Massachusetts Artists Leaders Coalition

Artists leaders and artist-run groups addressing policy issues that affect artists in Massachusetts

The House Overrides the Governor’s MCC & Library Vetoes!!

This afternoon the House voted to override the Governor’s vetoes of the MCC and Library Line Items!!  They now head to the Senate for that body to override those vetoes! (Possibly on Monday, July 30th!!)

 Massachusetts Cultural Council  Line Item # 0640-0300  The House restored full funding to this line item by overriding the Governor’s veto/reduction!!!  The amount has been restored to $16,154,982 (The vote was 141 to 8)

What the Governor vetoed/reduced in funding:

Reduce/Strike Wording  (reduce MCC funding by) -2,084,283 to 14,070,699
“I am striking language which earmarks funding for programs not recommended, and I am reducing this item to the amount projected to be necessary.” (more…)

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Advocacy Needed to Override Governor’s Budget Vetoes to the MCC & Libraries

Yesterday afternoon (July 26th), Governor Charlie Baker vetoed $320 million in spending for the state’s FY19 Budget Proposal. The legislature has until July 31 to override all or some of his vetoes and/or his line item funding reductions. As of now the House will be in session on Saturday 1 to 5pm to vote on these overrides in formal session.

By law when the legislature is in formal session the State House must be open to the public. This means advocates and concerned citizens can be up the State House lobbying for their line items override veto requests in person. It also means that state house staffers (not the senate staffers, only the representatives’ staffers) are in their offices and you can call and/or email over the weekend with your concerns.

MALC urges all artists and arts/creative economy supporters to contact the offices of both their state representative and their state senator. Please ask them to override/restore funding to the budget line items that impact our sector (listed at the end of this blog post).

Step 1: Determine who your state rep. and state senator are

Go to http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.aspx, type in your address, and find out who represents you within the state legislature. (more…)

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Important! Please take survey on Copyright Office fee increases!

The Copyright Office proposed fee increases on average of 41% in May. One increase was as high as 82% (group registration of photographs).

The Copyright Alliance recently published a survey in which we hope all creators will participate.

We welcome responses from individual creators as well as from organizations/companies that register works they produce, distribute, or publish. Keep in mind that if you are taking this survey as a representative of an organization/company, you should answer each question from the perspective of that company/organization.

The survey should take no more than 10-15 minutes. Please participate and share this with your networks!

[sexybutton size=”xl” color=”green” target=”_blank” url=”https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZPJ23ZC” icon=”noicon”]Take the Survey![/sexybutton]

 

NEA / NEH Funding Cuts Defeated in House!

(Action Alert Update via Americans for the Arts)

U.S. HOUSE REJECTS CUT TO NEA!

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Thanks to record-levels of calls, emails, and tweets from arts advocates to Members of Congress in the past few days, we have good news!

On July 18, the U.S. House of Representatives soundly defeated an amendment that would have cut funding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The House voted down the Grothman amendment by a vote of 114 – 297! This is one of the largest vote margins in support of the Endowments in the U.S. House! Read Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert L. Lynch’s statement here. (more…)

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