Library Cuts Could Hit Home at Capitol

A dozen years ago, in the midst of another budget crisis for California, the state Legislature created a research bureau to provide lawmakers and the governor with independent analysis.

Today, with the state facing an even more difficult budget dilemma, the California Research Bureau has again come to the attention of the Legislature -- but not as the bureau’s analysts and researchers would like.

The bureau is just one of several parts of the California State Library targeted by the Davis administration for spending cuts to help close a shortfall that was projected at $38.2 billion in the governor’s May budget revision last week.

And although the State Library is not the only target of cuts -- its budget would be trimmed about 20%, from $21 million to about $17 million -- it is a place strikingly intimate to those in the Legislature and the administration who are doing the cutting.

The State Library provides most of the basic research and analyses to legislative and gubernatorial staff through the bureau on the fifth floor of the Capitol.

Gov. Gray Davis’ proposed budgets have offered varying degrees of bad news, drawing quiet but unmistakable protests from researchers and analysts who work closely with the legislators who will make the cuts. A January budget proposal would have cut operations by 30% and cost the Legislature at least three of its own librarians and six of the analysts, including the bureau’s experts on state taxes, the California economy and Indian affairs.

The May revise offered better news, freeing up an additional $2 million in general fund money for State Library operations. Library officials now say they might be able to hold job reductions to half of what had been anticipated.

Era of Term Limits

Whatever their scope, the librarians argue that with so many decisions to make, lawmakers can hardly afford to cut the people and resources that help officials and citizens evaluate their government.

The drain is particularly notable in an era of term limits, when legislators must rely on the state government’s analytic machinery as they make budget choices.

“Clearly, this is a time when we do need more information rather than less,” said Michael Bartolic, a reference librarian for the State Library. “The library is part and parcel of that collective intelligence, which is necessary to be preserved.”

Administration officials and legislators say that although they would prefer not to cut from the library, some reductions are inevitable in any state program, given the size of the projected shortfall.

“I happen to be a big library proponent, and this certainly affects people very close to us,” said state Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena). “But the state is facing an almost impossible task, and the library will have to sustain some cuts.”

Anita Gore, a Department of Finance spokeswoman, pointed to the difficulty of the governor’s choices: “Everything is on the table.”

The library, whose main building is across 10th Street from the Capitol, is California’s institutional memory. Besides providing research for state officials, it is the keeper of significant documents from the state’s history. And it is the state’s only full federal depository -- making it the sole place in California where the public can access all federal government publications.

The library has previously grappled with cuts by shifting some expenses from state general funds to federal programs. Among these shifted costs have been purchases for the library’s well-regarded collection of material in rare languages, such as Persian. To make up for some of the cuts in the May revise, the governor has proposed that the library be allowed to collect up to $1 million in user fees. But the Legislature has been cool to the idea, arguing that patrons are unlikely to pay for library use.

The State Library might have to reduce its hours from the current five days a week, library officials say. Tentative plans call for cutting the materials budget in half, to $750,000. The 4-year-old Library of California initiative -- an attempt to make available electronically the resources of all California libraries -- is likely to lose its state funding.

Purchases likely will be curtailed in a category central to the library’s mission: Californiana. The State Library has long tried to maintain a comprehensive collection of materials published about the state, but it is impossible to keep up purchases during the budget crisis, library officials say.

Historians and researchers say that there will probably be a gap in California’s historical record for the duration of the budgetary difficulties. Because many titles go out of print quickly, filling in that gap later will be impossible, librarians say.

“It’s something that later generations of Californians will come to rue,” said Peter Blodgett, curator of Western American manuscripts at the Huntington Library in San Marino.

The Huntington, Blodgett said, has a strong collection, particularly in Southern California history, but “it’s extremely difficult to collect everything.”

“It takes a large institution with a professional staff and the resources of the people -- and the Legislature -- behind it to do the job,” he said.

“To let the State Library’s collection languish for a lack of a small amount of financial support would be wasteful and a terrible shame.”

Aid for Local Libraries

The cuts are not limited to the State Library’s operations. At different times, Davis has proposed cuts to two major aid programs for local libraries that the State Library administers. In both of his recent proposals, state assistance to local libraries would fall from $43 million to less than $15 million annually.

In January, Davis’ budget called for eliminating transaction-based reimbursement, which subsidizes the lending of books between libraries so that patrons who request a book at one branch can have it delivered from another.

The state program also subsidizes local libraries when a patron from outside their jurisdiction takes out a book. The program is particularly popular among Los Angeles-area librarians. Now, a Whittier resident who works in Torrance can check out a book in Pasadena on his way home without paying a fee. More than 30 million loans occur in this way each year, with the state paying out a little over $12 million as a partial subsidy.

In the May revise, however, Davis proposed keeping transaction-based reimbursement, and all but eliminating funding for the Public Library Foundation, another local aid program.

The foundation provides much of the money for materials for local libraries. In Los Angeles County libraries, $3.2 million of the $4-million budget for materials comes through the foundation. Losing that funding would cost the county an estimated 80,000 books in the coming year.

The situation is even more dire in poor or out-of-the-way places. In Needles, library Director Barbara Degidio has already cut more than half of her magazine subscriptions, including such titles as Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Time, National Geographic, Discover, Forbes and Good Housekeeping.

Needles residents have begun donating books or magazines from home that they’ve finished reading.

“Without that money from the state, there is no money here to buy materials,” Degidio said.

The impact of budget cuts could be felt just as immediately in Sacramento, by the same legislators who have to decide on such cuts. At the State Library, the governor’s May revise could mean a loss of about 30 of the 239 positions, management officials say.

At the California Research Bureau, plans had called for eliminating 9.5 of 33 positions. That is being reevaluated in light of last week’s revise.

The bureau was formed in 1991, on the urging of then-Gov. Pete Wilson and Senate President Pro Tem David Robertson, when the Legislature needed to cut its budget and chose to do away with the fiercely partisan research offices tied to each house.

The bureau has a staff of three senior librarians, two librarians and two assistants. These staffers fill “rapid research” requests from legislators and gubernatorial staff members in a matter of minutes.

“It’s a very useful tool for us,” said Vince Duffy, a speechwriter for the governor. He said he found the librarians particularly helpful with a speech he put together for a Bay Bridge ribbon-cutting.

Under the January budget proposal, Christine Henningfeld, the assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Capitol office, would have reduced the office’s hours from eight hours a day to four, and lost as many as four of the center’s seven staff members. With the more generous May revise, those plans are now up in the air. Still, Henningfeld said, “I worry.”

Research Analysts

For long-term projects, the bureau has analysts with different expertise. With a growing reputation, the bureau has been able to hire top academics in recent years. But if the bureau eliminates positions, seniority rules will require these new hires to leave first.

According to a bureau seniority list, among those who could depart are the bureau’s experts on Indian issues, project labor agreements, health, the biotech business, and endangered species.

One of those on the list is an economist who is part of a group studying ways to revise the sales tax and other consumption taxes.

In his May revise, Davis proposed a half-cent increase in the sales tax.