Kentucky law underlines the need to unite

Who is in charge of your library? In Kentucky, in 2023, the answer will change. I was hoping to make this a cheerful editorial about this year’s inspiring crop of Movers & Shakers—and then Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a state Senate bill was unexpectedly overridden in mid-April, enabling local politicians to take control of public library board appointments, and thus spending, and even the continued existence of facilities.

Kentucky previously allowed each board to nominate two candidates per vacancy, who were vetted by the state library, and then the County Judge/Executive (CJE) chose one of them. Now, the CJE will pick whoever they want. There are many ways library trustees are chosen in the United States, so I’m not saying changing the method is automatically a disaster. But giving CJEs leeway to pack the board will almost certainly result in less independence from political priorities that have nothing to do with what’s best for the library, and may even be at odds with it.

This is especially troubling because the precipitating event for this law was the Pike County Public Library’s refusal to give up its downtown facility to the private, religious University of Pikesville. (The University already leased some space and wanted more, which the library still needed.) Defending a public good that benefits all residents, rather than handing over needed public resources for a subset, is exactly what a library board should do.

The law also caps how much boards can spend on capital projects without permission from the Fiscal Court (county government, led by the CJE), and allows a simple majority of the board and Fiscal Court to use library funds to construct buildings for other “educational institutions,” or for library property to be leased to such institutions. In other words, the law is tailor-made to overrule one decision that was, at base, not even about library services. This is not how good law is made, and it is not how good libraries are made either.

If this law were happening in a vacuum, it would still be bad news for Kentucky libraries. But because it’s not, it’s bad news for libraries across the country. With dozens of states currently challenging local authority over school and public library policy, each such win provides a template and momentum for the next one. With a vocal minority trying to create a moral panic over books with LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC authors and characters, a mechanism designed to allow conversion of public real estate to the use of private enterprise could also be used to make an end-run around considerations of representation or professional ethics. This is especially likely when the same last-minute legislative session that brought this bill back also passed an anti-abortion bill, a ban on trans athletes from girls sports, and an education bill aimed at eradicating what the right persistently misterms “critical race theory” from Kentucky schools.

As John Chrastka of EveryLibrary told me, “There are no more quiet legislative campaigns. You cannot simply monitor a bad bill and hope it dies in committee. Every existential legislative threat is real and has to be fought in some way, shape, or form.”

However, if the bad news is that we’re in this together, that’s also the good news. “You are not alone,” concludes Chrastka, and he’s right. Library associations are already teaming up with writers’ groups and vendors, academic and public librarians with school librarians, state organizations with national groups, and political action committees with grassroots social media campaigns like Texas’s #FReadom Fighters.

This surge of legislation has the potential to divide us into a two-tier country, in which half the states have libraries that are free to serve their patrons, and the other half have libraries that are forced to serve their politicans. However, it also has the potential to unite libraries and everyone who loves them in an unprecedented, silo-breaking alliance.

This brings me back to this year’s Movers & Shakers. While I continue to fear the chilling effect of this wave of anti-library legislation, I am heartened by the evidence this year’s cohort provides of librarians overcoming systemic obstacles to support one another and empower our communities. I hope you will be too.