Governments have budget crises. At first, several took the obvious steps: implementing hiring freezes, capping travel and training budgets, telling department heads to cut budgets x%, etc. The next step was to alarm the public that things they valued, like education, would be seriously damaged without more money. Folkmoot is another thing many members of the public value, so the Haywood County TDA has announced it intends to cut its annual contribution of $9000 for advertising for Folkmoot. Of course I don’t think government should be in the business of collecting taxes to advertise for festivals. However, the Mountaineer article did not list the items in the TDA’s budget that will be retained and are of little value to the general public.