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Thank you, Representative Grampsas. It's a privilege to be introduced by the distinguished chairman of the Colorado Legislature's Joint Budget and Appropriations committees. It was not so many years ago that I had to wrestle with the kinds of competing claims in Washington that you do here in Colorado. I sympathize. There are no easy answers, although some would make them so!

It's a pleasure to be here. It's also a pleasure to have become acquainted with Fran Holden of the Colorado Council on the Arts and John Dandurand of the Consortium, and to become reacquainted with Gully Stanford of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Tom Young, President and Chief Operations Officer of Martin Marietta and Chairman of the National Business Committee for the Arts, spoke to you last year. There are business, as well as public, interests in the arts.

I remember the case of Pueblo when I was at the NEA. I personally announced an Endowment Challenge Grant there in the mid-Eighties. The business community that supported the arts in Pueblo included not only the steel mill that was practically shut down, but also auto dealers, drug stores, markets, retail stores and small businesses of all kinds. Everybody helped -- big and small. They did so because they knew the arts were important and could help revive the community. I used the Pueblo example nationally because it struck me as an eloquent testimonial to the arts not just being for the rich and famous, but for all segments of a community.

Let me begin by telling you where I'm coming from. I am in favor of public arts support, not so much as a member of the arts community, but as a government manager and policy analyst, lawyer and businessman. I am also in favor of public arts support as a conservative and Republican.

Colorado is God's country. Its beauty and its people lured my wife and me here some years ago. It's wonderful to be out of Washington and in a small community that's really a community. It

is in the public interest reasonably to maintain these Colorado qualities. For their part, the best of the arts are at the foundation of civilization, and understanding their vocabularies is at the heart of community. It is equally in the public interest reasonably to nurture them and make them accessible to all -- not just for those who are well educated and can afford them.

You in the Colorado legislature have many realities to deal with. One thinks of education and roads and criminal justice, for example. While you don't have to put as much money into the arts, I shall make the argument today that reasonable public funding of the arts is also critical.

This argument might be summarized into what I call the four "E's:" education, ethos (the Greek word for character of a people), equity and economy. A fifth "E," excellence, is a pre-condition of the other four. It could be the subject of a speech all by itself.

Education

No one disagrees that the State has a role in helping fund the education of its citizens. As you know, the arts are now recognized by Congress as part of the core curriculum -- along with English, math, science, history and foreign languages. It is important to note that the Reagan Administration initiated this idea. Both Bill Bennett and I thought the arts should be one of the basics. We created research centers in the arts, as in history and other subjects, to this end. As Secretary Bennett pointed out:

"Art, no less than philosophy or science, issues a challenge to the intellect. The great works of music, sculpture, painting, engraving, and all other forms of artistic expression engage the mind, teaching lessons about order, proportion, and genius."

We have made a start here in Colorado. The Colorado Arts Council and Colorado Alliance for Arts Education have created an Arts Education Equity Network. I commend to you the examples of Silverton, Walsh and Wray. We are also engaged in my own community of Ouray County. The support of the Colorado Council on the Arts is critical to these emerging efforts.

The Colorado Youth Arts Celebration currently in the Capitol Rotunda is another example. It is my guess that the students from Bear Creek High School, Greenwood Elementary School, Graland Country Day and Eaglecrest High School will demonstrate problem solving and teamwork as part of the art making process. I hope you will see them do it. That's one of the important functions of arts education.

How many of you have seen a new movie called "Mr. Holland's Opus?" It's about good teaching in general and music education in particular. It may not be the greatest movie of the year, but it's a good one. And, there's no violence, no sex, and no corruption. It's PG and wholesome. The values are right.

There's a colloquy in the movie between the School Principal and the School's music teacher, Mr. Holland. It goes something like this. The Principal says: In tough times, if I have to make a choice between reading, writing and long division, and music, I'll take reading, writing and long division. Mr. Holland replies: If that happens, the kids will have little to read and little to write about. Perhaps overdrawn a bit, but Bill Bennett and I would agree that the arts must be a basic. The Principal's choice is a false one. We must teach all the basic subjects.

The importance of moving forward in educating our young people in the arts cannot be overstated. Serious arts education will help them -- to understand civilization (ours and those that have contributed to ours), to develop creativity, to learn the tools of communication (in a television age), and to make wiser choices among the products of the arts. As conservative thinkers, E.D. Hirsch and Alan Bloom, noted in the Eighties, there is an enormous need for cultural literacy -- to allow all our citizens to draw on humanity's greatest achievements, in communicating about the present and in designing and achieving the future. There are real values expressed in the arts. Just look, for example, at Michel-angelo's Sistine Ceiling.

