State cuts off funding to halls of fame

As tourist-attracting monuments to Georgia’s great musicians and sports heroes, the halls were born in the 1990s in a much more favorable economy.

They lost funding in an era of drastic cutbacks, becoming a luxury lawmakers decided the state couldn’t afford.

“We’ve had to ask the question, ‘What is the role of government?’” Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, said. “Funding hall of fames is something you can do when you are flush with money. But in these austere times, you just have to say no.”

Joe McCutchen, an Ellijay retiree and a longtime critic of state spending of the halls, called legislators’ decision “great news for taxpayers.”

But Love said the state will lose something important if her facility, and others like it, close.

“My feeling is that Georgia music itself is a huge asset for the state -- culturally, economically and educationally,” Love said. “It’s devastating when you slash quality of life organizations beyond their ability to serve the public. I don’t think we will feel the full impact for some time, but it will be there.”

Local leaders have made financial pledges to keep the halls open in Macon without the state’s help, but questions remain about how long they will be viable.

$65 million, few visitors

The state isn’t completely out of the hall of fame/state museum business. Taxpayers still owe $8.7 million in payments on money the state borrowed to buy land, construct and equip the Georgia music, sports and golf halls of fame.

And state-funded Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College has taken over running of Georgia’s agriculture museum, spending about $588,000 on it this year.

In 20 years, the state plowed more than $65 million into state halls and museums to build and operate them.

In late 2008, a state audit concluded that the music museum would have to increase attendance from about 27,000 that year to more than 140,000 four years later to be self-sufficient. The sports museum, it said, would have to increase its paid attendance from 8,800 in fiscal 2008 to 166,000 in 2013.

They haven’t come close to those numbers since they opened in the 1990s.

The sports hall had set a goal of 100,000 visitors per year; the state audit said attendance peaked around 25,000 in the first few years and fell below 10,000 a year by 2005. A marketing analysis said the music hall should draw 250,000 to 350,000 visitors each of its first four years. Attendance generally remained in the 20,000 to 30,000 range during the past decade.

By comparison, on average, the Georgia Aquarium gets more paid visitors in a week than the two halls combined get in a year.

Where they came from

The state’s halls were the product of political deal-making by powerful legislative delegations from Macon and Augusta.

Sen. George Hooks, D-Americus, a former longtime Senate budget chairman, said Macon was initially talked about as a site for a massive prison hospital, but the state decided it couldn’t afford it. Instead, he said, the museums were born.

Meanwhile, Augusta leaders, including the then-majority leader of the Senate and the House speaker’s chief lieutenant, backed the Golf Hall of Fame.

The state borrowed about $21 million for the Macon halls and the Golf Hall of Fame. The final payment on the sports hall bond is due July 2013; the music hall bond is completed in 2015; and the one for the golf hall, 2016.

Meanwhile, the state usually pumped $1.5 million or so into the museums for operating expenses, which meant most of the facilities’ expenses were met by taxpayers.

But by the mid-2000s, lawmakers began talking of the need to wean the museums from state funding.

“None of those things were meant to stay forever on the state dole,” Hooks said. “The thought was we would get them up and running and they would become self-sufficient.”

Gov. Sonny Perdue vetoed funding for the Golf Hall of Fame in 2007 after the AJC reported that a decade after the state borrowed $6 million to build the facility, there still wasn’t a hall building.

Justifying the funding got harder when the recession hit and lawmakers had to begin cutting education spending — forcing teachers to take furloughs — and eliminating government jobs.

“We struggled every year to put money in the budget for it,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville. “I had guys who constantly said, ‘Why are we in that business?’”

But Rep. David Lucas, D-Macon, who fought for his local halls, said the state created the museums and now “you are asking the communities to take on the projects. The state created this monster.”

State should ‘step up’

The Macon halls have been cutting spending and looking for outside funds to help with operating expenses.

But Love said no museum in the country is self-sufficient. They survive on a mix of public funding, annual giving and earnings from museum foundations.

She said the music hall has enough money to stay open through June 30, and she developed contingency plans to divide the hall’s collection among three state colleges.

Mike Dyer, chairman of Halls of Fame Inc., said leases are being negotiated with the state to keep the sports hall open. His group has presented a three-year proposal to keep the music hall open in Macon as well.

“I certainly believe they are viable here,” Dyer said. “At the end of the day, can they pull in as many people as Atlanta might be able to?

“I’m not sure about that. But on the other hand, they can pull in a lot more than they have historically.”

Dyer said the state did little to market the halls.

“The problem is the state has operated it as a Macon hall of fame, not a state hall of fame, and everybody expected Middle Georgia to support these museums by itself. Well, Atlanta can’t support the High [Museum of Art] by itself.”

Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the Allman Brothers Band and, later, the Rolling Stones and a 2004 inductee to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, said it’s imperative for the museum to stay open and in Macon, where there is significant local support.

“If we let it fade away, that would be the worst possible thing to let happen,” Leavell said, adding that Georgia “has one of the richest histories of music of any state in the nation.”

He said the hall could have stronger marketing, but it still also needs state support.

“I think the Legislature needs to step up to the plate and provide at least a degree of funding for it,” Leavell said. “I know of hardly any similar entity that doesn’t get support from a state legislature.”

Vince Dooley: ‘Keep alive these memories'

Vince Dooley, the legendary Georgia football coach and athletic director who was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1978, said many top halls of fame struggle financially.

“The reason that Georgia has been chosen as the site of the National Football Foundation [College] Hall of Fame is because it was in trouble,” Dooley said. “It went from New Jersey, it went to Ohio, it went to Indiana and now it is coming here. It’s a challenge for all of those types of hall of fames.”

But Dooley said he doesn’t want to see the sports hall die.

“There are a lot of sports heroes people look up to and learn about and hear about. To keep alive those memories ... I think is a good thing.”

Love would be sad to see the museum close, but she gets the politics behind the Legislature’s decisions.

“Nobody wants to go back to their districts and say you cut out teachers but you funded that hall of fame,” she said. “It is unfortunate it is positioned that way because it’s not accurate, but I do understand the emotional argument.”

Love believes losing the hall would hurt the state.

“When businesses and corporations are looking to relocate, quality of life is one of the first things they look at,” she said. “If you’ve got a community that says, ‘Yes, we’ve got an industrial park, but the schools are terrible, we have no libraries, we have no museums and we have no parks,’ you are going to drop down or off the list.”

Staff writer Bo Emerson contributed to this article.