Bill to abolish Arkansas State Library and its board advances despite librarians' opposition

Yahoo

02-04-2025

Five Arkansans spoke against Senate Bill 536 before the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. From left: Misty Hawkins, regional director of the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System; Allie Gosselink, director of the Calhoun County Library; Debbie Hall, grants manager for the Arkansas State Library; John McGraw,executive director of the Faulkner-Van Buren Regional Library; and Clare Graham, Mid-Arkansas Regional Library System director. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
After more than two hours of debate, an Arkansas Senate committee advanced a proposal on Tuesday to abolish the Arkansas State Library and its board, which disburses state funding to local public libraries.
Senate Bill 536 would transfer the agency's and board's powers, authorities, funds, contracts and employees to the Arkansas Department of Education. The State Library is already under the department's umbrella but operates independently.
The bill would delete all mentions of the State Library from existing state statute and make 'prohibit[ing] access to age-inappropriate materials to a person who is sixteen (16) years old or younger' a condition for public libraries to receive state funds from the education department.
'My entire library, all 30,000 books, would fit inside this room,' Calhoun County Library Director Allie Gosselink said, speaking against SB 536 before the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs in the Arkansas Capitol's Old Supreme Court room.
'I need a definition for 'access,' or I can't let anyone that's under 16… inside my door,' Gosselink continued.
SB 536 defines 'age-inappropriate material' as 'books, media, or any other material accessible at a public library containing images or explicit and detailed descriptions' of sexual acts, sexual contact and human genitalia.
The location and availability of books based on 'appropriateness' for minors was the thrust of Act 372 of 2023. The law would have given local elected officials the final say over whether to relocate challenged library materials some consider 'obscene' and made librarians legally liable for disseminating such materials.
A federal judge temporarily and later permanently blocked portions of Act 372; Attorney General Tim Griffin appealed the ruling in January.
New bill would dissolve Arkansas State Library and its board, set new library funding criteria
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, sponsored Act 372 and is the primary sponsor of SB 536.
Protecting minors from 'age-inappropriate material' in libraries and detaching from the American Library Association were the two requests Sullivan said he gave the State Library Board last month as conditions of its survival. The board voted against two proposals with those stated goals from Republican ex-senator Jason Rapert, who has called for the board's abolition.
Sullivan subsequently doubled down on his existing promise to dissolve the board. He introduced a bill in February to abolish both the State Library Board and the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, which oversees Arkansas PBS, but he said he reached an agreement with the latter in March that led him to decide not to dissolve the commission.
On Tuesday, Sullivan told the State Agencies committee that his requests to the State Library Board should not have been difficult to fulfill and that SB 536 would ensure the state's 'oversight' of entities that receive public funds.
'When people say 'Book Ban Dan' is taking away their library or killing their library, they chose that path,' Sullivan said.
SB 536 would require libraries to submit annual reports to the Department of Education that include 'an assurance of compliance with the applicable laws of the state, rules promulgated by the department, and the policies of the public library.'
For example, Sullivan said, libraries should not espouse diversity, equity and inclusion policies or allow transgender people to use bathrooms that do not match their gender assigned at birth. Sullivan has sponsored or supported laws to these ends this year and in 2023.
Four library directors, including Gosselink, and Arkansas State Library grants manager Debbie Hall spoke against SB 536. No members of the public spoke for the bill.
If the education department determines a library no longer qualifies for state funding, the library would be allowed to appeal the decision as long as it can prove 'the determination was made in error' or 'the determination was correct but remedial actions have been taken by the public library to bring the public library into compliance,' according to SB 536.
The appeal process would not be sufficient if the law goes into effect July 1 in accordance with its emergency clause, said Misty Hawkins, regional director of the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System, which has seven branches in Franklin, Johnson, Logan and Yell counties. The library system would have to rewrite its interlocal agreements between the four counties to account for the new code and repealed code in SB 536, which is not possible to complete in only three months, Hawkins said.
'As a director, I am now doing more [to] ensure my libraries are in compliance in order to get the same amount of funding,' which is $188,000 from the state, Hawkins said.
She also said SB 536 does not specify how librarians must determine whether a book is appropriate for a 16-year-old but not for a 15-year-old. All five people who spoke against the bill said libraries already organize books on shelves in an age-appropriate manner in accordance with existing standards, and State Library Board members have made similar statements.
