The coffers of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture – the grantmaker that spends cigarette tax dollars on the arts – have been running dry for years as people give up smoking. A tax that yielded $20 million in 2007 brought in just $10 million last year, according to advocates for the levy.
That means it’s time to ask voters for more.
Cuyahoga County Council is poised to vote this coming Tuesday to place a 3.5-cent-per-cigarette tax to the November ballot. That tax would replace the 1.5-cent-per-cigarette rate that voters first approved in 2006.
The new tax is expected to raise $160 million over 10 years, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Executive Director Jill Paulsen told council last week.
Voters can expect to see online ads, mailers and in-person advocacy at summer events, according to political consultant Jeff Rusnak of R Strategy Group. He’ll be guiding the campaign as it sells voters on the idea of upping the tax on cigarettes.
“We will be running a very proactive campaign,” he told Signal Cleveland. “We know the case for funding is very strong, that voters in the past have supported this issue overwhelmingly and understand the benefits from the tax.”
Arts and cultural groups large and small benefit from that money. To name just two: Playhouse Square received $872,438 this year, while $3,410 went to the Cleveland Inner City Ballet.
Plenty of campaigns will be competing for voters’ attention this year, from Joe Biden and Donald Trump down to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Rusnak said he saw CMSD’s levy as complementary – as he put it, there’s a connection between the schools and the arts.
Assembly for Action, the campaign’s political action committee, paid for polling last year to test the waters. Rusnak didn’t share hard numbers, but sounded confident about the findings.
“We feel good about where we are,” he said. “We feel good about the support in the community and the direction we’re going.”
