The
wise man probably would not write this, but I’ve heard some stuff of
late that rather ticks me off. Wow
old age toning down the language. Some
of my colleagues have been placing the blame for the reduction in public
library funding on the State Library and OLC. God forbid I should defend these institutions but if I
can’t be fair I can be nothing.
Read
my lips: it ain’t the fault of Luke Skywalker, Lucky Lynda, Careful
Carol, the Lunatic Council Board, the new Sywasher, C<T< or anyone
else that has used a public library in this or last century.
Recently
the richest public libraries in the land, those within the confines of
the Buckeye State took it on the chin in the legislature.
As a youth I remember the last king of Egypt commenting that
although the Brits were gonna give him a million dollars (or was it
pounds?) per year that “poverty is living with less then you are used
to.”
Having
some familiarity with the ways of High Street there was some relief that
in this odd numbered year I was relieved of the necessity of calling on
the friends and supporters of libraries in Southern Ohio to remind them
of the worthy services my former employer provided for area residents
and how intertwined those efforts were with those of the member
libraries. I did make some
calls and contacts on behalf of other efforts and learned right away
there were much bigger fish to fry.
Ohio
is in the throes of a political battle whose ramifications may force a
shift, nee revolution, before it concludes.
The Ohio Supreme Court has deemed the legislature is neglecting
the school children of the state. Several
proposed fixes have been deemed insufficient by this august group.
We await (July 17th, 2001) their latest ruling on the most recent
proposal. My money is on
the fix ain’t good enough.
The
fix, 1.2 BILLION dollars thrown at public education by the legislators
works out to something like 15% (I don’t have the data, just my memory
of news reports to rely on, feeble as that might be) across the board
budget increases for every district (more or less). I don’t think Shrimp Louis is going on the school lunch
menu though I fear there will be lots more football uniforms purchased
than school library books with this windfall. Having spent the spring substitute teaching in several local
districts (I wouldn’t have to do this if every library would just buy
one copy of the Science Fair Toolkit) the need is there – not only in
libraries - but in just about everything.
For
those of you who have not (or chosen not to) look at your deferred comp
account or anything else you have socked away in the market, the economy
is in the crapper (apologies to namesake Thomas).
The budget boys know this, and projections are down, down, down.
I
have a great deal of empathy for a local boy done good, John Carey.
A more decent, honest, honorable man you could not find.
Even more amazing he is a legislator and this year was honored
with the chair of the House Finance Committee.
I can’t imagine what it is like getting up in the morning
knowing the Supreme Court has a 12 gauge aimed at your head and a
plethora of state agencies needing additional cash pulling every favor
they have acquired in the last four decades to just maintain their
funding levels. He is
giving Job a run for the money in the patience department.
The
former mayor of Wellston, ardent library supporter (some day we will
tell the fax machine story) and humble proponent of Appalachian
development, John faced perhaps the most difficult task of anyone in his
shoes in memory. There is
absolutely no way he could play win-win with any part of this mess.
The
only choice the legislature had was to rob every Peter to pay for
Schools.
Some
of my old friends under the dome were quite relieved when the first
words out of my mouth were not “maintain LLGSF”.
They too knew this was a battle they could not take on.
For
those of you in Information 101 (in the non-public sector aka Lobbying
101 but since public agencies are only permitted to provide information
…) your first lesson is pick your battles.
Lesson two is listen between the words.
Legislators will often say there is nothing they can help you
with, you have to develop a set of ears to know when they really mean
it. I was told early on by
folks I have known, worked with, and respected for more than a decade
that every single shekel, drachma, and penny was going to K-12
education. The orders had
come from high, it was a done deal, and pray the economy picks up so the
next biennium isn’t this bad.
The
guys with the wigs I think will torch the latest proposal for a simple
reason: the cash provided public schools is a one-time deal.
Legislators can ballyhoo their support for the future, but some
of them, perhaps many of them, won’t be there.
My read is the Ohio Supreme Court wants a permanent fix with a
permanent revenue stream - some sort of dedicated source.
The
problem with a dedicated source is the guys in power.
All politics are the same, only the players are different.
The Bedouins spend a decade trying to control the town.
When they finally move in they have to spend all their energy
defending it against those they threw out.
In another decade they are Bedouins again.
Being
chair of the Socialist Workers Party for Jackson County, I look upon the
scene from rather a pure prospective.
