By Dominic P. Papatola
dpapatola@pioneerpress.com
Article Last Updated: 10/31/2008 12:32:48 PM CDT

In the past couple of weeks, a few friends in the arts community have confided their doubts about voting for the Legacy Amendment, the proposed change to the state constitution that would provide extra money for outdoors and cultural initiatives throughout Minnesota.

This column is a response to them and to anyone else who might be on the fence two days before the polls open.

Some believe making fiscal policy through constitutional amendment is a bad idea. Others have a hard time stomaching a guarantee of money for things like the outdoors and the arts when other pressing concerns, from poverty and health care to roads and bridges, remain unmet.

I understand those concerns. I understand the reluctance to increase the state sales tax in tough economic times. And I absolutely understand that, once you throw out the wing nuts, wack jobs and knee jerks on either side of the argument — those loud, angry voices that can reduce and polarize a policy debate — this amendment is something about which reasonable, thinking people can disagree.

But this amendment is important. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help solidify some of the best things about this state. Its beneficiaries aren't just limited to the hunters and the canoeists and the gallery-goers: This small investment of money is good for all of us.

To recap: The amendment, officially known as the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, would raise the sales tax by 3/8ths of 1 percent. That's less than what you throw in the extra-penny jar at the convenience store when you buy a $1.99 bottle of water.

The money would raise about $300 million a year for the next 25 years. Most would go to preserving clean water, parks and trails and other environmental causes. Just less than 20 percent, about $59 million a year, would go to cultural endeavors and efforts across the state.

Others, including my Pioneer Press colleague Chris Niskanen, have made a persuasive case for why our natural resources need the time, attention and care that comes through money. The need for our cultural infrastructure is just as pressing.

Theaters like the Guthrie and the Children's Theatre, museums such as Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and musical ensembles including the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra give Minnesota a deserved position of prominence on the national arts landscape.

But the arts are as much a part of our landscape as our forests and lakes: >From the potter in Grand Marais to the revived old opera house in Fairmont, arts of all kinds thrive on scales of all sorts, and it touches our lives in ways we don't even recognize. Exposure to and participation in the arts increases standardized test scores. It's good for the business climate. It helps us understand our times, our problems, our destiny and ourselves.

But unlike our rivers and streams and forests, the arts are not a gift of nature: They are the product of our education system, of the creative energy and passion of individuals, philanthropists small and large and of a network of arts organizations that form a mutually dependent web.

That web is sturdy, but it's not unbreakable. We've seen one of our Tony Award-winning theaters, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, go dark this year, and the Minnesota Center for Photography shuttered, as well.

In editorializing against the Legacy Amendment, the opinion page of this newspaper said that adding cultural funding to the initiative weakened it. "Arts programs can certainly make a case for state funding," the editorial said, "but they are not irreplaceable in the sense that our lakes and wetlands are."

I disagree. It took decades to nurture and grow Minnesota's unique aesthetic environment to its current point. But a recession here and ill-advised government cuts there can and will jeopardize it much faster and in as just an irreplaceable way. Yes, you can try to rehabilitate a cultural scene, just like you can restore a virgin prairie. But it's a more expensive process, and it will never replace what was lost.

We gripe when our professional sports teams don't excel. We fret when our universities and our hospitals fail to make some national magazine's list of excellence. Why would we settle for a second-tier arts community, when the top-notch one we have can be preserved and grown for a comparative pittance?

This will require sacrifice, but only a tiny one — about a dollar a week for the average Minnesota family. That's new money, money that doesn't take a dime away from all the other vital government programs that are out there.

But it will also require your vote: Constitutional amendments require approval from a majority of ballots cast, not a majority of those who vote one way or another on the amendment itself. Leaving the question blank is the same as voting "no."

So don't condemn the arts, one of the state's most precious resources, with indifference. Vote yes. Please.

Theater critic Dominic P. Papatola's "Culture in Context" column appears Sundays in Life. He can be reached at dpapatola@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2165.