Books As Pawns

[Reprinted with permission from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.]

State Legislature's treatment of local libraries is shameful.

Need yet another example of Albany's dysfunction? This year, local libraries are dependent on partisan pork to avoid a 5 percent cut in state funding.

Here's the situation: Gov. Pataki vetoed the Assembly's attempt to restore $4.4 million that he had cut from state library aid to close the state's budget gap.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's effort to override that veto was thwarted by Assembly Republicans. Now Pataki is channeling discretionary funds to Republican Assembly members to restore cuts to libraries in their districts.

This is no way to run state government.

Republicans contend that Silver should use some of his nearly $100 million in pork barrel funds to help libraries in districts that elected Democrats. Instead, he is running around the state bashing Republicans for being cold-hearted toward readers.

Meantime, no one is addressing the real problems.

Silver and Pataki ought to be working toward solutions for the major drains on the state budget. Forty billion dollars in Medicaid costs, for example. Reforming Medicaid would mean billions in savings.

But state lawmakers are busy bickering over $4.4 million that would keep library aid level. That drop in the state's $100 billion budget bucket, unfortunately, is critical to libraries, which haven't seen a funding increase in seven years.

As a result, collections, availability, services and the state's intellectual capital are suffering.

Library aid ought to be increased substantially, and it certainly should not be dependent on legislators' partisan whims. The state Legislature should at least come up with a bipartisan way to ensure that the funding cut from all state libraries is restored.

Reining in discretionary funding is one way to do it. It doesn't make much sense to give legislative leaders hundreds of millions of dollars to play with when the state can't maintain library aid.

This tug-of-war over libraries underscores the dysfunction that characterizes the state Legislature. Library patrons, and all New Yorkers in general, must demand reform.