Great headline, sad story from KY:
Library bill could leave libraries’ bills. Librarians throughout the state are raising alarms over legislative proposals that they say could result in drastic cuts, including closing some libraries.
Evansville-Vanderburgh Pub- lic Library director Marcia Au said, “I don’t know what we would be able to keep open if the bill is approved. It depends whether they are looking at just operating budgets or cumulative budgets.”
Not Kentucky!
Actually this is Indiana. As a border city, Evansville news is covered by Kentucky newspapers.
Public Libraries in Indiana are independent municipal units with the authority to levy tax. Growth of the levy is controlled by state law and overseen by a state agency, and in fact an increase of more than 5% is possible only if the unit’s assessed valuation growth is higher than the state average.
For the last year plus all of Indiana has been involved in a court ordered change of the way property values are determined for property tax purposes. About half of the counties have not sent any tax bills during 2003 and local government units in those counties have had to borrow money for cash flow.
The whole process is a mess and there are a lot of upset voters. The legislature is looking for someone to blame, and it appears that they have decided to blame local government for spending too much. Thus this proposed law for what we refer to as fiscal review.