The public library is an American institution – but right now, it’s under threat of being transformed from a public service to a for-profit venture. AB 438 is a result of a year-long effort by community residents, local organizations, librarians and labor organizations to save public libraries from widespread privatization efforts. Recently, the city of Santa Clarita privatized their library services and instead of saving money (as the private stated) it will cost the local taxpayers $12 million, and AB 438 addresses these types of hidden costs.
Currently, Library Systems and Services (LSSI) is the only private company that offers turnkey private library management in the United States and is often the only company in line to take over a local library system. LSSI has taken over libraries in Oregon, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Kansas and California, and has diminished services and staff while relying on more volunteers to make a profit. Privatization threatens America’s public libraries and library services and community residents are upset that they do no not have a voice in the matter. Read the New York Times article about the struggle in Santa Clarita.
SEIU launched the www.privatizationbeast.org campaign earlier this year to support and coordinate local community efforts to preserve quality public library services, and now there is legislation — AB 438 (Williams) waiting on Governor Brown’s desk — that will establish standards for transparency and provide protections for taxpayers through audits and accountability. There will also be safeguards protecting quality jobs and that communities will also have the opportunity to express their concerns.
As a public librarian, I believe that library services should be available to everyone, and this can best be done through a strong public library system. The residents of Santa Clarita did not have a choice or a voice in their City Council’s decision to privatize their libraries and how their tax dollars are spent but AB 438 will change that for other communities. With the help of CREDO and change.org more than 71,000 Californians signed petitions in support of AB 438 and librarians along with public library supporters across the country joined them.
Click here to send an email and ask Governor Brown to sign AB 438.
If I was on a city council and a privatization plan came in for libraries, my first question would be, “has this been tried anywhere else?”
Presuming I had honest city management, they would tell me of the Santa Clarita experience and that would be the end of that.
We don’t need protection from higher levels of government for ideas that are demonstrably bad ideas.
I too believe in collective bargaining as a right and the republicans are as idealogically driven as democrats and just as controlled by narrow special interests that nobody elected.
I do however think that you and me are in a distinct minority on this site. Its editorial content alone would never allow anything that espouses the sort of meaningful pension reform that Jeff Adachi is talking about.
and diverts it to outside investors.
LSSI achieves “efficiency” only by firing the city’s staff and hiring them back – with reduced benefits and a “privatized” pension plan, from which Wall Street extracts its pound of flesh.
Wall Street knows that in the next decade the baby-boomers are going to start cashing in their 401k’s, and the fund managers are desperate for new revenues. So they’ve hired the Republican Party to preach the gospel of”privatization” to capture every dollar from every public revenue stream they can get their hands on – from libraries to schools, to military logistics.
Most of America’s cherished public institutions started as private or voluntary associations. But as public appreciation increased for libraries, fire departments and hospitals, these institutions became “publicized”. Taxpayer support for these enduring public institutions remained strong until they were desegregated in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.
Ronald Reagan’s new Republican Party arrived in the wake of the civil rights era. And it’s no coincidence that he found a receptive audience for the lie that “government is the problem”. Today’s crypto-racist Tea Puppets are last gasp of that dying breed for whom government really was a problem. It was government that enforced the desegregation of their cherished “white-only” lunch-counters, buses, schools, hospitals, and yes… libraries.
I mean book stores are going away, books are more readily accessible digitally. Shouldn’t we be exploring digital libraries? Why waste money on land and operations, when it can be done simpler.
This is my problem with where the Progressives are. We’re not defining what role Government should play correctly.
Government shouldn’t be anachronistic, we should be PROGRESSIVE. We should see where life technology is trending and finding ways to make that work to equalize. Digital libraries will be much more beneficial to all than the brick and mortar ones.
The only way for a private profit-driven company to take over a public function and wring a profit from it is to 1) screw the workers or 2) screw the customers. Or both. That’s assuming there isn’t a lot of “waste” and “inefficiency” in the public enterprise. There probably is some, but, as Arnold Schwarzenegger discovered after running for governor on a platform of “cutting the fat,” there wasn’t enough to make a dent in the budget deficit. It certainly doesn’t compare to the bottomless pit of desire for profit.
There were subscription libraries long before there were free public ones. Let these companies set some up and compete with the public libraries. We’ll see whether they are so wonderful when they aren’t sucking up public money and forcing their competition to shut down. Let the public decide based on actual competition, not glossy brochures and empty promises.