Prop. 81: A New Chapter for the State’s Libraries?

When then-state Sen. Dede Alpert tried to place a state library bond on the ballot two years ago, she was forced to make a bargain: The governor would support the bond if she agreed to wait until 2006 for it to go before voters.

Alpert, a San Diego Democrat who was about to be termed out of office in 2004, agreed. So she has waited. And so have the libraries.

On June 6, California voters will finally decide whether to invest $600 million to modernize aging public libraries around the state.

Proposition 81 -- the only bond measure on the ballot next month -- has won the broad backing of teachers, businesses, organized labor and the state’s major newspapers. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed Alpert’s bill to put the bond on the ballot, has not endorsed the proposition, for reasons his campaign office would not explain.)

With little organized opposition, its champions are cautiously optimistic that they can win the simple majority needed on election day.

Still, Proposition 81 won’t come close to meeting the massive needs of library systems statewide, which a 2003 survey by the California State Library put at $4.4 billion. As much as anything, the little-known measure illustrates the ongoing struggles of California’s public libraries: always competing for attention in a state whose schools, highways and other civic institutions are also scrambling to make up for years of underinvestment.

For years, that has meant waits like Alpert’s. It also means that although other ballot measures can draw millions of dollars from supporters, a library bond campaign can plan to attract only about $500,000, campaign manager Les Spahnn said.

Though Proposition 81 is the third state library bond since 1988 -- the others, which were smaller, passed -- it is dwarfed by the more than $80 billion in outstanding debt that the state has accumulated in recent years to pay for upgrades to schools, universities, prisons, water projects and other public works, according to a recent report by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

It is also a fraction of the $37.3-billion package of infrastructure bonds that state leaders have agreed to put on the November ballot.

“We wish we could do more,” said Nancy Mahr, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County public library system, the state’s largest, which recently calculated it would cost nearly $850 million to modernize its 84 branches, many of which were built in the 1960s or earlier.

“We don’t have the money,” Mahr said. “That’s just the unfortunate truth.”

Los Angeles County, which operates libraries in numerous cities as well as in unincorporated areas, might get enough money from the bond to renovate just a handful of branches. Local library systems would have to commit local dollars to get any state money through the bond.

With the dearth of state money, some cities, such as Los Angeles and San Jose, have gone directly to their voters to raise money to modernize their libraries, often with stunning results.

In Los Angeles, which is just completing a $317-million modernization program to build and renovate 63 branches, library usage has jumped 70% in the last decade, according to library statistics.

And across the city, distinctive new branches have rapidly become community icons, as well as study centers, book repositories and neighborhood gathering places.

But library systems like Los Angeles County’s that have failed to raise substantial local funds -- instead turning to the state and in some cases private sources -- have had to settle for less.

That’s not surprising, said Alpert, a former local school board member who served in the Legislature for 14 years beginning in 1990.

“Our school facilities were in such dire straits, and we were so far behind, that they needed to take precedence,” she said recently, remembering years of unsuccessful efforts to convince legislative leaders to boost spending for libraries as well.

“They would sort of pat you on the head and tell you it was a priority, but it just didn’t make the cut,” recalled Alpert, who finally settled on the $600-million figure after negotiating with the governor and other legislative leaders in 2004.

Nowhere are the results of the disparities more striking than in the corner of South Los Angeles where the Harbor and Century freeways meet.

On one neighborhood corner stands the Mark Twain branch library, a strikingly modern, purple-and-gold monument to the city of Los Angeles’ decision to reinvest in its libraries.

The city spent $3.2 million to build the nearly 10,000-square-foot branch, which opened in 2002 and is now a bustling community center where children flock to do their homework, read magazines and play on computers.

Sixteen blocks away, the Woodcrest branch of the L.A. County system bears the forlorn signs of a municipal building nearing its 40th birthday.

A drab beige brick box with a handful of computers, worn furniture and torn carpeting, Woodcrest is on the list of county branches most in need of an upgrade, according to a 2001 county study.

But with two dozen other county branches in even more dire need, no upgrade is planned.

Today, there are some who still believe that the state should leave library investment to local communities.

“They are local institutions and they ought to be locally funded,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which is opposing Proposition 81.

The association frequently opposes bond measures, which it complains saddle taxpayers with unnecessary debt. Because of the cost of servicing the debt, Proposition 81 would end up costing the state more than $1.2 billion over the next 30 years.

But there is growing consensus that the state must make up for years of underinvestment in all its public institutions, including libraries and schools.

“We like both,” said Fred Glass, spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, the state’s second-largest teachers union and one of Proposition 81’s leading backers.