Years of accusations that the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library Board has been hampering library operations through micromanagement culminated April 7 in the passage of a state bill that would shrink the board composition from 17 members to 11 and make it accountable to the Fulton County manager. “I understand [Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue] will sign it soon,” AFPL board Vice-Chair Stephen M. Dorvee told American Libraries April 15.
Once it becomes law, SB 231 will end the terms of all current trustees as of June 30 and place oversight of the library with “the institution that pays for it,” Dorvee said. Each of the seven county commissioners will appoint a trustee; additionally, the Atlanta city council will approve the nomination of two board members, and the mayor of Atlanta and the Fulton County Commission chair will either serve on the board ex-officio or name designees. SB 231 also makes the library’s executive director accountable to the Fulton County manager instead of the board “for purposes of job performance, evaluation, and budgeting.”
The changes come more than six years after the county commission appointed a seven-member blue-ribbon panel to study how to retool the board in light of a written complaint from former Director Julie V. Hunter about trustees’ management style. Since then, eight white librarians have won $18 million in a reverse-discrimination suit against the board and Hunter’s successor, Mary Kaye Hooker—who filed her own EEOC complaint February 11. Noting that “it was not my experience” that trustees still micromanaged, despite recent findings to the contrary, Dorvee expressed confidence that the restructured board would focus on setting and monitoring policy as well as suggesting new programs “and then leaving implementation to staff.”
Asked about Hooker’s future with the system, Dorvee told AL, “I don’t think anything will happen before the new board is in place.”
Posted April 16, 2004.