When budgets tighten, arts funding is often among the first casualties. The reasoning must have felt practical to the San Diego Mayor, ever responsible: in difficult times; governments must prioritize essentials over extras—roads over symphonies, math over music, housing over galleries. The past decade—and especially the years since 2020—tell a sad story about government budgets and the dilemma they face.
On the surface, the logic behind cutting the arts is compelling. Public resources are limited, and every dollar allocated to the arts is a dollar not spent on infrastructure, public safety, or social services. Critics argue that the arts should survive in the marketplace. If people truly value museums or theater, they will pay for them directly. Why should taxpayers subsidize experiences many may never use?
It sounds sensible—until you examine what actually happens when arts funding disappears.
In 2023, San Francisco proposed significant reductions to its Grants for the Arts program as part of broader budget tightening, prompting warnings from local organizations about closures and job losses. In 2024, Washington, D.C. faced similar debates over scaling back cultural funding, even as the city struggled to revive downtown foot traffic. The pattern is consistent: arts funding is cut just when cities most need economic and social recovery.
Chicago, too, has continued to scale back neighborhood arts investments in recent years under budget pressure. Research from The University of Chicago links these reductions to declines in local business activity and community engagement. These are not abstract cultural losses—they are measurable economic contractions.
At the state level, the cautionary tale of Kansas still resonates. When Governor Sam Brownback eliminated the state arts agency, Kansas lost matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts along with tourism revenue and nonprofit activity. The policy was eventually reversed, but only after the damage was done—a reminder that cutting arts funding often costs more than it saves.
Even education has not been spared in recent years. Across multiple states, pandemic-era budget shortfalls led to reduced or paused arts programs in public schools between 2020 and 2022. Many districts have yet to fully restore them. The consequences are visible: lower student engagement, reduced attendance, and widening achievement gaps. The arts are not enrichment—they are foundational to how students learn creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking.
Closer to home many institutions like the La Jolla Playhouse and the San Diego Museum of Art are not luxuries. They are economic engines—driving tourism, supporting local businesses, and shaping the region’s identity. When funding tightens, programming shrinks, visitors decline, and the ripple effects spread quickly through restaurants, retail, and hospitality.
What these examples make clear is that arts funding cuts rarely deliver the savings policymakers expect. Instead, they reduce economic activity, weaken education systems, and erode the cultural infrastructure that underpins long-term growth.
The market-based argument—that the arts should simply pay for themselves—fails in practice. Many of the most valuable cultural assets, from school programs to community theaters, cannot survive on ticket sales alone. Their benefits are broad, long-term, and shared across society. That is precisely why public investment exists.
Mature policymaking does not force a choice between infrastructure and imagination, or between economic growth and cultural expression. It recognizes that thriving communities require both—and that each reinforces the other.
Cutting arts funding may produce short-term budget relief. But time and again, it generates long-term costs—in jobs, in education, in economic vitality, and in the social fabric of communities.
The real question is not whether we can afford to support the arts.
It is whether we can afford the consequences of not supporting them.
The council debates these cuts sometime in early May; and June 9 the Final Budget is to be adopted.
Here are some ways you can continue to advocate for arts funding leading up to the next key budget meeting on Monday, May 6, at 9 a.m. Action Items include visiting artsandculturesd.org to fill out a very quick form to send letters directly to your city councilmember and Mayor Todd Gloria.
