Arts grants head to Montana governor without cuts restored

Associated Press

29-04-2025

Lawmakers have sent a bill funding arts grants to Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte without restoring awards that were cut amid a scuffle — driven by Anaconda Republican Rep. John Fitzpatrick — over organizations that didn't present their applications before a legislative budget subcommittee.
The grants bill, House Bill 9, is a routine funding measure that routes investment earnings from the state's coal trust to grants that support cultural and aesthetic projects.
As it was introduced this year, based on grant applications compiled by the Montana Arts Council and included in Gianforte's budget proposal, the bill would have allocated $954,000 to 75 organizations, with most awards either $12,000 or $13,500.
However, Fitzpatrick and other lawmakers on a budget subcommittee voted in February to strike grants for 17 organizations that didn't appear in person or virtually at January committee hearings. They also reduced grants for another 10 organizations that had provided only written testimony.
The funding that was freed up by those cuts was redistributed to other applicants, increasing the remaining allocations.
At the time, Republican and Democratic committee members expressed concern about the non-appearances, which they said kept them from being able to effectively evaluate the proposals.
'It's not a very heavy lift to sit on a Zoom call for 15 minutes and give a presentation about your project and maybe answer a question or two from the committee in exchange for $12,000, $13,000,' Fitzpatrick said at a Feb. 17 meeting. 'But apparently we have a number of people who don't think that's part of the process.'
Materials from the Arts Council provided to grantees in advance of the January hearings had indicated that testifying before the committee was optional. 'You are not required to testify, but the committee chair strongly encourages everyone to participate,' those materials read in part, adding that applicants could testify in person, via writing or by a Zoom video call.
The arts council staffer who manages the grant program, Kristin Burgoyne, apologized for giving applicants the impression that testimony was optional, saying at a Feb. 21 meeting of the full House Appropriations Committee that she had misinterpreted Fitzpatrick's expectations.
As the arts grant bill advanced through the remainder of the legislative process, lawmakers restored funding for a few applicants that they judged to have extenuating circumstances for not providing verbal testimony — in one case because an executive director had left for another job and in another because an executive director had died.
However, Fitzpatrick has resisted restoring other grant awards, instead using the funding cuts to broadcast his displeasure with how the Arts Council, a state agency, is managing the grant program. He's said he doesn't like how the grants are awarded to some of the state's largest arts organizations session after session, creating a dynamic he's likened to an 'entitlement program.'
'The Arts Council I think has made a serious mistake,' Fitzpatrick said as the bill was debated on the House floor April 7. 'Instead of vetting these projects and creating some criteria to rank them and select some that should be better than others, they've kind of treated this thing like running salami through the slicer — everybody gets a piece of the pie.'
A separate bill sponsored by Fitzpatrick, House Bill 757, would rework how the arts grants are awarded in future sessions, requiring the Arts Council to rank proposals with a system that prioritizes smaller organizations and ones that haven't received recent grant awards. That bill has passed both chambers of the Legislature with bipartisan support and is headed to the governor.
As the debate has drawn on, Fitzpatrick drew criticism for not disclosing that his wife, Connie, is on the board of a grant recipient that got more money than originally proposed. St. Timothy's Summer Music Festival in Anaconda had its grant increased from $5,000 to $12,600 as a result of the cut dollars being redistributed.
State law generally requires legislators to disclose conflicts of interest before taking part in a legislative matter 'that would directly give rise to an appearance of impropriety as to the legislator's influence, benefit, or detriment.' In a statement to the Daily Montanan, Fitzpatrick said he isn't affiliated with the festival himself and does 'not personally benefit' from the grant.
Fitzpatrick's son, House Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, referenced the Daily Montanan's coverage of his father as he made an ethics disclosure during the House debate on the grants bill.
'My mother is a board member of one of these groups that's getting some money here under this — I guess I'll disclose that,' Fitzpatrick said. 'I guess I'll disclose that for him too.'
Among the organizations that lost funding as a result of the wrangling over the bill are the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture in Bozeman, the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings, the Billings Symphony Society, the Bitterroot Performing Arts Council, Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization, Cohesion Dance Project in Helena, the Daly Mansion Preservation Trust in Hamilton, the Glacier Symphony and Chorale in Kalispell, the Grandstreet Theatre in Helena, the Lewistown Arts Center, Queen City Ballet in Helena and the Whitefish Theatre Co. A full list of the organizations funded or defunded as the bill heads to the governor's desk is here.
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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.