Creating a workable formula for local arts funding is always a tricky project, but when your metropolitan area spans two different states, it becomes a major headache. Kansas City has struggled with different funding methods for years, and now, the city’s Metropolitan Cultural Fund has proposed a new system under which arts groups from across the region would compete for multiple “pools” of funding, which would come from a multicounty, bistate tax. But opposition is already being marshaled to the plan, which would require voters in all affected counties in both Missouri and Kansas to approve the new tax. Some opponents just plain don’t like public arts grants, but others consider it an issue of state sovereignty.