Some Arkansas libraries still waiting new state funding rules now a year overdue
Allie Gosselink (left), director of the Calhoun County Library, advocates for public libraries before the Arkansas State Library Board at its quarterly meeting on Friday, February 14, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
The Arkansas State Library Board on Friday will disburse public funds to libraries for the last time in the 2025 fiscal year, and likely the last time before all seven board members will be replaced.
As local library directors wait for their regular shares of state funding, some continue to await a long-delayed avenue for rural libraries to be eligible for more state funding. An amendment to the State Library's fiscal year 2024 appropriation bill introduced by Sen. John Payton, R-Wilburn, required the Arkansas Department of Education to alter library funding eligibility standards to allow smaller libraries not supported with a local millage access to state aid.
The original deadline for establishing those standards was July 1, 2024, the start of the current fiscal year.
'We want [libraries] to receive local support,' Payton told a Joint Budget subcommittee at the time. 'We don't want them dependent on the grants and aid that might come through the State Library system, but it's impossible for them to pass and maintain one mill if they're a city of less than 5,000.'
Arkansas Constitutional Amendment 30 prohibits libraries in cities with fewer than 5,000 people from being supported by local property taxes. Payton said he presented the proposal to change the rules on behalf of his constituents in Ash Flat, which has a population of just over 1,100 and a library funded by the city government.
Eligibility for state aid would allow the Ash Flat Library to apply for state and federal grants it currently cannot access, Terry Hill, chairman of the library's governing board, told the Advocate.
Subsequent State Library appropriations, for fiscal 2025 and 2026, reiterated the need to broaden access to library funding, but the rule-making process stalled last year, meaning rural libraries still cannot access the funds, according to library directors and the education department.
State Library Director Jennifer Chilcoat told the board in a Feb. 14, 2024, email that the rules had to be in place before the board met that August to start disbursing state funds for fiscal year 2025. If not, the State Library would be 'in violation of' either its standards for state aid to public libraries or the legal requirement to create the rules, Chilcoat said in the email.
The State Library appropriation bills state that the new rules must 'allow a public library to adequately demonstrate a source of revenue in lieu of the requirement to maintain a one-mill county or city property tax,' which is currently a standard for libraries to receive state aid. Without formal rules, the current standard limits which libraries can receive state grants. A mill is equal to $1 dollar for every $1,000 in assessed value on real estate.
Calhoun County is Arkansas' most rural county, and its library system would receive an $18,000 funding boost under broader state aid eligibility standards, director Allie Gosselink told the Advocate. The Hampton library would also be able to increase its hours of operation from 28 to 40 hours per week and would bolster its early literacy services and upgrade its technology, Gosselink said.
She and John McGraw, regional director of the Faulkner-Van Buren Library System, were both on the advisory committee that drafted new rules required by the 2023 law.
'We talked about every piece of that and tried to decide what worked, what didn't work, what was detrimental, and we changed the rules based on what we thought would be fair,' Gosselink said.
Assistant Attorney General Sarah DeBusk told the State Library Board in November that proposed rules must be approved by the education secretary and governor and a public comment period before final approval by the Arkansas Legislative Council.
The Department of Education's legal division is responsible for ensuring the rules are in the proper format before they return to the state agency that drafted them. The State Library Board would be responsible for opening a 30-day public comment period on the rules after receiving the formal version from the education department, and Chilcoat urged the board in the February 2024 email to plan for a special meeting the following month.
Education department attorneys were 'tentatively predicting that we should either hear back from or receive approval from' Sanders' office in the subsequent few weeks, Chilcoat wrote.
'There is a timeline that we are keenly aware of to get the changes in place before the start of the 2025 State Fiscal Year,' she said in her February 2024 email. 'For that reason, we cannot wait until the May board meeting to get these Rules in front of you and the public.'
The State Library Board has not voted on the proposed rules but has a new deadline of this July 1 to act, according to emails obtained by the Advocate via the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The still unofficial rules and possible actions the Library Board can take were the subject of late April emails between Chilcoat and ADE Chief of Staff Courtney Salas-Ford.
Since the board doesn't have new rules to address Payton's 2023 appropriations amendment, Chilcoat wrote on April 25, 'we need to have a stopgap formula beginning in August in case the promulgation process is not complete at that time.
'If there aren't new State Aid Rules in place when the new board members begin their terms, these drafts will give them a template which they can use or dismiss, but it will give them a starting point from which to work if they so choose,' the email said.
One of the last laws the General Assembly passed before adjourning this month was Act 903, which will dismiss the entire State Library Board and require Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to appoint seven new members in August.
In an April 30 email, Chilcoat told Salas-Ford she has 'two versions of a one-time state aid formula for the current board to choose from and approve so that the new board doesn't have to deal with the first quarter payments at their first meeting.
'One formula simply removes the MLS (Master's of Library Science) credit from all recipients of it. The other is a simple across-the-board percentage decrease [in state aid to all libraries].
'Both are included so that we can honor Senator Payton's amendment to include those libraries that don't or can't collect the millage previously required. Of course, the current board can also vote to pass the responsibility to the next board.'
Gosselink and McGraw both told lawmakers in April that the inaction on the proposed rules was a reason the Legislature should not dissolve the State Library and its board and transfer their responsibilities and funds to the education department. A House committee rejected the proposed dissolution, one of several bills that generated hours of debate about library oversight and funding throughout the 2025 legislative session.
The new rules for state aid to libraries are on Friday's Library Board agenda.
Gosselink said she hoped Friday's board meeting would create 'a little bit of clarity' for her library's funding for the rest of the state's fiscal year.
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