Where has the mayor of Huntersville been all these years? It is far, far too late to pop up and decry the inevitable funding cuts to local arts groups, cuts mandated by a conscious policy of spending millions of public dollars on new performance spaces.

For at least five years it has been obvious that to simply assume, as local leaders did, that arts groups and the ASC could always raise more money next year was fraught with peril and financially unsound. Yet this was done in order to make the numbers “work” for speculative, publicly subsidized ventures like the Wachovia Arts Tower. Some of us pointed out this was a bad idea then.

Now that reality has hit, Swain tries to up the ante with a ridiculous argument that Government cuts to arts groups threaten our area economy. No. Bad fiscal policy does. If Mayor Swain wants to join the fight against that, there is plenty of work to do. And all of us are half-crazed for trying such a thing, so she’d fit right in.