It will be up to the SCFD's nine-member board of directors -- six of whom are chosen by the commissioners in each of the counties in the SCFD and three of whom are appointed by the governor -- to decide if and how to amend the current legislation. Changes would be driven by feedback from member organizations, and a bill would have to be drafted and sent to the state legislature.
William Taylor
Anthony Camera
Museo de las Américas executive director Jose Aguayo (left) and El
Centro Su Teatro's Tony Garcia would like to see smaller groups get a
larger slice of the pie.
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But there may not be a consensus among the members of the SCFD, the legislature may not approve the bill, and "there's no telling if someone will present a competing bill," says the district's Williams. If an amended version of the sales-tax initiative does make it onto the ballot, there's still one last hurdle: the voters.
That last obstacle may be impossible to overcome if the scientific and cultural organizations succumb to infighting. In Fresno, California, an almost identical initiative called Arts to Zoo went before the voters several years ago; the city's arts and science organizations proposed a 0.1 percent sales tax, of which half of the revenue was to go to Fresno's own Big Four -- the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra, the Fresno Art Museum and the Chaffee Zoological Gardens. Representatives of some of Fresno's Hispanic cultural organizations spoke out against the funding formula, however, saying groups such as Arte Americas and Radio Bilingue deserved more money.
Although the initiative was approved in March 1993 by 57.6 percent of the voters, a taxpayers' association challenged its passage in court, alleging that the tax was unconstitutional since special taxes need to be approved by a two-thirds majority. In 1996, the tax was ruled unlawful by the California Supreme Court, and retailers had to stop collecting it. Arts to Zoo supporters placed the sales-tax initiative on the ballot again last fall, but accusations of elitism resurfaced, and the measure failed.
Some leaders of Hispanic cultural organizations in Denver also feel disenfranchised. Even though Hispanics constitute a huge number of taxpayers, some people feel the cultural organizations that cater to them aren't getting their fair share of SCFD revenue.
El Centro Su Teatro's Garcia says he'd like to see the money distributed according to the racial makeup of the taxpayers, with Hispanic cultural organizations -- of which there are only a few -- getting a percentage comparable to that of the Hispanic population. But he knows the Big Four would never agree to give up much of their sales-tax dollars to culturally specific groups without a lot of pressure. And he's not sure Hispanics will band together to apply that pressure. "I don't think there's awareness in the Latino community," he says. "Arts are a very low priority for Latino politicians."
Stanford believes that any division within the SCFD -- no matter how small -- could hurt its chances of passing again and that the long-term survival of the SCFD should be incentive enough for Tier I members to cooperate with the other organizations. "Any short-term selfishness will, in the end, be divisive to a point where it will destabilize the district, and when it's destabilized, it will fail," he says.
In the past, he points out, these groups have managed to come together. "Denver's SCFD is viewed from coast to coast as a miracle," he says. "Very few measures have succeeded in other cities. We've succeeded because of our internal stability -- because we've gone to the voters with a unified front."
But people should be prepared for some lively debate as 2004 approaches, he adds. "It's not going to be easy. We have to make sure no one organization feels entitled to more than its fair share. We have to be prepared to make the hard choices so that whatever redesign we come up with can last another ten years."
