Schumer Secures $1.5 Million for Shakespeare Fest

Theater groundbreaking expected next month

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York came to Philipstown on Tuesday (Aug. 6) to announce that he had secured $1.5 million in federal funds for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s newly approved outdoor amphitheater. 

“Shakespeare himself, as brilliant a man as he was, couldn’t create this gorgeous scenery which will serve as the backdrop for this new, permanent anchor for the arts in the Hudson Valley,” said Schumer, standing on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. The bluff, which was formerly the 11th hole of the now-closed Garrison Golf Course, will soon be the front row of the structure, which will be the first purpose-built Platinum LEED-certified theater in the country. 

Touting the arts as an economic engine, Schumer said that HVSF’s new permanent home (it has performed for decades in a seasonal tent) would not only attract tourism dollars but bolster the local workforce. “There will be good-paying construction jobs, and once construction is complete, HVSF plans to hire dozens of new staff positions,” he said. “This is a job creator in every way.”

Schumer has some personal experience with the Bard, noting he once appeared in a production of Julius Caesar in western New York. “Guess what part I played?” he said. “A senator!” 

The majority leader also has a history with HVSF, having staged a photo in 2020 at Boscobel, the festival’s former home, to promote the Save Our Stages Act, which provided funding during the pandemic to arts institutions that had to temporarily close. Davis McCallum, HVSF’s artistic director, credited the legislation with saving the festival.

The federal funding for HVSF will come from the fiscal year 2025 appropriations for the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, which also pays for development in rural communities. Schumer said that the bill already has enough bipartisan support to pass the Senate and is scheduled for a vote before the end of the year. He said that, although the bill is facing some opposition from “some intransigent folks over the Republican House side,” as majority leader, “I’ve always been able to get the budget through. And they can’t touch our earmarks.” (See below.)

When is an Earmark Not an Earmark?

Technically, the $1.5 million in federal funding for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival will be included in a 2025 appropriations bill as “congressionally directed spending.” Colloquially, it’s known as an “earmark,” although as Sen. Chuck Schumer said this week, that word doesn’t quite mean what it used to.

“Earmarks were actually good until they were abused,” he said. In the past, they allowed members of Congress to direct federal spending to projects in their districts that they were familiar with. “I know what Putnam County needs more than some bureaucrat in Washington,” Schumer said. “I’ve been here.”

But the process was also secretive. “You didn’t know who was asking for what, and many of them were going to for-profit groups,” said Schumer. Things came to a head with the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, a $223 million structure proposed in 2005 to connect Gravina Island, which had about 50 residents, to Alaska. [That would be $375 million today.] Although the project received an earmark, “they couldn’t tell us who put it in the budget,” said Schumer. The bridge quickly became a symbol of wasteful spending in Washington.

The earmark for the bridge was canceled, followed by the earmark program itself. “But then we all realized that we needed them,” Schumer said. “So we reformed them. Now they’re all public. They have to have a hearing. You have to stand up and say, ‘This is my earmark, and I’m proud to do it.’ It can’t go to anything for-profit. So now it works. [The HVSF theater] is one of many examples. I get more earmarks than anybody, and the whole state benefits.”

McCallum said that a groundbreaking ceremony for the theater, which received final approval from the Philipstown Planning Board on July 18, will take place next month, at which point HVSF will announce how much funding it needs to complete the project.

Schumer noted that for decades, New York has been what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan referred to as a “donor state,” contributing more to the federal government than it received in return. “For the last two years, we’ve actually gotten back more money than we sent,” he said. “It’s good to have the majority leader come from New York.”