16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Newsom slashes $11.5 million for performing arts fund, devastating Bay Area organizations
Cuts to public arts funding are now a one-two punch.
On Wednesday, May 14, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a budget proposal eliminating the $11.5 million allocated to the state's small nonprofits arts organizations through the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, or PAEPF. The fund, painstakingly created from leftover pandemic-era relief dollars allocated to the arts, sought to help organizations with budgets under $2 million comply with AB5, the so-called gig work bill that makes it harder to classify workers as independent contractors.
'Now the rug is being pulled out from under us,' San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company Managing Director Adam Maggio wrote in a letter to patrons.
The company had qualified to receive more than $150,000 for artists, technicians and staff through the program, he continued, noting, 'If the fund is eliminated, we'll be forced to make some very difficult decisions.'
Newsom's revision isn't final, though; the legislature makes its own amendments before passing a budget on June 15. In the meantime, SFBATCO and other performing arts companies are urging their followers to write their representatives, the state budget committee and the governor's office, with Dance Mission inviting allies to a letter-writing and phone-banking potluck at its Mission District facility at 3316 24th St. starting at noon on Saturday, May 17.
The move comes nearly two weeks after theaters, circuses, music groups and more across the region and the country received 'letters of termination' regarding their promised grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. The form letters told grantees their projects 'fall outside' President Donald Trump's priorities, which include commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and supporting the military, skilled trade jobs and the nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities and 'Hispanic Serving Institutions.'
'The recent NEA upheaval has already caused such a crisis. Imagine what more cuts will do,' Dance Mission Theater wrote in an email to its community, noting it's now poised to lose a promised $120,000 from PAEPF.
In announcing the revised state budget, Newsom cited an $11.95 billion shortfall, which he blamed on the president's's tariffs, tourism disruption and other economic uncertainty.
'Even as the Trump Slump slows the economy and hits our revenues, we're delivering bold proposals to build more housing, lower costs for working families, and invest in our kids,' he said in a statement.
Hillbarn Theatre Executive Artistic Director Steve Muterspaugh, whose Foster City company now expects to lose a promised $160,000 from the gutting of PAEPF, pointed out in an email to audiences that the fund represents a rounding error in the state budget. 'But it has an outsized impact on our sector,' he added.
Emilie Whelan, West Edge Opera's director of advancement, noted in an email to the Chronicle that PAEPF 'could keep us afloat and prohibit the next closure announcement,' referring to Aurora Theatre's recent decision to suspend production at its Berkeley venue next season.
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