Serious arts education will also help prepare our kids for work in the 21st century. Arnold Packer (now a Senior Fellow at John Hopkins and formerly Elizabeth Dole's Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy) points out that the performing and visual arts provide management skills in the allocation of time, money, space and staff; communicating skills in conveying meaning; problem solving discipline in having to complete an artistic activity (withone's best on display at the end); and new thinking in developing new art. Undertaking an artwork is like football. The artist's work is on the line for all to see, not tucked away in a Blue Book in a teacher's desk. An artist has to cross the goal line to score.

There is also increasing evidence that arts education can help improve SAT scores. The College Board's analysis of SAT verbal and math scores (1990-93) showed that arts education increased these scores substantially. In 1993, SAT takers with coursework and/or experience in music performance scored 45 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 32 points higher on the math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts. Scores for those with coursework in music appreciation were 54 points higher on the verbal and 37 points higher on the math portion. The longer the arts study the higher the SAT scores: in 1993, those who studied the arts more than four years scored 53 points higher and 37 points higher on the verbal and math portions, respectively, than students with no coursework or experience in the arts.

In my view, serious arts education should become a requirement in Colorado. Arts Council funding is an important component of helping local communities make their arts education more serious. Helping students understand, think about and communicate with the broader range of images their culture has provided will help them engage the new work of the Information Age and be more a part of their society.

President Reagan once said that civilizations are more often remembered for their art and thought. As I said in 1985 in a speech that the Consortium has retrieved and kindly circulated excerpts of: "Surely it is in the interest of the nation, and therefore the schools, that this art and thought be 'recoverable' by young people." Needless to say, this is also in the interest of the State of Colorado.

Ethos

America is comprised of many cultural elements -- e pluribus unum. Each community, whether it be a part of the Greater Denver area or Ridgway (a town of 450), has certain defining characteristics. More often than not, these characteristics are expressed in the arts. Some of these arts are local -- the combination of singing in church, or readings by a cowboy poet; others are derived from elsewhere but accepted locally -- a visit to a small or medium sized town by the Colorado Symphony or Ballet West (out of Salt Lake City).

The popular culture permeates all communities. But most of our cultural heritage and those things that don't make the Top Ten live in a Twilight Zone. Because of the klieg lights of the popular culture, it is more difficult today to see, to hear, to make a part of our lives those things that have more permanently influenced us -- as a society, a country, a State, a town.

By helping make those things more visible and available, the Colorado Council on the Arts helps inculcate the ethos -- both the pluribus and the unum. Some may love or hate the latest rap song on the charts, and no one will know its worth for sure, not even the best of critics. History is the only judge. But the great variety of the Twilight Zone, which includes most of our communities' individualities and most of our cultural heritage, is essential to the ethos of our many communities, the State of Colorado, and the Nation.

There is a public interest in illuminating and providing access to this Twilight Zone. The marketplace will not necessarily do this; nor will the Boards of Trustees of our not-for-profit arts institutions necessarily do this. The public interest needs the support of the public purse here -- to stimulate others to open to the light of day our most important images.

Equity

The Greater Denver Area has a wealth of arts resources -- museums, music, theater, dance, galleries, performance spaces, small presses, The Tattered Cover. It also has money. Wealthy people live here, and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District 1/10th of one percent sales tax produced $23 million for cultural institutions in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties in 1995. Compare this to $2.3 million for the Colorado Arts Council in Fiscal 1996 -- to serve the whole State.

Mesa County (where Grand Junction is, a city now of over 100,000) could not possibly achieve this kind of local critical mass, let alone Ouray County where I live (with its current population of 2,850). There is a State of Colorado public interest in helping those communities which do not have as great access to the arts to have at least some access. In looking through the Arts Council's 1994-1995 Annual Report, I see Alamosa, Carbondale, Canon City, Cortez, Creede, Durango, Fort Collins, Gardner, Glenwood Springs, Greeley, Leadville, Loveland, Manitou Springs, Montrose, Pagosa Springs, Paonia, Silverton, Walsh and Westcliffe.