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After rejecting the two proposals put forth by Sullivan and Rapert last month, the State Library Board passed a motion to create 'non-binding policies to protect children' while honoring First Amendment freedoms and libraries' material selection policies.
Sullivan said this was not enough to deter him from dissolving the board, partly because the majority of members still opposed removing references to the American Library Association from board documents.
On Tuesday, Sullivan repeated his criticism of a former ALA president for publicly calling herself a Marxist and the ALA's Library Bill of Rights for stating that access to libraries should not be restricted based on a person's age.
The ALA presidency is 'a ceremonial job' that does not directly influence the policies of the nonprofit trade association that advocates for libraries and helps them secure grant funding, said John McGraw, executive director of the Faulkner-Van Buren Regional Library.
Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, said the ALA's Library Bill of Rights rubs him the wrong way because it asserts 'you can't protect a 3-year-old' from inappropriate content.
Gosselink called Clark's statement 'semantics.'
'Not a single person sitting behind me will tell you that you do not need to protect a 3-year-old from certain things that are in our libraries,' she said. 'That is the parents' job. We can't make a whole library acceptable for a 3-year-old.'
Local libraries are already governed by their local boards that know their communities best. This bill takes that away, replacing it with centralized oversight that doesn't understand the unique needs of each town and city.
– Clare Graham, Mid-Arkansas Regional Library System director
McGraw said, not for the first time, that his library system doesn't have a mechanism to lock away books that might be appropriate for adults but inappropriate for small children.
A bill advanced later on Tuesday that would require Arkansas public school libraries serving K-5 students to segregate 'non-age-appropriate sexual content' in 'a locked compartment within a designated area.' House Bill 1646 passed the House with 75 votes for it and 14 against it, mostly along party lines, and will next go to the Senate Education Committee.
SB 536 includes a limited exception to the proposed restrictions on 'age-inappropriate materials.' Sex education materials would be accessible to minors between 12 and 15 years old, and those under 12 would not be able to access such materials if their parents or guardians have forbidden their access in writing.
Six of the eight Senate State Agencies committee members, including Sullivan, voted to pass SB 536. Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, voted against it. The committee's sole Democrat, Sen. Clarke Tucker of Little Rock, was absent during the vote.
SB 536 would also require libraries to maintain a specific minimum hours of operation depending on the populations of the areas they serve. For example, a library in a community of less than 10,000 people would have to be open 1,480 hours per year in order to receive state funding, and a library that serves 10,000 to 19,000 people would have to be open 1,730 hours per year.
The library directors who spoke against the bill said this would disproportionately threaten rural libraries' funding. McGraw called the provision an 'unfunded mandate' and said it would apply unevenly to the branches he supervises in Conway and in rural areas.
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Gosselink said the payroll and utility costs to meet the hours requirement at the Calhoun County Library's main branch in Hampton would cost more than the state funding she currently receives, which is $7,100 per year.
'It's my entire discretionary budget for programming, for books, for computers, for anything I might do that's above and beyond opening the doors and turning on the lights,' she said.
Sullivan said county governments and taxpayers would be required to put in extra effort to make up for any library funding that might be lost, but he also said he doubted that libraries are at risk of losing funding in the first place.
McGraw challenged this statement and mentioned that the entire staff of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services was put on administrative leave for 90 days Monday. Earlier in March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to gut the federal agency that provides grant funding to libraries nationwide.
The Arkansas State Library distributes IMLS funds to Arkansas libraries. These funds support summer reading programs, interlibrary loan programs, resources for blind and print-disabled library patrons and state document depositories, Arkansas Library Association president and Garland County Library director Adam Webb told the Advocate.
McGraw called SB 536 'an unnecessary introduction of chaos' into the already uncertain landscape of library funding, and he said the bill does not include any metrics for measuring improvements within libraries that meet all of the bill's state funding requirements.
The fourth library director to speak against the bill was Clare Graham, who oversees the five-county Mid-Arkansas Regional Library System.
'This bill imposes a one-size-fits-all approach that stifles creativity and flexibility,' Graham said. 'Local libraries are already governed by their local boards that know their communities best. This bill takes that away, replacing it with centralized oversight that doesn't understand the unique needs of each town and city.'
The full Senate will consider SB 536 Wednesday. The bill's emergency clause requires two-thirds of the chamber's support, or 24 votes.
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