State budget analysts recommended this week that the Maryland State Arts Council’s budget be trimmed by 1.5%, a compromise aimed at maintaining a much-debated funding formula requiring lawmakers to set aside at least as much money for cultural programming as they did the year before.

Senior policy analyst Tonya D. Zimmerman told state delegates and senators during budget hearings on Thursday and Friday that the Department of Legislative Services is suggesting that $437,000 be removed from the Arts Council’s proposed $29.1 million state grant for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

But she added that her department thinks the General Assembly should reject Gov. Wes Moore’s request to revoke the 1994 Arts Stabilization Act.

“We’re recommending that the Arts Council take a larger cut for fiscal year 2025/2026 instead,” she said.

Local arts advocates would be relieved if the General Assembly adopts the compromise outlined by Zimmerman, according to Nicholas Cohen, executive director of Maryland Citizens for the Arts.

“Our position is that we want to keep the funding formula,” Cohen said Thursday in response to a question from Del. Kent Roberson, a Democrat from Prince George’s County. “We also understand that a cut this year might be necessary given the massive state budget deficit.”

Zimmerman and her colleague, David Romans also suggested other culture-related cuts that could help lawmakers nibble away at a looming, $3 billion deficit. They suggested eliminating the automatic transfer of $150,000 in lottery revenues next year to the Maryland Humanities Council, and reducing a film industry tax credit from $20 million to $12 million one year earlier than planned.

While lawmakers consider feedback from state analysts, they are not bound by it.

This year’s budget hearings are taking place in an environment of uncertainty that has been exacerbated by controversial measures enacted during the first six weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term, including the Feb. 13 firings of federal employees who were on probation.

Moore told lawmakers that the state lost 1,000 jobs last month alone in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties — and added that he fully expects the situation to get worse, culminating in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in income and federal aid to Maryland.

“I cannot stress how much the world has changed and the sands have shifted in just the past six weeks,” Moore said. “The final budget that we will carve together this year will have to reflect that very harsh reality.”

The Legislative Services recommendation appears to give Moore something he wants — help eliminate the deficit — while also safeguarding a 31-year-old funding formula that advocates say is essential for protecting the state’s fragile arts ecosystem.

The Stabilization Act provides for the Arts Council’s funding to increase each year by the same percentage as Maryland’s General Fund, or the pot of state revenues not legally required to be spent for a specific purpose.

In other words, if the General Fund grows by 5% in a particular year, the state’s Arts Council grant would also increase 5%. If the General Fund’s growth is flat or decreases, the Arts Council’s budget would remain unchanged.

Last year, the Arts Council passed along 61% of its state grant, or $18 million, to local museums, film festivals, theater troupes and string quartets.

Some advocates argued that the turmoil in Washington is precisely the reason legislators should reject Moore’s request.

“At a time when we are witnessing daily how damaging government policy can be, please don’t dismantle the smartest, single most effective piece of bipartisan legislation to benefit the arts in 30 years,” pleaded Monica Jeffries Hazangeles, president and CEO of the Music Center at Strathmore, one of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s two performing homes.

“It has just been two years since the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said. “Many organized have not fully recovered. Please don’t add this to our list of challenges.”

Katarina Ziegler, director of development for the Walters Art Museum, told senators Friday that the museum’s ability to offer no-cost admission and educational programming would be imperiled if the Stabilization Act were repealed.

Reliable funding from the Arts Council “is critical to our ability to remain free and open to all of our 110,000 visitors,” she said, adding that if the Stabilization Act was revoked, the museum might have to lay off some of its 132 employees.

“Without the protection of the Arts Stabilization Act,” Ziegler said, “uncertainty would become the norm, jeopardizing jobs, limiting access to the arts and making long-term planning impossible.”

Moore’s budget also seeks to eliminate a second, nearly identical funding formula that ties increases in the state General Fund to financial support for Maryland Public Television.

But in this case, the Department of Legislative Services recommends that the 2017 act be rescinded, in part because analysts concluded that viewership for public television is declining.

But Larry D. Unger, the station’s president and CEO, testified during the hearings that MPT fulfills a vital public service mission. The most recent gubernatorial debate, he said, attracted almost 300,000 viewers “which is close to the audience of an NFL game broadcast.”

He added that eliminating the formula would threaten everything from the station’s ability to broadcast regular town hall meetings with the governor to eliminating MPT’s ability to make documentary films showcasing such prominent Marylanders as abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

A third documentary about former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is expected to broadcast nationally this fall, he said.

“Without funding certainty, there are no future productions about Maryland and its people,” Unger said. “If this law is repealed, everything is at risk.”

The General Assembly is required by law to complete the budget by March 31, and lawmakers are expected to debate the funding formulas and dozens of other potential budget cuts over the next several weeks. But at least one observer thinks they are likely to cut the deadline close as they await the fallout from Trump administration orders.

“The amount of uncertainty this year is unprecedented,” Cohen said.

Given that instability, some arts advocates worry that legislators will take actions now they might later regret.

“Now is not the moment to undercut the power of the arts,” Jennifer Ridgeway, co-founder of Teaching Artists of the mid-Atlantic, told the senators and delegates. “Now is the time for visionaries and champions to safeguard our work. Won’t you please be our hero?”

Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at mmccauley@baltsun.com and 410-332-6704.