Use of 'Rainy Day Fund' for libraries 'wrong'

Maylon T. Rice
Maylon T. Rice

OK everyone, I admit it.

I am quite a grump when it comes to the recent actions of the General Assembly in the hopefully-just ended fiscal session by the time this makes print in the second week of May.

I am still unusually critical of the line-item veto as the way to pass the Arkansas Works Medicaid funding bill by a legislative gimmick of get the anti-Obama Republicans to vote, at least some of them, to pass the appropriation.

And now another Legislative trick is in play.

The newest trick is that of using one-time monies from the governor's Rainy Day Fund -- a once $50 million savings account reserved for the governor's discretion -- to fund public libraries and senior citizens' centers that suffered a $1 million cut from their basic budgets in 2015.

The trick is that the Rainy Day Fund is not a permanent replacement. It will replace the $1 million taken from both the budgets of libraries and senior centers in 2015, but it, again, is not a permanent fix.

Dial your memory back to the final days of the 2015 Legislative Session when it was discovered that -- to fund the big tax cut for multi-millionaires -- more than $1 million was raided from the budgets of public libraries all across this state; and another $1 million was taken from the Senior Citizens' Centers' budget as well.

That money, folks, even with this proposed use of Rainy Day Fund, is still missing from those (and other) agency budgets.

The $1 million taken from the Arkansas State Library's budget is doled out in a formula based on population, location and use of the 1940s era one-mill levy of local tax. To replace these missing funds, in some areas of the state, it was made up by local lawmakers giving the public libraries some of their General Improvement Funds -- better known as GIF, in legislative lingo.

Librarians, library board members and members of the outraged reading public hammered legislators, especially those who voted FOR the tax cut for millionaires, for taking money out of the state library budget.

Lawmakers like state Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, and a leader of the Republicans on budget matters, quickly said he would "donate" from his GIF slice, the missing money.

But in truth, it took an application to the local Regional Economic Development District and the approval of several other elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans to replace the funds.

There was, however, very little or no help for the Senior Citizens' Centers. At least not right away.

But that is another story for another day.

Most lawmakers felt good about the end result that the missing library funds would be reinstated -- even with the governor's private piggy bank account of Rainy Day Funds.

One conservative legislator told me, "...to do this amendment, I'm not really happy about this and do appreciate Asa's working with the budget chair to get this done."

The legislator said the constant pressure on the governor was the reason the funds were restored out of his account.

The solon agrees that the use of Rainy Day Funds is not best, "but I'll take it for now."

So once more we see Hutchinson's administration kicking the can down the road to deal with the issue later -- an issue that it could have fixed today.

For transparency, I love libraries, I serve on a local board, and I am a member of the state Library Association.

I just hate the fact that once more these state librarians are out rattling the collection plates for basic operational money, just to replace what the state took away in a needless tax cut for the rich.

And our libraries even with this $1 million infusion of Rainy Day Funds, is trapped somewhere in the 2002 level of national library funding.

Editorial on 05/11/2016