A month after the Wisconsin Assembly voted to repeal a 130-year law guaranteeing no-fee public-library services for service-area patrons, a legislative conference committee agreed April 16 to retain the law—in effect, reaffirming free public-library service in Wisconsin. The item, which is the only one on the committee’s 320-point agenda on which members reached a rapid consensus, echoed the Senate’s April 1 passage of a budget bill pointedly titled “Putting the ‘Public’ Back in Public Libraries.”
“The assembly is more than a bit chagrined by the whole thing,” Waukesha County Federated Library System Director Tom Hennen told American Libraries. “At the end of the day, it is still ‘motherhood, apple pie, and free libraries.’”
Among the issues still to be resolved are proposed cuts in the state’s shared-revenue formula, which bolsters cash-strapped libraries among other municipal services. “When we get through this, local government officials will breathe a sigh of relief,” promised Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala (D-Madison) in the April 16 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “We are out of touch if we think we can hold everything harmless,” Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) countered.
Posted April 22, 2002.