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Chicago Tribune
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Library funding faces uncertain future under President Donald Trump's orders
Thousands of Lake Countians were on the march over the weekend to protest what's been happening as the administration of President Donald Trump enters its fourth month. Most were ordinary Americans, not wild-eyed left-wingers as all the president's men would have us believe. Indeed, many hadn't ever manned a picket line, but there they were, crowding around the busy intersection of Grand Avenue and Hunt Club Road in Gurnee, which is not exactly a hotbed of revolutionary fervor. The rally was one of several held in Lake County, across the U.S. and around the world on April 5. Those assembled were voicing opposition to many of the wild moves coming from the White House in the early days of Trump's second term: Aristocratic tariffs pasted on our trading partners; declining retirement savings; stripping heroic deeds of Black and Latino veterans from government museums and Websites; fears about the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the loss of federal workers at crucial agencies; curtailing free speech. One of the cuts the Trump administration is eyeing is the elimination of the Institute of Museum & Library Services. IMLS, an independent government agency with a budget of around $295 million –.0046% of the federal budget — is the key source of federal support for the nation's libraries, museums and educational institutions. As of March 31, all staff at IMLS were placed on 90-day administrative leaves. The potential elimination of IMLS, which is up for reauthorization by Congress in September, will impact every library, including many in Lake County. Grant awards in 2024 included a $240,000 grant for the Chicago History Museum. It's ironic that the plans to gut the agency came just before National Library Week, which is marked through April 12 this year. Observed since 1958, the week highlights the value that libraries, or if you prefer learning resource centers, play in American lives and communities. Paradoxically, the IMLS was established in 1996 by a Republican-led Congress and has a mission to, 'advance, support, and empower America's museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.' Imagine what Waukegan's favorite literary son Ray Bradbury would have become if not for the Carnegie Library in the city's downtown. He was a frequent visitor at the edifice at Sheridan Road and Washington Street, gleaning much of his writing flair from the shelves of hardbounds the library offered him as a youngster. Despite modernization and the advent of electronic materials, there are future Ray Bradburys currently wandering the stacks of their neighborhood libraries. Certainly, everyone supports responsible government spending and the reduction of duplicative and unnecessary bureaucracy. However, librarians and patrons across the U.S. see the IMLS as a model federal agency that delivers exceptional value to more than 1.2 billion in-person patron visits annually, according to one estimate. 'President Trump's executive order to eliminate the IMLS might save a tiny fraction of the federal budget, but the costs to our communities would be enormous,' Ryan Livergood, executive director of the Warren-Newport Library in Gurnee, said in a statement. 'IMLS funding is targeted where it's needed most, especially in underserved communities. Libraries have an amazing track record of maximizing taxpayer dollars.' Livergood notes that without IMLS funding, rural libraries may lose their ability to provide internet services to communities with no other options; smaller libraries won't be able to afford digital collections like e-books and audiobooks; and library staffers will lose their jobs, further reducing services. 'Libraries are the institutions in our community that keep our democracy running,' he said. 'The time to support them is now, before we lose an investment that pays dividends far beyond its modest cost. 'You would be hard-pressed to find a government agency that makes taxpayer dollars go further than your local library,' Livergood added, 'and libraries accomplish all this with far less funding than other government entities. Taking more funds away from them isn't just unfair, it's shortsighted.' The American Library Association feels the same. In a statement, the group condemned, 'eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services. The Trump administration's executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer.' Trump, however, is adamant that he wants the agency dismantled, 'to the maximum extent of the law.' Since taking office, the president has ordered nearly a dozen agencies, including the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Institute of Peace, shuttered or their operations drastically curtailed, according to The Associated Press. Belt-tightening at the federal level certainly is long overdue. Yet targeting something as basic as library funding seems draconian at best.
Chicago Tribune
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Administration should not mess with Lake County's federal funding
Now that more and more of us have determined the federal government is our enemy, it looks like area communities that had hoped for some grant money may be disappointed. Once, Uncle Sam was their partner. No longer, as President Donald Trump and his merry band of Muskians are ready to sack and pillage the federal government like Visigoths at the gates of Rome. While there may be fiscal waste at all levels of our governments, we forget the aid provided and what the influx of funding from Washington, D.C., can bestow. About this time last year, U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, submitted a number of worthy proposals for community project funding for towns in the three counties — Lake, Cook and McHenry — he represents in Congress. They were seeking federal funding totaling $55.7 million. The monetary nominations still haven't received funding. Depending on what the Senate does by March 14 on a continuing resolution to extend keeping the federal government running at current funding levels through Sept. 30, the money may never surface. One of the Lake County proposals included $580,694 for downtown Antioch improvements. Another was $240,000 to upgrade mobile data terminals in Round Lake Beach Police Department patrol squads. North Chicago police sought a similar grant totaling $446,620. Gurnee asked for $5 million to design and build a pedestrian path along Fuller Road, from Route 132 to Stearns School Road. Highland Park wanted $4.3 million to update its water treatment plant. Other infrastructure requests in the county included $3.5 million for removing lead water pipes in North Chicago; $3.5 million for upgrading the Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility in Fox Lake; $13 million toward flood mitigation in Lake Bluff; and $1.3 million for ecological restoration of 250 acres at Gander Mountain Forest Preserve off Wilmot Road. One of the most interesting proposals came from the College of Lake County to build an urban farm center in downtown Waukegan at a cost of $6.13 million. Gurnee Park District officials are expected to apply soon for $600,000 in federal funding under an open space grant program. The money will be used to revitalize Viking Park on Old Grand Avenue. That is if there are going to be any federal grants available anytime soon. Lake Countians pay taxes just like others across the nation, and they deserve their fair share. Since 2021, more than $50 million in federal funds have found their way into the 10th Congressional District through Schneider's efforts. In the long run, these 'pork projects' make lives better. They create good-paying jobs and benefit communities in numerous ways. These community-related projects aren't haphazard requests for federal largesse. They need support to come to fruition, which public works jobs have over the decades, making the quality of life better for Lake Countians. Somebody has to approve and oversee these projects at the federal level. Those people are part of the national workforce, which is rapidly being drained. Yet there are those who contend these communitywide projects, like historical federal safety-net programs — so-called 'entitlements' like Social Security, Medicare and food stamps — are ripe with trillions of dollars in fraud and waste. Those vast amounts have yet to be proven. If so, those millions of violators should be prosecuted, and soon. One of the 'entitlements' many may recall were those $1,200 stimulus checks handed out in 2020 to couples earning less than $150,000, and paycheck protection business loans during the coronavirus pandemic. As the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 invading the U.S. is this month, I don't remember anybody refusing those federal gifts. In his joint address to Congress last week, President Trump railed at the 'appalling waste' of tax dollars within federal agencies. The administration has been canceling grants and federal contracts; and ending real estate leases, a number in Illinois. One 'entitled' agency, Social Security, which Americans and their employers have paid into during their working lives, plans to cut its workforce by 7,000 to 50,000 employees. Seeking to slash $800 million from its budget, the SSA has closed local offices, including one in Rockford. Meanwhile, stock indexes, whose components comprise many 401(k)s and retirement nest eggs, continued to sink earlier this week amid trade war fears with our former nice-guy allies, like Canada. With the administration in office for less than 90 days, many economists are predicting a 'Trumpcession,' or at the least a return to the 1970s and 'stagflation' — slow growth and rising prices — as markets are whipsawed when the president proclaims tariffs on nations on one day and then changes his mind the next. It's hard for businesses and local governments to plan for the future without clear and prudent signals from Washington. One way for that to happen is the return to federal monetary support of local infrastructure proposals.
