Yakima Officials Click
on Internet Compromise
The board of the Yakima (Wash.) Valley Regional Library has modified its Internet usage policy to require that parents submit their written preferences for filtered or unfiltered access for their children. The November 8 revision comes after officials in Yakima, Zillah, and Selah threatened to withhold funds or sever their branch’s ties to the regional system unless libraries stopped offering the choice of unblocked access.
“We’re doing all of this within the provisions of our constitution,” YVRL trustee Darlene Lust said at the board meeting. In seeming agreement, Doug Honig of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington remarked, “We’re opposed to filtering, but support having choices for patrons.”
“I do understand that the library is faced with federal rules and regulations that they can’t do what the community wants to do,” Yakima Mayor John Puccinelli stated in the November 10 Yakima Herald-Republic. But Zillah Mayor Dan Simmons insisted that “the threat to pull funding is still on the table” since the policy hadn’t changed.
Posted November 15, 1999.
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