Sonny ``I Got You, Babe'' Bono of California says he never met anyone who needed NEA money. Republican opponents of the NEA say complains that the agency funds ``pornography'' - an allusion to the minute number of grants linked to controversial exhibits and performances. They also contend that NEA dollars go to ``elitists.'' But do urban and rural schoolchildren, seniors and the disabled, among the chief beneficiaries of NEA grants for arts-outreach programs, qualify as ``elitists''?

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representative voted 217-216 to chop funding for the NEA from its current $99.5 million level to $10 million in 1998 with which to shut itself down. President Clinton's request for $136 million wasn't in play.

On Friday, the House voted down an alternative bill to send lump sums to the states for arts education and local arts groups. So, no money for the arts - but no money for the NEA either, which would perish.

NEA partisans look to the U.S. Senate and to the White House to save the agency's bacon. The Senate leans to keeping the agency alive. Clinton has pledged to veto any killing bill.

As fascinating as the fight to save the NEA is the struggle between far-right Republicans determined to zero-out the agency and Republicans determined to keep on funding it. The block-grants initiative championed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia was designed to end that conflict by acknowledging a federal role in arts funding while dumping the NEA. Republicans and Democrats who saw the maneuver as a prelude to ending federal funding for combined to defeat the block-grant bill.

NEA head Jane Alexander, the actress, is criticized and praised for spreading the agency's funds across the land for uncontroversial events. But her approach not only carries performances and exhibitions to thinly populated districts and inner-city neighborhoods, it also wins over congressmen who might otherwise be hostile to the agency.

Expressing his opposition to keeping the NEA on life support, Republican U.S. Rep. Phil Crane of complained that his state's share of the NEA pie is smaller than the District of Columbia's - a ration that includes some national arts projects. The aggrieved Crane seemingly wants more or nothing - not exactly a principled stand. It also ignores the reality that a country's capitol city is usually - and understandably - the site of a heavy concentration of arts activity; last year, 4.7 million people visited the National Gallery of Art.

Meanwhile, the ``elitist'' charge rings hollow. Not-for-profit arts organizations add $37 billion a year to the U.S. economy, employ 1.3 million and contribute $3.4 billion to the federal treasury, of which the $136 million the administration asks for the NEA is a fraction.

But the NEA could easily become history unless those who to value its contribution to the national arts scene speak to those who represent them in House and Senate.

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