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In 2025, Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland) sponsored a bill in the Oregon House to declare an emergency in arts funding.
The bill—HB 3189—would have boosted the Oregon Arts Commission’s baseline annual funding from $4 million per biennium up to $10 million. The bill died in committee at the end of that legislative session, but Nosse says the dream is still alive. (The bill would have distributed about half a million dollars to Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera and Oregon Ballet Theatre, plus $2.5 million to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among other grants.)
In WW’s endorsement interview last week (along with Morey Straus, the Libertarian challenger for U.S. District 42 in Southeast Portland) Nosse stood behind HB 3189, despite its ultimate failure. He acknowledged that it’s been difficult to convince other lawmakers of the necessity of the arts.
“I’m struggling. They all intellectually understand what I’m saying, but we’re confronted by trying to ameliorate human misery,” Nosse said. Addiction, housing, healthcare and schools often take precedence over the arts, he said. “Those forces just win out in terms of trying to fund joy and beauty in this state, which, I would argue, is just as equally important.”
Because the funding levels are so low—Oregon spends an estimated 57 cents per capita on the arts each year, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, putting us at 39th out of 50 states—“we’re spreading the peanut butter a little too thin,” Nosse said. He would love the state to be able to fund the larger arts organizations like the opera and the symphony while still supporting smaller theaters and summer camps in rural Oregon.
“Not only is it a good economic driver and an employer, it’s also fun and wonderful,” Nosse said.
Watch the discussion here:
