The office that hands out art money costs more than the art money itself.

Indoklás

This is the payroll of the academy's administrative apparatus — the staff who run the Secretariat, service the membership, and administer the grant programmes. The function the payroll supports is the operation of a state-financed artists' corporation that decides which artists and projects receive public money. That is subjective allocation by an appointed body, not a rights-protection or constitutional function. Once the academy is returned to the voluntary status it held before 2011 — a private association of artists, funded by its members, by patrons, and by whatever audience values its work — the state payroll has no remaining rationale. The figure invites a comparison the chapter's own tables make available. The Secretariat employs the people who administer 2,479.5 millió Ft of grant programmes and 2,331.8 millió Ft of life annuities. The administrative cost of moving roughly 4.8 milliárd Ft of transfers is itself nearly 5.9 milliárd Ft — the apparatus that decides who receives art money costs more than the largest single block of art money it hands out. This is the standing pattern of a discretionary allocator: the cost of running the allocation competes with the allocation, and grows with it, because every grant programme needs a committee, a call, an adjudication, and an audit.