[T]he state has given general fund dollars to Vermont PBS for almost half a century.
Now, faced with a $113 million budget gap between projected state spending and revenue in fiscal year 2016, lawmakers are poised to break that tradition.
The budget bill that the House voted out in March included a plan to cut Vermont PBS out of the state budget over the next two years. In FY 2016, the station would receive half the amount of its FY 2015 appropriation. The following year, the amount would be zero.
The Senate also OK’d cutting state funding for Vermont PBS, but stepped it back to a three-year process.
Holly Groschner, president of Vermont PBS, said state funding for public television is an important endorsement of a public/private venture in Vermont’s education and culture.
“We are the people we are because of the arts and education, and I’m afraid that eliminating that is the threshold for making the state poorer,” Groschner said Monday.
In addition to programs like “Downton Abbey” and “Nature,” the station provides educational programming for young children and for teachers, she said. According to Vermont PBS, 18,000 children watch programming on the station each day.
When Vermont PBS launched, the state’s $406,000 appropriation for FY 1968 covered 95 percent of operating costs. Now, the annual $546,683 state appropriation, which has been level funded for the past six years, comprises 9 percent of the budget.
According to Vermont PBS, the loss of state money will amount to about an $850,000 annual loss because of federal matching funds — in total, about a fifth of the station’s annual budget.
Groschner said that the station has already trimmed much of the fat in its budget. If the Legislature follows through with the elimination of funding in the coming years, it will likely hit Vermont PBS’ programming and staffing, she said.
Vermont PBS will seek to find alternative sources of funding to replace the state’s share in the next few years. That will likely be from grants and from contributors and donors, Groschner said.
The largest share of Vermont PBS’s budget comes from contributions — in FY 2014, that amounted to about $2.87 million.
Rep. Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, said that her colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee, which she chairs, were faced with deciding how the appropriation fits in with the “core functions of state government.”
“I think it is a wonderful, wonderful offering for the state, but I think there are more pressing needs that state government is responsible for,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the notion of cutting state funding for Vermont PBS has come up in past years, but has always been met with resistance. This year, however, in putting together a budget that includes some $53 million in cuts and funding changes, lawmakers grappled with defunding “basic supports for Vermonters,” she said.
“The budget is at a point where we’re going to lose chunks of state match almost everywhere we turn,” Johnson said.
