Chairman Phil Mendelson convened a public roundtable of the Committee of the Whole to consider the mayor's nominations for reappointment of four individuals to the Commission on Arts and Humanities. The hearing included testimony from a representative of an arts nonprofit and statements from three of the four nominees. The record will remain open until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2026.
I'm going to order this hearing or round table. This is a public round table of the committee of the whole of the council of the District of Columbia. I'm Phil Mendelssohn, Chair of the Council and Chair of the Committee of the Whole. The Committee of the Whole is actually having two hearings this morning, or today. We start with this public round table, where we are going to hear testimony regarding the mayor's nomination for reappointment of four individuals to the Commission on Arts and Humanities. That hearing will probably be about a half an hour, maybe a little longer. I'll take a brief break and then we'll start the second hearing, which is a public hearing on the mayor's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027. And we will be hearing testimony in this order, first concerning the Department of Buildings, then considering the Commission on Arts and Humanities, then the Office of Planning, and then the excuse me, the Office of Zoning, and concluding with the Office of Planning. We actually have a lot of witnesses who signed up. We are not going to start with the on the budget hearing. We're not going to start with the Commission on Arts Humanities because we were translation services were requested for uh of us for some witnesses for the Department of Buildings, so we'll start with them. In any event, we're going to go through these nominations. I'll adjourn the uh round table and then uh I'll take up the budget hearing. On um March 12th, the mayor sent to the council for nominations for reappointment to the commission on arts and humanities. PR 26-569, Demetrius Butler, PR 26-570, Janice Kim, PR 26-571, Carla Sims, and PR 26-572, Hector Torres. The stated purpose of these resolutions is to confirm the mayor's nomination for reappointment of these four individuals. The Commission on Arts and Humanities is an independent agency in the District of Columbia Government. It's responsible for evaluating and initiating action on matters relating to arts and humanities and is the designated state arts agency for the District of Columbia. The Commission is also responsible for selecting and distributing grants to artists and arts organizations in the District of Columbia, as well as grants to the to humanities DC. I would say the bulk of what the Commission does, or at least its budget, is grants, which are important for many arts organizations. The record in this matter will be open for two weeks. That is, it will close at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20th, 2026. We have, I believe, six or seven witnesses who registered to testify. I believe most of them are online, beginning with Rebecca Lichtenberg, who is executive director at Studio Theater, Mark Chalfont, who is executive and artistic director at Washington Improv Theater, Amy Austin, who's president and CEO of Theater Washington, Anderson Wells, who is managing director at Constellation Theater Company, Alexis Hartwick, who is managing director at Keegan Theater, Abigail Cady, who is director of institutional partnerships at Arena Stage, and Andrew Dolan, who is executive director at Solus NUA. I am told that Andrew Dolan is the only one who is here. And is online. So let's turn to Andrew Dolan. You're up. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Andrew Dolan. I'm the executive director of Solos NUA and arts nonprofit here in DC. Thank you for taking some time to listen to the arts leaders here in town. I feel and we all feel that DC is in a period of economic uncertainty, and the nonprofit art sector has yet to fully recover from the destabilizing effects of the pandemic. And I appreciate the focus the mayor has put into stabilizing restaurants and retail and the work that the council has done to provide continued support structures for our neighborhoods. And it is the districts, your continued support for the arts. That means that here in DC, arts are integrated into the lives of the folks who live here. And that's not the case in other cities. And it's something I'm really grateful for here in DC. I live over on 14th Street near Logan Circle, and there are a few restaurants that have four lease signs in the window. And when a restaurant goes, oftentimes another restaurant comes in. There's an entrepreneurial spirit of somebody who can take out a business loan and start a new endeavor. When it comes to the nonprofit arts, we don't have that luxury. A nonprofit organization is really a network of trusting relationships that have been built up over many, many years. And when there is cuts to our funding model year over year, it makes it difficult for us to stay in business and provide the communities with the services that we offer oftentimes for free or reduced cost. And unlike a restaurant, like we're when a nonprofit goes away, another one isn't necessarily going to pop into that new vacant space. There aren't economic incentives for arts nonprofits to start up. It takes like a decade to finally get to a place where one can have a space and provide performances or galleries. And when there are destabilizing factors to our funding, that makes really really difficult landscape to work in.