The Ohio General Assembly is due to vote on a budget that could reduce library funding by up to 25%:
“With a finite amount of taxpayer dollars to work with,” said [Highland County District Library directory Judy] Lindley, “something will have to be cut in order to have a balanced budget. At this time, it would appear that local government and library funding would be a possible way to cut” …
As funding has decreased through the years, Lindley said that the library has found ways to cut corners, and has been successful in saving money. But when funding gets cut, there are not many areas left in which to save.
Complete article from the Hillsboro Times-Gazette. More in an article previously posted here.
Hmm…
Since I am actually in Ohio (still…), I will say that that piece is the only one that even references libraries getting whacked to the tune of a 25% cut. Mark Tuscano even reported in this morning’s edition of the Ashtabula Star Beacon that the figure for library cuts is only to be 5% according to present planning. Counties and cities are supposed to be hit 20% while townships and villages will get hit 10%. Such cuts are percent reductions in state-level funding as compared to the prior biennium. then I would think the story cited from the Hillsboro Times-Gazette is a wee bit off.
Of course, all of this is just Governor Taft’s (a Republican from Cincinnati) proposal to the General Assembly. A substiute bill that resembles Taft’s proposal very little prepared by the General Assembly’s Republican leadership is anticipated to come out in early April from what I remember reading on the Ohio Library Council web site. The whole thing must come to a close by June 30th as the clock cannot constitutionally be stopped as to getting a budget passed to take effect for the 2006-2007 budget biennium.
Re:Hmm…
But isn’t that what they were saying? That a lot of their income comes from local taxation not direct state funding alone and therfore their proportion of local funding will reduce as well?
I’m in the UK so don’t know how it works in the US but thats the impression I got from the article.
Re:Hmm…
By and large in Ohio, public libraries don’t get much of any money from local taxation. Local public libraries average roughly 80-100% of their operating budget coming from the Ohio General Assembly. Cuts to the 88 counties as well as municipalities and townships do not impact libraries except in the most infinitessimal way on the local level. Libraries have separate levies (if they even have them) and those monies go straight to the libraries through the County Auditor of the relevant county (who acts only as a pass-through pretty much) and are not managed by local jurisdictions for the most part (i.e. Ashtabula County’s Board of County Commissioners cannot steal money from Ashtabula County District Library to fund the criminal justice system). Libraries are considered their own separate districts for the purposes of taxation and many other matters.
Out of everything I have seen in the matter, the original story from the Hillsboro Times-Gazette is just way too creaky. Something does not seem right with it. If the Plain Dealer in Cleveland and others directly contradict that single story from that smaller newspaper, I most certainly doubt that smaller paper has an inside track into the workings of the Ohio General Assembly. A paper like the Plain Dealer has tons of members of the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate it can hit up for information and their stories are in agreement.
Initial library funding levels are to be frozen at that of the prior biennium once the 2006-2007 biennium kicks off on July 1 according to the current budget proposal. The reduction in the amount of income tax brought in will not impact that. FY2006 will see libraries receiving 5% less than they did in FY2004. The 21% reduction in overall income tax receipts taken in conjunction with the first-half freezing of state-level funding for libraries followed by a second-half cut from the level that funding was frozen at is a nullity.
I would be greatly worried about the substitute bill that is upcoming. What a substitute bill is is a drafted bill that gets inserted in lieu of the text of the original bill and then keeps the original bill’s bill number. Often the substitute bills do not look all that much like the original. Over Governor Taft’s tenure the substitute budget bills that get introduced usually bear very little resemblance to his proposal. Usually the substitute bill is drastically more severe than what the Governor proposed. Alas, since Governor Taft was elected a “happy medium” has rarely been found between his proposals and the proposals originating in the legislature.