More Books Require More Government?

KELO runs an AP report on Pennington County commissioners' support for the creation of library districts to finance and govern South Dakota public libraries [AP, "Pennington County Seeks Support for Library Districts," 2007.08.18]. A library district would be just like a school district:

1. Voters would establish its boundaries based on the area served. A library district might be a portion of one county, or it might include territory across county borders.
   
2. A library district would have its own governing board, elected from residents within the established boundaries.
   
3. A library district would have the power to levy taxes, which would appear as a separate assessment on residents' property tax bills (just as now my property tax bill shows assessments from Lake County, Madison Central School District, and Lake Herman Sanitary District).
   
4. The library district board would use the tax dollars raised to carry out its statutorily defined powers -- in this case, limited most likely to purchases of books and other materials, operations and maintenance, and salaries for library staff, as well as costs for meetings of the library board.

Currently, public libraries derive funding from city and county governments. The Pennington County Commission proposes to give its county library $400,000 in FY 2008. As noted here earlier, our less culturally inclined Lake County Commission grudgingly gives the Madison Public Library $800.

Pennington County Commissioner Ethan Schmidt thinks library districts would be a "more equitable" way of funding libraries. According to the AP report, "[Schmidt] says people in New Underwood and Wall, for example, may never get to Rapid City to use the library, but they are paying for it."

The Madville Times is all about equitable taxation. It doesn't seem right to tax citizens for services they never use. But in this case, setting up a separate layer of government and taxation doesn't feel like a step in the right direction.

First, just who uses the library, and who doesn't? The proportion of New Underwood and Wall residents using the Rapid City library is likely lower than the proportion of Rapid City residents, but there are probably folks who make the trip to the big city to use the library, and likely even more who obtain resources from the Rapid City library through interlibrary loan (an outstanding program, by the way!). Everyone in the county can make use of the public library, even if not everyone does.

Conversely, not everyone in a library district would use the public library, even though everyone in the library district would be paying for it. There may be property owners within a couple blocks of the public library who never set foot inside yet would find a new "Library District" assessment on their property tax bill.

Whether we fund libraries through existing governments or through new library districts, there will still be plenty of library users -- renters, college students, kids, out-of-town visitors -- who will not pay a penny to support the library. If equitable taxes are the goal, our Black Hills Libertarian friends might suggest that libraries ought to be funded entirely by user fees: a dollar admission fee, a dime a minute to use the library computers, a quarter per book checked out or $50 annual fee for a library card. But libraries serve the public good. Even if I don't go to the library, I benefit when my neighbor reads a book and gets smarter. Society as a whole benefits from every increase in knowledge. Folks in Wall -- heck, even us folks in Madison! -- benefit when folks in Rapid City read books (every bit of education is a step closer to replacing Bill Napoli with a rational legislator). User fees ignore that social benefit while limiting access to folks on tight budgets. Libraries are essential to democracy: like public schools, they guarantee equal access to information for every citizen, rich or poor. Democratic governments thus have an obligation to support libraries.

A library district might be able to concentrate the tax burden more perfectly on the population with the highest proportion of direct users. There may also be some benefit to creating a new governmental entity that focuses solely on supporting the local library. A library district would offer more citizens a chance to participate in public affairs, especially those who may be keenly interested in the library but not in wrestling with all the other issues before a county or city commission.

But library districts seem to be a movement away from recognizing the broad social benefit of free access to information. They would excuse existing governments from setting priorities within their budgets. This writer's own experience on the Lake Herman Sanitary District and view of uncontested seats for local school board elections suggest that citizens are already stretched thin on public service time. We may not be able to find civic-minded folks with enough volunteer time left to serve on such boards. Some might argue a lack of eager board members would indicate a lack of enthusiasm and thus lack of need for the service; we would suggest rather that there is a limit to how many government boards we can practically create and staff. It may not make sense to have one board govern every township, school district, and other service provider in the county, but neither does it make sense to have a separately elected board controlling the police, the fire department, the municipal sewer, the zoning office, the welfare office, every school building, the library, and every other public service agency in the county.

Creating yet another special governing district may pose some taxation problems. Even if city and county commissions could transfer their library funding functions completely to new library districts and if the net tax burden did not increase at all, citizens would find it harder to challenge taxation decisions. A library district is just one more set of hands reaching for your pocketbook. While paying taxes is patriotic, so is making sure your elected officials are using your taxes efficiently. The more government boards we create, the harder it is for us to get around to all of their meetings and keep an eye on their fiscal decisions.

We already have plenty of layers of government. Here in Lake County, we may have more coming, as the Interlakes Water Quality Committee looks into creating a Water Project District. One layer of government can't do everything, but everything can't have a separate layer of government. There's a proper balance somewhere in the middle. Separate library districts seem to lie somewhere south of that proper balance; however, the Madville Times welcomes insight from county commissioners, library patrons, and taxpayers that might suggest otherwise.

One last note: if for some reason libraries don't well fit the purview of sity and county governments, might we fold libraries naturally into some other existing governing entity, like public school districts? Each school board already maintains a library of some sort within its school district, and in small towns, the school library often serves as a public library as well. Perhaps combining school and public library funding and oversight would create efficiencies that would benefit both entities and the public.