When it comes to the cost of culture -- still an urgent enterprise -- there's nobody more resourceful than Veletta Forsythe Lill, head of Dallas Arts District. She needs to be. The Wyly Theater and Winspear Opera House, once promised $2.5 million annually for maintenance in a contract with City Hall, saw that figure reduced to $800,000 this year as well as last. Thus far only $360,000 of that $1.6 million have been paid. But Maria Munoz-Blanco, director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, said that bills for about $300,000 are waiting for proper documentation, with another $600,000 or so also in the works.

If at first you don't secede, try, try again. It was last April 15, the cruelest day of the cruelest month, when Gov. Rick Perry appeared at a tea party in Austin and told an agitated crowd, disturbed about taxes due that moment, that the country was being strangled by taxation, spending and debt, this from the Huffington Post. Afterward, he explained to reporters that Texas could secede from the U.S. anytime it wanted to, though he wasn't pressing for it then. However, he said, "Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

The Wyly Theatre and Winspear Opera House have burst into being, bringing with them glamour, glory and great promise of things to come. Now Deedie Rose, one of the major movers of the performing arts center, and her husband, Rusty, have put up $2 million (from a gift of $5 million to the Trinity Trust) to create the Dallas City Design Studio, an essential effort if Dallas is to build on the brilliant beginning in the Arts District.

Who would envy Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm, as she rides the whirlwind at City Hall, struggling to cut $200 million from next year's budget? The figures are one thing; fairness another; and good, farsighted sense another still.