Trust me, I’ve eaten bad chicken with all of em as any good
library director should. The
“R”’s have ultimate control (just as the “D”’s did in times
previous) and have made their hay on “no news taxes.” While things are good, and as long as the Supreme Court
hasn’t ruled against you, you’re cool.
To give the schools what they need will either require a
dedicated chunk of the income tax (so much for our rebates) or an
increase (as in our neighbor to the north who woody hated have done) of
the sales tax. This by
nature makes an “R” very uncomfortable because there goes the hay.
The
latter, a sales tax increase bothers me more than the former because it
impacts those on the bottom (not necessarily “R”’s).
A guy who worries about what the sales tax increase will do to
the annual purchase of his Mercedes has not much to cry about.
Public
libraries in Ohio are the perfect example of what a dedicated source of
funding can do. In the
first six years the poorest libraries rose from $0.50 to $0.76 on the
dollar in per capita funding. The
’93 “freeze” wiped out those advances, but when you average from
seven to thirteen percent annual increases (again my memory from data no
longer available to me) you can figure it out.
You don’t have to go very far to see the results of that
increase either, and the library users are happy campers (and more of
‘em too.)
LLGSF,
in theory, was to provide equal per capita funding for public library
services to every citizen in the state in fifty years.
An influx of cash is needed (to wipe out the damage of the ’93
freeze) to have it function as originally proposed.
Nonetheless, the poorer libraries are much better off than they
were fifteen years ago even if they are still dwarfed by their big
brothers.
What
makes LLGSF work is the final “equalization” component of the
formula. Part one:
everybody got what they got last year.
Part two: everybody gets an equal increase. Part three: what’s
leftover goes to the poorest first.
For
those of you who don’t remember Jimmy Carter, his one contribution to
my development (ok he wore good sweaters too) is the idea of zero based
budgeting. The trend in
public finance is to start where you ended and add. The guy with the Nobel Peace Prize said nope, you start with
nothing and defend everything from scratch.
It
is difficult to face a High Street guy who says “you didn’t spend
what we gave you.” The
words of my former boss Shirley Mills Fischer are coming back to haunt
me: “People who have been poor all their life don’t know how to
spend money.” A Shelby
County (Tx. for clarification purposes) with plain truth.
The leadership of the library community has known about this
issue for years, and I may be the first to speak about it outside the
cloister, but it definitely took a large chunk out of the keeester this
year. My sense is this led
to the partial funding of OPLIN with LLGSF, but more of that anon.
Although
I am out of the loop, and don’t really miss a lot of the emails, the
membership publications of OLC never said “to the barricades” this
year. I am sure they heard
the same message I did. That
dog won’t hunt, just worry ‘bout feedin’ him through the winter.
In a heavy storm, lay low, don’t do something that will get you
hurt, and fight another day. Kind
a like Bill McNickle telling me to tighten the helmet strap and go as
low as I could during a Franklin Valley Golf Club Board meeting.
I
did hear rumors of an email promoting nuclear winter – “cut the
things the public use most” – but that only works if your defending
Moscow (twice.) If it does
exist, just a brash over reaction and hopefully not a trend anyone would
take seriously.
The
greatest danger in the whole process is using LLGSF to fund portions of
OPLIN. “They’ve got
plenty of money, let them fund their own computer network.”
And the answer is: “(insert your own good one here)”
I
remember the biggest battle we ever had funding my former organization
in the same halls. We had
been completely removed from a previous budget. During the following session the strategy was to remove
everything that hadn’t been in the original Governor’s budget the
preceding biennium regardless of the fact that the funds were reinstated
when it was all said and done.
When
you open a door on high street, all sorts of crazy things can walk
through. Term limits have made an even more interesting chess game
because the leadership today will not be here next session. Not only is there no history, there is no loyalty as there
was in the old days.
I
imagine the first strategy on the plate of the OLC Legislation committee
two years from now will be reinstating the $12.3 million shifted from
LLGSF to OPLIN back into LLGSF. There
next challenge will be to reinstate some of the ground lost this year.
In
rough numbers, state funding for public libraries rose from 185 million
to 496 (again my memory) in fifteen years.
You do the math.
The real losers in the cut were those libraries at the
bottom of the feeding chain. The
one component that made sense (and would resolve at least part of the
school funding fight) is the “equalization” component. That sent money to the poorest libraries and made a real
difference. The ’93 freeze whacked it hard.
The ’01 should whack the poor libraries even harder.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Just more apparent in hard times.
