NEWPORT BEACH : City’s Library Policy Gains New Support

A little-used, decade-old policy banning groups that promote an ideology “subversive” to the U.S. Constitution from using the meeting room at the Newport Center Library is receiving new support from some City Council members.

Reviewing the policy earlier this week, some on the City Council said they would support keeping the prohibition, despite suggestions from both the Library Board and the city attorney that the policy be scratched.

“I think we should keep that paragraph in there,” Councilman John Hedges said. “I think it’s a basic policy. . . . We could have the Ku Klux Klan in there.”

Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart also gave preliminary support for keeping the policy intact. “It’s just a policy,” she said.

At a study session earlier this week, council members gave the city’s policy manual a cursory review. The library policy is included in the manual. The council is expected to discuss the entire manual and take a formal vote at its next meeting Oct. 28.

The library has no record of groups that have been barred from the meeting room since the policy was put in place in 1980, and former Library Board members could not recall what prompted the policy.

“If my memory serves me correctly, it was nothing,” said former board member Jean Hilchey. “It was not a biggie.”

The current Library Board did not discuss the policy on ideological grounds when members voted to eliminate it for legal reasons, board Vice Chairman John W. Nicoll said.

City Librarian La Donna Kienitz said that few groups use the room because it is often occupied for library activities.

“It actually is very much a moot point,” Kienitz said. “It’s just one small room, and we have three to four library activities there many days of the week. It’s seldom available to the public.”

The current policy opens the meeting room to use on an availability basis. Library-sponsored groups and public agencies get top priority. At the bottom of the list are social groups and for-profit civic and private groups.

The city attorney’s office had recommended deleting the policy because it could be challenged by groups who felt they had been discriminated against, although the office had no record of any groups filing a complaint.

“It might leave the policy open to challenge,” said Robin Flory, the assistant city attorney who recommended the policy’s removal.

There are four libraries in the Newport Beach system, but only the central library has a meeting room that is covered by the policy.