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August 13, 2010

State restores some funding for libraries at last minute

http://www.nbs.gmnews.com
Aug. 12, 2010
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer
Don’t get her wrong, Patricia Tumulty is grateful that some of the massive cuts in state funding to libraries across New Jersey were restored during last-minute adjustments to the state budget.
But problems still remain.

“We still have about a 50 percent cut from the year before,” said Tumulty, executive director of the New Jersey Library Association [NJLA]. “We live to fight another day.”

The NJLA planned to meet with library officials from around the state this month to discuss how they will deal with their remaining funds.

“We’ll discuss how much we have and what services we’ll be able to provide,” she said in a recent interview. “Our core services and library loan drive and some of our databases will be able to continue with this level of funding. But it’s still a big cut. We’re certainly very happy to get the funding, but there are many, many other challenges facing our municipal and county library leaders.”

Library officials had originally been faced with a 74 percent cut in state funding under Gov. Chris Christie’s original budget, from $14 million to $3.6 million. The loss of state funds would also have meant the loss of at least $4.5 million in federal matching funds. But legislators restored $4.29 million before the budget was adopted last month, leaving a pot of $7.97 million this year for libraries around the state, Tumulty said.

“It’s a very difficult cut for us to take,” she said. “But we certainly feel we’re in a much better place than we were in March.”

And she credits the public for helping to keep more of the state funding. More than 80,000 postcards protesting the cut were hand-delivered to legislators, who were also blasted with emails, she said.

“It was a wonderful grassroots effort by the public,” Tumulty said. “We are so proud they really value their library services. They really understand the value of libraries. We’re hoping the public response will keep us from getting a significant cut next year.”

Had the original cuts gone through, the intra-library loan system, various databases and Internet access for patrons would have been lost.

“These had very serious service implications for us, particularly since so many people use libraries to apply for jobs online,” Tumulty said.

Municipalities also provide funding for town-owned libraries, and the amount of funding a town provides is based on a state formula that requires one-third of a mill (one-tenth of a cent) for each $100 of assessed valuation to be given to the library, or $33 for each $100,000 of assessed valuation in a town.

The NJLA supports a new bill in the state Senate that would call for a dedicated municipal library tax outside of the state cap on municipal expenditures, Tumulty said.

Posted by tumulty at August 13, 2010 10:43 AM

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