"Utah Arts Council requested a $1 million increase in arts grants. It didn't happen," says UAC executive director Margaret Hunt, noting a continuing trend of flat or declining grant funding over the past decade.

Hale managers won its $100,000 ongoing funding through political connections rather than following the a long-standing "gentlemen's agreement" among arts groups to present a united lobbying front through the Utah Arts Council, say several non-profit arts directors.

"It felt secretive," says Scott Phillips, director of the Utah Shakespearean Festival of Hale's lobbying. "It seems like they are breaking the system."

But Hale Centre's development director Brent Lange argues that the theater, which has the highest attendance of any Utah theater company, was forced to go directly to the lawmakers because it has suffered "an injustice" at the hands of the Arts Council in recent years.

Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley City and House leader of the main budget committee, pushed the appropriation.

He says Hale Centre leaders convinced him it had been shut out of Arts Council funding by Salt Lake City arts groups.

"We have a system where certain organizations take a lion's share of the funding," Bigelow says. "I wanted to see some of that [funding] be spread around the state."

Anne Ewers, the outgoing chief executive of the Utah Symphony and Opera, warns Bigelow unwittingly may have made life more difficult for lawmakers.

"If groups do this end run, it completely destroys the system," she says. "The legislators need to realize that everybody's going to do it. They'll have chaos on their hands."

Make that a funding "land rush," says Chris Lino, managing director of Pioneer Theatre Company.

"It becomes about who is the most politically adroit rather than a process that can evaluate arts organizations," he says. "If the Legislature intends for us to go to them directly for money, then that's what we'll do."

Hale chief executive Mark Dietlein promises the theater will no longer apply for Arts Council grants, making the direct state funding a "win-win" for all nonprofits because it "enlarges the pie."

That's bunk, says Plan-B's Jerry Rapier, who is a member of the review panel that evaluates theater grant applications. "My philosophy would be $10,000 to 10 is better than $100,000 to 1."

Dietlein says the biggest winner will be Hale artists. "We have ear tagged that money to increase the compensation for actors and production teams," Dietlein says. The state money should translate into a 6 percent to 30 percent increase in actors' pay and a 15 percent to 20 percent increase for production workers.