Dear Library Advocate, the Legislature is rushing through a proposal by the Attorney General to consolidate local governments. The legislation, which also includes library districts, passed the Assembly already this week, and the Senate is expected to vote either today or tomorrow.
NYLA believes special legislative district libraries (those created by an act of the Legislature), municipal libraries and potentially school district public libraries are covered by this proposed consolidation legislation.
The bill allows for the elected bodies of governmental entities, or the voters of these entities to initiate process for consolidation. Education Law already allows for the dissolution and consolidation of libraries, and so like school districts, should be exempt from this legislation.
In addition, the bill also allows for county government to initiate consolidation of local governmental entities and put the vote for consolidation to all the voters of the county. This means that the voters of your library district could vote to maintain your library, but the voters throughout the rest of the county could vote to dissolve your library, thereby allowing majorities of voters outside your library coverage area to determine the fate of your library.
This legislation was only introduced at the end of May and has already passed one house of the Legislature and is poised to pass the other this week. NYLA believes more discussion, public hearings and greater scrutiny of the ramifications of this proposal needs to conducted before it becomes law.
I therefore urge you to visit our website at www.nyla.org and click on Contact Your Elected Officials button to send a fax/email to your legislators asking them to exempt library districts from this legislation.
No comments:
Post a Comment