Cool Cleveland Comment
Support the Arts Levy

Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are the heart of our region and the center of our Arts & Culture industry. Some of our region’s most treasured organizations are right here, along with the many smaller community arts groups that contribute so much to our economy and our neighborhoods. But unlike so many major metropolitan areas, we don’t provide significant, dedicated funding for our Arts & Culture assets. If we don’t seize the opportunity presented in the Arts & Culture ballot issue this November 7th, mounting economic challenges will threaten our Arts & Culture treasures, and we will start to lose some of what makes this region great, and gives us a chance to grow in the future.

Our Arts & Culture sector helped make this region great, and continues to keep our economy strong. It generates over more than $1 billion in annual economic activity and creates thousands of good, family-supporting jobs for our residents. The billion dollar economic activity comes in all shapes and sizes including tourism, major plays and concerts, neighborhood festivals, street and music fairs, and individual artists. These are the activities and people who make our city so vibrant. They are also the reason Northeast Ohio receives tens of thousands of visitors and tourists every year who bring money into our region.

Everyday we see the additional jobs created from Arts & Culture activity – workers in hotels and restaurants, transportation providers, street vendors and tradesmen of all kinds. Such related jobs, and thousands more in allied arts businesses, may not continue to exist without public support for the Arts & Culture sector they rely on. These jobs employ people in every community in Cuyahoga County, and have led to the revitalization of some of our most cherished neighborhoods like Ohio City, Old Brooklyn, Shaker-Buckeye, Slavic Village, Tremont and the Warehouse District. They have also sustained and nurtured suburban communities from Bay Village to Cleveland Heights and Lakewood, and from Solon to Westlake and Independence.

Beyond our economy, arts and culture prepares us for the future by improving education for our children. When our children participate in arts and culture, they have better reading and math skills, and perform better on proficiency tests. Students with Arts & Cultural education stay in school longer, graduate high school at higher rates and have higher rates of college placement. All of these benefits occur in every community, whether urban or suburban.

Beyond supporting our Arts & Culture sector, a minimal increase in Cuyahoga County’s cigarette tax will have a direct, beneficial impact on the local economy. Money spent on cigarette sales will not disappear if cigarette sales decline. A cigarette tax would shift consumer expenditures toward other products or to consumer savings or investments. Smokers who quit or cut back will spend the money they formerly used on cigarettes in other ways – and those alternative uses are likely to produce more jobs and more productive economic activity.

In addition, this issue works much more powerfully to prompt lower-income smokers to quit or cut back and to stop lower-income kids from ever starting, than it does among higher-income smokers and youths. Smokers with family incomes at or below the national median are four times more likely to quit because of cigarette price increases as those with higher incomes.

This issue will end up increasing the portion of the total cigarette tax revenues that are paid for by higher-income smokers and reduce the portion paid by lower-income smokers.

In recent years, the processes by which the funds are awarded and distributed have been tested through the Cuyahoga County Arts and Culture as Economic Development program (ACE). ACE is a nationally recognized program and has been proven to evaluate applications and distribute funds to Arts & Culture organizations and events in a fair and equitable way. This process ensures that small organizations and individual artists are not overshadowed by larger organizations throughout the region. Recently Mayor Frank Jackson, City Council President Martin Sweeney and Cleveland City Council endorsed the Arts & Culture issue, partly because it includes a process that provides equal opportunity to the small neighborhood organizations.

Over the last 100 years, Cuyahoga County has developed an Arts & Culture industry that sets us apart from most other major metropolitan regions. It has produced artistic giants, as well as inspired thousands of children and adults alike to continue to explore arts, science, music, ethnic heritage, and the cultural experiences that tie us together. The arts and culture of Cuyahoga County will continue to inspire future generations if we act now to preserve and nurture it for future generations.

It’s time we protect one of our area’s most significant assets, our Arts & Culture sector. Without this issue, our arts and culture assets will remain at risk, and we could lose one of the things that make this region world-renowned.

from Eric D. Fingerhut, Campaign Director, Arts & Culture Action Committee

Send your comments to: Letters@CoolCleveland.com

i) See, e.g., U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Responses to Cigarette Prices By Race/Ethnicity, Income, and Age Groups – United States 1976-1993,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 47(29): 605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm or ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Publications/mmwr/wk/mm4729.pdf . Chaloupka, F. J. & R. Pacula , An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998.

ii) CDC, MMWR 47(29): 605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm or ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Publications/mmwr/wk/mm4729.pdf .

iii) Using CDC data, if lower-income smokers account for 60% of a state's cigarette tax revenues with 40% from higher income smokers, a tax increase that raises the price of a pack by 25% will reduce the number of packs smoked by lower-income persons by about 7.25% and reduce the number of packs smoked by higher-income smokers by 4.25%. After those reductions, lower-income smokers will be paying 59% of all state cigarette tax revenues and higher-income smokers will be paying 41%. Larger cigarette tax increases would have more pronounced effects. CDC, MMWR 47(29): 605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm

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