The largest earmark in Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposed 2009 budget is not for children, the impoverished or health care, but rather a $10 million grant to Ford’s Theatre, the National Park Service-owned venue in downtown D.C.
“That’s outrageous,” D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson said of the proposed funding. “We’re struggling to make ends meet in some of the agencies, so sure, let’s shovel some money to a federal project.”
Fenty’s $5.7 billion spending plan includes roughly $26.8 million in earmarks for dozens of nonprofits, from the D.C. Central Kitchen and DC Vote to the Fort Dupont Ice Arena and the High Tea Society.
But the largest allocation by far is slated for Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated April 14, 1865. The facility, at 511 10th St. NW, which draws about 1 million visitors a year, was closed last August for a $40 million overhaul and isn’t expected to reopen until February 2009.
The capital campaign, led by the nonprofit Ford’s Theatre Society, has netted a $5 million grant from ExxonMobil and $8.5 million from the federal government, making D.C.’s proposed $10 million award the most generous so far.
The grant is five times more than the mayor’s next-largest earmark, a $2 million award to THEARC of D.C., whichhosts arts and recreation programs for thousands of underserved city youth. Dena Iverson, Fenty’s spokeswoman, said the mayor’s budget proposes grants for a variety of organizations, including Ford’s, “which is an important part of our local and national history.”
Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said there was no logical, competitive process for the distribution of arts funding. The city instead “gives large gifts to a few favored organizations,” he said.
Hannah Olanoff, spokeswoman for the theater’s society, said the group was “pleased to see something in the budget.” The society expects the theater’s “campus” — a modernized theater, museum, Petersen House, and the new Center for Education and Leadership — to be Penn Quarter’s economic anchor, while providing “substantive education experiences” for D.C. Public School students.
Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, who represents downtown, said Ford’s earmark is in keeping with previous large-scale grants to the Arena Stage, the Harman Center for the Arts and the Washington Ballet, and “is not unusual by any means.”
