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Library officials asking residents to call senators about H.B. 318
More cuts are on the way if the Ohio Senate doesn’t pass House Bill 318, library officials warn.
YOUNGSTOWN — To prevent another crisis in state funding for libraries and local governments, local library officials are asking Mahoning Valley residents to call their state senators immediately.
Carlton Sears, director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, said the budget crisis will occur if the Ohio Senate begins its holiday recess next week without passing House Bill 318.
“Further budget cuts will result, which will dramatically impact Ohio’s ability to recover from this struggling economy,” if the bill doesn’t pass the Senate, Sears said Friday. A lack of action by the state Senate “is absolutely unacceptable,” he added.
“We’re asking people to contact their state senators and let them know how serious the situation is,” said Janet Loew, the local library system’s communications and public-relations director.
Loew urged area residents to contact Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Canfield, D-33rd; Sen. Jon Husted of Kettering, R-6th; and Senate President Bill Harrisof Ashland, R-19th.
About two-thirds of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County’s $12,135,400 budget for 2009 comes from state funds. On Thursday, the local library board set next year’s general fund appropriation at $11,944,800.
Before local library officials learned that the Republican-controlled Senate might not pass the bill, they estimated Thursday that the local library system would get $6,569,533 in state funds for 2010, compared to $8,001,133 this year.
The bill, which passed the Democrat-controlled House in October, is designed to help balance the state budget by delaying for two years the final 4.2 percent cut in personal income tax rates, which was contained in 2005 tax reform legislation.
In a Friday statement, the Ohio Library Council, which represents the state’s public libraries, said: “More cuts to libraries and other important services are on the way,” if the Senate doesn’t pass House Bill 318.
“If they [state officials] were to go back and cut another 10 or 20 percent from our budget, we certainly wouldn’t be able to operate in the same manner we are now, and right now, we’re already on a reduced scale of operation,” Loew said.
The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County cut library hours by 15 percent in September and laid off 30 employees this year. But Sears said those cuts didn’t adequately compensate for earlier losses in state funds and that the system can’t sustain current operations in 2011 unless it plans corrective action soon.
The voters stabilized the system’s local funding when they renewed last month a 1-mill property tax levy for five years, but that renewal didn’t compensate for any of the losses of state funding, Sears noted. At 100 percent collections, that levy would generate $3,622,000 annually.