During state budget negotiations last week, Missouri House Republicans voted for defunding all public libraries in the state. As the bill moves through the Missouri Senate, public librarians are worried about how the draconian move could affect the communities they serve.
The effort to completely defund public libraries actually began with Senate Bill 775, legislation that was supposed to give more rights to survivors of sexual assault.
Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin derailed the bill and included an amendment which prohibited educators from “providing sexually explicit material” to students. That many similar offers, the wording was broad and unclear. The bill became law, and a few months later, conservative parents began using it to target books with LGBTQ themes, labeling books about gender or sexual identity as “pornography.”
The new law led to 300 cards removed from schools across the state from August to November, according to PEN America.
In February, the ACLU of Missouri, the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the ban violated the First Amendment.
Republicans decided to retaliate against MLA, a non-profit organization of professional librarians, for joining the lawsuit. Their proposal: Cut $4.5 million annually to public libraries.
“I don’t think we should be subsidizing this effort,” said Republican Budget Chairman Cody Smith She said. “We’re going to withdraw the funds and that’s why.”
But the professional organizations named as plaintiffs in the suit receive no state aid, which goes directly to the libraries, and the ACLU of Missouri is paying for the suit.
“They are choosing to punish librarians for exercising their right to question their government,” Katie Hill Earnhart, executive director of the Cape Girardeau Public Library, told HuffPost.
“There’s job assistance, computer access, passport applications, free tax assistance, homeless heating and cooling centers. We do much more than checkbooks.”
— Otter Bowman, president of the Missouri Library Association
Books have become the target of conservative ire in recent years. As protests for racial justice swept the nation after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Republicans have raised concerns among white parents about what their children are learning about race in their classrooms. In recent months, conservative attention has turned to books with LGBTQ characters and themes.
Missouri state government is constitutionally required to provide aid to public libraries, so Republicans are unlikely to successfully end all funding. But librarians still worry that there could still be drastic cuts that would force some libraries to reduce services or close their doors.
“I think it’s more of a political statement to eliminate it completely, but there is a valid fear that there will still be a significant reduction,” Otter Bowman, president of the Missouri Library Association, told HuffPost. “There is a greater sense of urgency that this could be real.”
The amount of funding each library receives from the state varies, but no library would be immune to defunding or drastic cuts.
“My library would have received about $26,000, which is about 20 percent of our acquisition budget,” Earnhart said. “Either we’d have to find excess funds somewhere… or we’d have to reduce the number of items we can buy.”
Earnhart said her library is fortunate to have other sources of funding: If the state withdraws funding, it won’t have to close its doors. Libraries in rural areas would not be so lucky.
“They don’t have the tax base that cities have,” Bowman said. “Rural libraries should reduce hours, staff and collections, which are already small.”
Libraries in these areas are often community centers that offer a variety of resources to residents, not just books for “woke” children, as conservatives tend to claim.
“There’s job assistance, computer access, passport applications, free tax assistance, homeless heating and cooling centers. We do a lot more than checkbooks,” Bowman said.
Bowman said she worries about the long-term impact of anti-librarian policies: The rush to pass new laws limiting the materials librarians can provide patrons has led to a decline in the number of people who actually want to join the profession .
“We like to serve people, and obviously we weren’t there for the money, but our offense makes it very difficult to keep people,” he said.
It is unclear how the Republican-controlled Senate will vote on the budget. In the past, such extreme bills were seen as a pipe dream for far-right MPs. But in recent months, the culture wars have become top priorities for Republican lawmakers: Defunding the entire public library system is now a blanket proposal.
Across the state, librarians are preparing for whatever comes next.
“If we’re going to be cut,” Bowman said, “we’re not going to be quiet.”
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