Your taxes to fund Psycho Beach Party film?

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Senate Bill 1582 dedicates millions of Covid funds to bailout Oregon arts organizations and declares it an emergency.

SB 1582 includes:

• $250,000.00 for Portland Art Museum’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow.   The Center this very month is featuring high-culture fine artwork like a film showing of the 2000 film Psycho Beach Party.   This is the same Portland Art Museum that fired 175 volunteers and replaced them, in part, with paid employees.  The Willamette Week has a great article on this.  They fired 175 helpers for lack of diversity — which may be illegal.  Also, the new program must have been a massive failure because the Portland Art Museum Facebook page is begging everyone for more volunteers (just months after laying off 175).   Are taxpayers paying the Art Museum’s mistake?

• $ 2,555,175.00 for Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  For over a decade the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has drawn complaints from longtime ticket-holders for injecting too much politics into classical Shakespeare plays.  Mary McDonald Lewis on Substack reported on the decline of the festival.   It speaks about over-paid 6 figure administrators.  It also quotes fans complaining about Shakespeare politics such as, “My friends and I went to the OSF every summer for years. We all stopped going .. At least a decade ago, the progressive agenda was already making most shows unwatchable. Regardless of where one stood on the political spectrum, it was cringe”  The OSF has $90 million in assets, but needs a quick $2.5 million to survive.  Is this the best use of our taxpayer dollars?

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