State officials say they will need to write new contracts with at least 14 such organizations, an approach that lawyers for Cuccinelli (R) agree is legal and will allow funding for health-care groups to continue. Also, some funds briefly frozen for the groups after Cuccinelli’s opinion that the state constitution prohibits the funding will now flow with the new contracts, they said.
But the future of grants to Virginia cultural groups is less clear.
As recently as 2008, Virginia doled out more than $27 million to 300 groups around the state. The funding largely dried up as the recession led to deep state budget cuts, but many had hoped state dollars would return as the economy improves. They are now concerned that Cuccinelli’s legal opinion would make that unlikely.
“It’s our worst fear,” said Jo Hodgin, director of planning and initiatives for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, traditionally one the largest recipients of state funding.
From 2004 to 2008, Wolf Trap received $3.57 million in state money, which Hodgin said paid for an early-childhood education program that uses the arts to teach kids to read in 35 communities statewide.
Without public support, the initiative has been scaled back and now serves only children in Northern Virginia.
“While it’d be a great loss for Wolf Trap, it’d be an equally great loss for our colleagues throughout the commonwealth,” Hodgin said.
Legislators have secured the grants for years despite language in the state constitution that bars “any appropriation of public funds . . . to any charitable institution which is not owned or controlled by the Commonwealth.”
Cuccinelli’s legal opinion came in response to an inquiry from a state delegate who asked about the constitutionality of grants Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) proposed for two charities. Cuccinelli’s response: unequivocally not.
“It doesn’t give us any joy — but the constitution is the constitution,” Stephen McCullough, senior appellate counsel for Cuccinelli, told a legislative committee this month. “These are very worthwhile things. But we’re duty-bound in our advice to follow the constitution and precedent.”
He said contracts that provide state funding to groups for a particular service should pass constitutional muster. However, those that award direct grants would not, he said.
That prohibition could end the practice of “non-state agency funding” — earmarks requested by individual legislators for community groups that historically have served as a lifeline to small cultural institutions and a prized plum for elected officials.
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