Art(funding)pocalypse: Austin May Cut Arts Funding By Up To Fifty Percent [Seriously]

Interestingly, a similar example appears in that same 2003 AG opinion: "A municipality could find, for example, that subsidizing a quilting exhibit or demonstration at a senior center is permissible as encouraging... the arts," it reads, though it also points out that it "would also have to find that the subsidy would 'directly enhance and promote tourism and the convention and hotel industry'.

To muddy things up further, there's no rule in the tax code that requires any organization receiving the HOT funds to quantify the tourism impact. It doesn't call for attendance figures, or the numbers of out-of-towners who choose to stay in hotels. The definition of "tourist" in this context is similarly broad. The tax code defines a tourist simply as "an individual who travels from the individual's residence to a different municipality... for pleasure, recreation, education, or culture." So, according to the law, Round Rockers and Pflugervillains who attend arts events in Austin satisfy the requirement.

At the arts commission meeting, commissioner Bruce Willenzik made another argument in favor of the broad interpretation of the code. "It's like saying that baseball brings in tourists, so you want to fund baseball. But you don't want to fund little league, and you don't want to fund high school, and you don't want to fund college ball, since those are for locals. You want to fund Major League Baseball." Which begs the question, where are the next generation of players in the World Series going to come from? "How long do you think it'll stay a tourist attraction? A year? Two?" Willenzik asked.

That's a concern that even the people whose events are unquestionable tourist draws have.

Zack Carlson, an organizer of Fantastic Fest (which obviously puts heads in hotel beds across Austin) says that a big part of the festival's appeal is that it takes place in the Austin creative community. "The crowd itself is maybe 40-50% local, and people come back year after year because they love Austin and look at it as a mecca," he told Austinist. "There's a big arts community here, and it's carried in a way that's not as cutthroat or fashion-based as it is in lesser cities like New York. A large part of the reason the festival has the appeal that it does is that people are already looking at going to Austin as a getaway." While he stopped short of declaring that the Fantastic Fest appeal is because Austin is known as "an arts epicenter", Carlson definitely feels that the culture of the town is key. "The town has an appealing aesthetic, and I know a lot of the reason Fantastic Fest works as well as it does is the city."

And, as Fantastic Fest, SXSW, the Austin Film Festival, Fusebox, and more of the tourist-based arts events continue to break records each year—and during a recession, no less—it's hard not to think that this is all a matter of trying to fix something that's far from broken. As Willenzik told Austinist, "If we were to take this very quick step, we'd be damaging Austin's reputation as a 'scene' city. If we're going to change direction, would we want to do it at a time when things have been working best? If we damage these things, our reputation changes because we're not as good as we used to be. If you want to build a scene that brings in this kind of activity, attention, and money, then it needs to constantly be getting better." And thus far, it has been, which begs the question: Where's the urgency coming from here? "If we have to do it," Willenzik says, "Let's do it smart. Let's do it strategic. And let's not do it at the worst possible moment."