Indiana libraries fearing future if Senate Bill eight passes 

GOSHEN, Ind. — Senate Bill No. 8, dubbed the Library Budget Bill, is moving through the Indiana legislature and could have drastic effects on local libraries, with some fearing they could be defunded by their county or city if SB 8 is put into effect.

Goshen Public Library’s development and community engagement manager, Grace Thomas, has been at her job for nearly five years and said it’s the best job she’s ever had, but worries that may change if SB 8 passes.

The bill looks to give Indiana public libraries two ways to go about the budget, “…they keep their operating budget’s growth at 50 percent or less of the growth quotient, which is set by the state,” explained Thomas. “Or we take the full growth quotient and then we go before our fiscal body, which in our case is the city council. We take them our budget and then they have control over approving, editing, or reducing the budget”.

Thomas explained they don’t know the ‘why’ behind the bill. They have heard there are concerns in the state about public library boards being appointed rather than elected, which would mean people are fearing taxation without representation, but Thomas said Goshen Public Library’s board is appointed by elected officials, and with so many other similar taxing entities in Indiana, she said she and her peers can’t understand why this legislation is happening and why it’s directed at libraries.

“If every year we’re choosing to only take less then 50 percent of the allowable growth quotient, we are not going to keep up with rising cost of employment, with rising costs of materials, with utilities, with any of the cost-of-living increases that you know people are dealing with in general. So, we’re either stuck with that choice of not growing quickly enough to maintain our services or putting our budget fully at the mercy of another organization, even after we’ve already gone through a review process with our board, which is appointed by elected bodies,” said Thomas.

Like many libraries, more than half of Goshen Public Library’s budget is spent of wages and benefits, while in the last few years local income tax has made up 32 percent of the budget.

“What being tax funded looks like is that our budgets are locked in at the beginning of the year, and so if we’re not collecting the tax dollars, the tax levies that we anticipate, cuts have to be made and so services go away,” said Thomas.

Another concern on top of that, the still unknown effects of Senate Enrolled Act-1 (SEA-1), which changed the way Indiana property taxes are collected and distributed.

“If property tax goes down and local income tax does away, and then we take our operating budget to a fiscal body who decides to cut us, then that’s just one thing on top of another and it makes it hard to plan for the future, makes it hard to keep providing the services that people rely on us for… you know, Indiana has a lot of needs right now, and duplicating legislation that’s already on the books and making it more stringent for public libraries, to me, doesn’t feel like a great use of our time,” shared Thomas.

To view the Indiana Library Federation’s statement on SB 8, including more information on SB 8 and ways to act, click here.