WASHINGTON, D.C. — The founder of Port Angeles’ Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts testified before a Congressional committee last week to push for increased National Endowment of the Arts funding.
Karen J. Hanan, who founded the annual Port Angeles festival in 1994 and served as its executive director, testified Wednesday before a U.S. House Interior Appropriations subcommittee in her role as executive director of the Washington State Arts Commission.
Gov. Jay Inslee appointed Hanan to the state position in January 2014.
She had left the festival in 2000 to head Arts Northwest, a private nonprofit based in Port Angeles that serves four states.
Hanan was invited to testify by Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who serves on the subcommittee.
Kilmer represents the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula.
Hanan urged the Appropriations Interior Subcommittee to support a budget of no less than $155 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, an increase of $9 million from current funding.
“The response was very positive and quite optimistic,” Hanan said from her Olympia office Friday.
“I think they were impressed by the impact the NEA has on the country.”
Hanan told the committee that the production of arts and cultural goods added more than $698 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“Approximately 40 percent of all NEA funding is assigned directly to the states where decisions can then be based on local knowledge of a region’s unique cultural, social, economic and artistic environment,” she said.
In its 2014 report to the Office of Budget and Management, the NEA reported that “the ratio of matching to federal funds generally approaches or exceeds 9:1,” because of leveraging private funds, she said.
“This far surpasses the required non-federal match of at least one to one, and is one of the most impactful results to be found anywhere across government,” she told the committee.
The subcommittee will put together a bill that includes discretionary spending for all agencies under its jurisdiction.
No action has been taken yet.
Among other arts representatives the committee heard were Anita Stewart, executive and artistic director of Portland Stage in Portland, Maine, and Melia P. Tourangeau, president and CEO of Utah Symphony and Opera.
“I had come the farthest,” Hanan said, noting that her trip was supported by the Americans for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
Her first time testifying before Congress was “fairly overwhelming in concept” but “ wasn’t as intimidating as I expected,” Hanan said.
It takes a lot of preparation, she said.
“You’re given five minutes so you have to do a really good five minutes.”
Hanan, who moved to Port Angeles in 1992, continues to maintain a home in Port Angeles, while living most of the week in Olympia.
She expects to speak at public venues in Port Angeles and Port Townsend in May.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
