Thanks to a tip-off from a reader, we saw that there is fuss about subsidies in Eindhoven. Now that happens quite often, but here something special was going on. The Eindhovens Dagblad reported (Blendle link €) that the entire Supervisory Board of the Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven had resigned. There was shit to do because, writes the ED, the members found it unpalatable that the Eindhoven College was once again taking control of the distribution of cultural subsidies.
Time for a look into Eindhoven's cultural politics. In 2016, the Eindhoven City Council decided that it no longer wanted to decide on individual cultural subsidies. After all, this is something that many local, as well as national, politicians find annoying: nagging art institutions. With Thorbecke in hand ('The government is not a judge of science and art') people prefer to outsource as far as possible the task of determining who does and does not receive government subsidies. That's why we have culture funds here, and why Eindhoven has the Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven. That foundation gets all the money earmarked for culture subsidy and gets to decide to whom it is allocated. Very convenient. Politicians only have to look at it once every four years.
Not authorised
All that goes well, until it goes wrong. And so it went wrong when the Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven decided that the Eindhoven Library should get less money. The library lodged an objection, went to court if no response was forthcoming, lost all its subsidy after one appeal, appealed again and the whole thing ended up before the Council of State. That supreme court decided in February that the Culture Eindhoven Foundation had no authority at all to decide who gets a subsidy or not. Indeed, those kinds of decisions that involve public money and the welfare of citizens should always be legal decisions, and a private club like such a foundation is not allowed to do that at all.
And so this is where it gets interesting. Because what about those funds that the central government actually spends some of the grant money on? Imagine that those actually, when all is said and done, have no legal authority either? It's all about Article 4:23 of the General Administrative Law Act. That states: ''An administrative body shall provide a subsidy only on the basis of a statutory provision regulating the activities for which a subsidy may be provided.' In plain language, this means that any grant award is a legal arrangement, so must be preceded by democratic decision-making.
Eindhoven blunders
I decided to ask the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, which deals with our cultural subsidies. After poking around a bit, they told me that the cultural funds are well regulated. They are implementers of statutory regulations, the ministry stated, and are therefore open to all appeal possibilities and review that are set up for this purpose. In Eindhoven, according to the ministry, this had been arranged less conveniently: the council had mandated decision-making on subsidies to the municipal executive, which in turn called in a third party. And so then the legal basis falls away.
Those who might have hoped - or feared - that so now the legal basis under fund subsidies everywhere has fallen away, can sleep easy - or stay awake. It is now mainly up to Eindhoven's mayor and aldermen to fix things. So the college has done on 19 April, but not in the way the Eindhoven Culture Foundation thought was right. Instead of establishing a legal basis for the next four years, as in the case of government funds, the municipal council will again take all decisions on cultural subsidies and then send them to the SCE for implementation. Which has thus basically become just a counter. There, besides College and Council, no more additional Supervisory Board.
Rush job
Why this rather wooden-looking solution was chosen is clear from the reply I received from the lawyers of the Eindhoven municipality. They state: 'This mandate arrangement is the quickest and - very importantly - a legally valid and tried and tested construction.... Although the College is ultimately responsible for the decisions taken via the mandate arrangement, the assessment and implementation of the decisions is left entirely with SCE via the mandate. The College has no intention of taking control of this process or interfering with SCE's implementation. What has been paramount in this choice is that in this way SCE will be operational again in the shortest possible time and the subsidising of the cultural sector can continue.'
The councillor does argue that this is not the very best scheme, but that there is too little time for a good scheme: 'The ordinance does more justice to the original intention of distancing SCE from the municipality. However, the disadvantage of an ordinance is that it requires an amendment to the General Subsidy Ordinance (ASV) and/or the adoption of a separate Subsidy Ordinance Culture Eindhoven. This takes more time, as it requires a council decision.'
Evaluation moment
And then a tail end follows. An evaluation of the SCE also took place this year, and in the autumn the city council will discuss the results. This is the reason why the councillor does not want to make any major decisions yet and adopt a real ordinance. Then it seems, but of course this is pure malicious speculation, that the councillor has an inkling that this evaluation is not going to turn out very well for the SCE. Or: that there will be something completely different for the next grant period. Or perhaps in the new, borealere political climate in Brabant does have councillors who actually want more influence on subsidies. Of course, that could also be a very good cause for chagrin for a Supervisory Board like that of the SCE.
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