If you’re not a working artist in King County, or some sort of moneyed arts patron, you may well have no idea what 4Culture is. But if you make art in or around Seattle, or work on cultural preservation projects, you definitely do, because 4Culture forms a crucial component of the funding process for local artists, cultural centers, and arts organizations, and currently, they’re under threat.

Here’s how it works–the state levies a 6.5-percent tax on hotel and lodging. Back in the 1970s, when King County was looking for ways to fund building the Kingdome, the state agreed to give the county a 2-percent credit against the tax collected in King County to service the debt. Over the years, the amount collected exceeded that necessary to fund the debt, and so 4Culture came to exist, using part of the money to fund arts and heritage projects in King County, with the rest dedicated to the Kingdome debt and supporting youth sports and tourism advancement.

But here’s the catch–in 2012, the program expires when the Kingdome debt gets paid off, so a group called Advocate4Culture has formed to press the legislature to pass bills to continue the funding. Currently, there are bills that have made it out of committee and are waiting for floor votes, so time is of the essence. Here are some important facts:

• The bills have nothing to do with taxes. Whether or not 4Culture continues to receive a credit on taxes collected, the state will continue to levy them; they won’t go away. The only change will be that in 2012, a major revenue stream to support culture, arts, heritage, and youth sports in King County will be lost.
• This is not just a King County issue. Many counties in the state have followed suit and receive a credit to support tourism activities and other local priorities.
• This is not just an arts issue. Rep. Frank Chopp, whose bill in the House is the main hope for preserving funding, has tied arts and heritage funding to increased funding for affordable housing, making it a win-win if it’s passed.
• 4Culture will not be able to continue funding at the same level if funding isn’t extended. Strictly speaking, 4Culture won’t go away in 2012; 40 percent of the money they receive has been put into an endowment to support their mission after 2012. But the endowment isn’t large enough to continue funding at the same level–nearly $5.2 million in 2008. Also, a lack of long-term funding will prevent them from helping other organizations with capital funding projects–such as the effort that is restoring Washington Hall.

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So how can you help? Visit Advocate4Culture’s website, or join them on Facebook or Twitter, to keep up with news and events, and to learn more about the bills currently before the legislature. Last night, they held a “laptop rally” in Georgetown, where people got together to write their representatives and encourage them to pass legislation to continue supporting 4Culture. Another rally is scheduled for Thursday at Caffe Vita in Pioneer Square, starting at 6 p.m. to coincide with First Thursday Art Walk.

Jonathan Raban

“‘Seattle–you got a lot of liberals there,'” Jonathan Raban says the man checking him in for the Nashville Tea Party Convention said. “I accepted his condolences.”

Raban’s Tea Party piece in The New York Review of Books is delightful reading not just for the chutzpah employed in sending an Englishman to a Tea Party, but also because Raban resists the urge to add one wingnut lump or two: his Tea Party survey explores the way all sorts of people with inflamed passions have gathered together, only to discover that the hobbyhorses that brought them don’t necessarily like the close quarters.

For Raban, author of Surveillance, a libertarian lean against government intrusion into private life was calling card enough that he could chat sociably with the gamut of Tea Partyers he met: the ones who vacationed in Amalfi and Tuscany, the ones with the second home in Torquay, the red-headed, sixtyish Virginian with two special-needs adopted daughters.

Only one man went public, even in a presumably “friendly” crowd, with overt racism. A table of Tea Partyers was recounting the public’s hoodwinking by the Obama campaign.

Obama was an unknown quantity when he was elected. He had no record, no experience; he was an empty suit about whom we knew nothing.

“Well,” said the alpha male, producing his ace of trumps, “we knew he was black.”

Later, one of Raban’s fellow conventioneers would tell him that “being here has made me realize that I am a liberal conservative.”

After all the invective heaped on Tea Party heads–and the attention focused on those mugging for TV coverage–it’s a relief to have at least one reporter not succumb to the temptation to caricature poorly, but to do it with Rabelaisian naturalism and zest. Diminishment is what creates a Tea Party in the first place.