To 'save' kids, Sarasota County may hurt libraries. Can someone make that make sense?

On Tuesday, the Sarasota Board of County Commissioners again waded into the culture wars arena, voting, 4-1, to stop funding the county’s public library system’s memberships in the American Library Association (ALA) and the Florida Library Association (FLA) over what they perceive as the organizations’ political advocacy.

Despite two hours of testimony from community members – most of whom opposed the action, citing the dangers of book banning and a rise in authoritarian government – the board sided with supporters who’d asked for the vote at the previous commission meeting, many of whom have been outspoken in the past about removing “inappropriate” materials from school libraries, curating Black history curriculums or refusing vaccine mandates.

Thus Sarasota joined Citrus, Lee and Collier counties in Florida and a dozen state governments across the country – from Montana to Texas – who have dropped, or are considering dropping, membership in the 150-year-old ALA. It is the world’s largest and oldest library association, and it provides funding, training and tools to most of the country’s 123,000 public libraries.

And the commissioners – who recently approved resolutions in support of “medical freedom” and making Sarasota a “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” county after urging by the same advocates – joined the growing pool of elected officials willing to overrule evidence and the authority of subject matter experts to cater to their own partisan positions.

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Rene Di Pilato, director of libraries and historical resources for Sarasota County, testified – at the request of Commissioner Mark Smith, the sole dissenting vote – that the effect of losing the memberships will be to deny staff access to professional accreditation, trainings and discounts.

She said the county library system, while a member of the ALA, does not “march in lockstep with any organization” and that the ALA has no influence over local catalog choices. Most librarians say the ALA is vital to their professional development.

Chairman Ron Cutsinger, who has served the library system as a volunteer for many years, insisted the county commission’s action had “nothing to do with book banning” or curtailing library patrons’ access to materials.

Cutsinger noted the county’s generous financial support of the library system in the past and said commissioners were aware the ALA does not dictate what books are chosen locally (decisions that are most often based on community input). However, Commissioner Joseph Neunder equated the vote to “protecting children.”

The main objection, according to Commissioner Mike Moran – who proposed this motion as well as the one for the previous medical and bill of rights resolutions – is that the ALA, which claims to be nonpartisan, is “straying from its core mission” and “acting as [a] political action committee” by promoting “social justice initiatives.”

(No specific example was cited.)

Moran, who has in the past criticized “Sarasota socialism” – such as funding child care supports for working, low-income parents – was supported by Commissioner Neil Rainford, who seconded the motion and said continuing to support the memberships would equate to “funding Marxist ideology . . . and organizations that support that ideology.”

These comments can be traced back to a single tweet by the ALA’s current president, Emily Drabinski – who, just after she was appointed to a one-year term last June, called herself a “Marxist lesbian who believes collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world.”

Though Drabinski has insisted her “views, beliefs and ideologies are mine alone and not shared by the ALA” the since-deleted tweet ignited a domino effect of membership cancellations.

Not only did the county commission vote to drop funding for ALA and FLA memberships (which amount to less than $4,000 annually), both Moran and Rainford called for an examination of “all professional associations, trade organizations and membership organizations” the county has any connection with so they can assess whether taxpayer support should be provided.

That’s an exercise that could easily consume enormous amounts of staff and commission time, but it would indeed provide further opportunities for partisan meddling by the board.

In the past – whether it was a membership association like the ALA, a government agency like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or administrators of a school district or hospital – elected officials stayed in their own lanes, trusting the expertise and knowledge of professionals deemed experts in their own fields and arenas of control, whether teachers, librarians, doctors or scientists. That is no longer the case.

The societal and political climate of the times has inflamed societal and cultural issues these organizations did not face in the past. If the ALA’s advocacy for free speech and against censorship has been elevated recently, it is because the association and the mission it has long upheld without interference – to provide “the best reading, for the largest number, at the least cost” – has come under increasing attack. Such organizations aren't pushing political ideologies; they are fighting to preserve what drove them passionately to their chosen careers in the first place.

The irony in all this, of course, is that the county commission itself is doing exactly what it is accusing these organizations of doing – straying from its “core mission” of governing and meddling in partisan social issues.

Just as they did recently in rejecting the well-researched funding recommendations of their behavioral health advisory committee to instead make their own rules and choices, the Sarasota County commissioners are, once again saying, “We know what is best for the people – more than they do themselves.”

While this recent rejection may seem minor, the danger is the precedent it sets, that “slippery slope” we’re often warned about. If the BOCC – which is charged with committing taxpayer monies responsibly in accordance with greatest benefit to its constituents – continues to go rogue and value its own “greater wisdom” in decision making, a government “of, by and for the people” is a farce.

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota County continues its war against libraries - and common sense