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California Book-Checkout Fee Plan ScrappedGov. Gray Davis has dropped a controversial budget proposal to force libraries to impose interlibrary loan fees of $1 to $5 per book under certain circumstances. The proposal, contained in his January spending plan, was dropped from the May 14 revision of the 2003–04 budget after librarians across California protested.Designed to ease the impact of a 50% cut in state support, the measure was viewed as unfair to poor patrons. “We’re very happy about it going away,” Linda Krause, director of the Peninsula Library System in San Mateo County, said in the May 23 Oakland Tribune. “By trying to impose charges—that goes against the whole idea of what free libraries are about.” The current version of the budget retains a $12-million subsidy for interlibrary loans between county systems, but it still reduces state support from the current $52 million to about $22 million. The final spending plan may differ significantly from Davis’s proposal, the Tribune reported, because library funding has already been partially restored in some legislative versions of the budget. Posted May 26, 2003. |
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