The Colorado Arts Council does good work here. A good example is its sponsorship of the Jazz in the Sangres festival in Westcliffe. This involved a collaboration of the West Mountain Valley Arts Council, the Westcliffe Parks and Recreation Depart-ment, the Custer County Chamber of Commerce, local businesses and 90 volunteers. I am told the cultural tourism generated by the festival significantly affected the economy of the area. There is surely a State of Colorado public interest in helping this kind of activity.

Economy

The National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies 1994 report, Arts in the Local Economy, points out that nationally the not-for-profit arts generate 1.3 million full time equivalent jobs, $25.2 billion in personal income, $790 million in local government revenues, $1.2 billion in State government revenue, and $3.4 billion in Federal income tax revenue.

The Colorado Business Committee for the Arts estimates that in 1992 in Metro Denver scientific and cultural organizations had a sales impact of $461 million. They ranked twelfth among private Metro Denver employers, and outperformed the Nuggets, Broncos and Rockies in combined home game attendance. They generated $6.5 million in direct taxes and $29 million in indirect taxes. They also offered more than 10,600 performances and cultural oppor-tunities, and provided 1.1 million contacts with area school children.

There is no question that the arts offerings of Colorado's resort communities (for example, Aspen, Steamboat, Telluride, Vail) also produce major economic benefits, for the State as well as themselves. There is also no question that the arts in smaller or less famous communities are economically beneficial. I am glad to hear that a new economic study is under way to document these benefits for the State as a whole.

Given the State of Colorado's interest in tourist revenues, there is no question in my mind that there is also a State of Colorado public economic interest in helping stimulate and sustain these not-for-profit activities.

In sum, there is a public interest in the arts. That public interest has State, as well as local, ingredients. In both cases, the ingredients of the public interest might be grouped around education, ethos, equity and economy.

Let me close with quotes from two very different people: Jack Kennedy (a Democrat) and my former boss, Ronald Reagan (a Republican). There are many things on which Kennedy and Reagan would not have agreed. But they both agreed on the public interest in the arts.

First Kennedy:

"There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo daVinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the new Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a new frontier for American art."

Second Reagan:

"For two decades now the National Endowment has been doing wonderful work. Most recently, they've been involved in a great endeavor to preserve our rich heritage of film and television and the dance. And they've been building endowments for fine arts institutions and helping struggling young artists find an audience. And the members of the Endowment would be the first to say that none of their great work would have succeeded without the generous financial help and support of the American people, of unknown, unsung citizens who each day volunteer their time and money to encourage the arts."

The national level may have gone off track in recent years. But your Arts Council here in Colorado can be proud of having maintained the public trust. As Ronald Reagan said in 1985 of the NEA, I say now of the Colorado Arts Council. It has been doing wonderful work. It needs your support. Republicans, as well as Democrats, can and do support that proposition.

Given the public interest in the arts and bipartisan support for funding that interest, I was saddened to learn that Colorado is today 41st among the 50 States in per capita arts support, at 45 cents per capita. According to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies' 1995-96 Annual Survey, all seven of Colorado's neighbors (Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming) support the arts at substantially greater per capita rates than Colorado. Utah, for example, with a Republican governor and legislature, supports the arts at nearly three times the rate of Colorado, notwithstanding per capita income that is 24 percent below and a poverty rate that is 8 percent above Colorado's. In a State that has the highest percentage of college graduates in the nation and the highest per capita income and lowest poverty rate among all its neighbors, we should not be dead last in State support for the arts. We can surely do better than that.

I understand the Colorado Arts Council's request to raise the per capita contribution to 46 cents in FY 1997 has been denied. This is most unfortunate. Even at 46 cents per capita, Colorado would still be dead last among its neighbors. Out of a total budget of $4.1 billion, it should be possible fiscally to find at least $100,000 more for the arts. It is not in the interest of Coloradans to allow Colorado's cultural offerings to lag behind those of other States and/or become the province of the elites and metropolitan areas.

It may be too late to change the mark on the Arts Council's request for Fiscal 1997. But I strongly urge you to bring that mark up in Fiscal 1998. In my view, we should be on a par with Utah. But, if that is not possible, surely we should be on a par with at least Wyoming, at 69 cents per capita.

This is not a question of making up shortfalls in Federal funding. It is a question of making the best of the arts available as a matter of education, ethos, equity and economy.

My wife and I moved here because we thought of Colorado as a great State. We should move forward in culture, as a complement to God's endowment of physical beauty and Colorado's citizens' endowment of good nature, good values, hard work and a growing economy.