Mike Penrod remembers one library patron who visited the library every day for six months during a recession.
Penrod, the Wood County District Public Library director, said she spent six months applying for jobs using the library’s computers, eating lunch with employees and getting help from librarians.
Now, Penrod is worried that the resources that the libraries have offered communities for years won’t be as readily available if Ohio’s new proposal to cut $100 million from the state’s Public Library Fund gets signed into law.
The Wood County District Public Library in Bowling Green would lose approximately 60% of its funding if this bill went into effect.
“(The fund) is 60% of my tax revenue, 60% of my budget, and not having the Public Library Fund puts all of that into question,” Penrod said.
The new bill, H.B 96, would change public library funding from a consistent allocation of state tax money to a fixed line in a budget that could decrease after 2026.
Penrod has worked in libraries for 30 years and has been with the Wood County Public District Library for 28 years, serving as director for 14 years.
This proposed change is something that he has never seen before and tears down a funding system that libraries have depended on for the past century.
He explained that Ohio has served as a blueprint for other public libraries, and that a system like this puts Ohio libraries in a place they’ve never been.
“It’s been a 100-year revenue sharing agreement where a certain percentage of state revenue each month is distributed to libraries, and that has allowed for the building of the best library system in the country,” Penrod said.
“In Ohio, we’re different. We are a separate political subdivision in every other state, except Hawaii…they’re either a department of the county or the city. So luckily, I don’t have to compete with the local fire department if the city’s fire department needed to save up money for a fire truck, (and) maybe they couldn’t fund the library for a few years. We are separate political subdivisions, and we need to have money because we don’t have all the revenue sources a city or a county has.”
On Tuesday, April 8, hundreds of Ohio library advocates, including Penrod, went to Columbus to petition the bill.
Following this, the budget was increased, and Ohio public libraries were promised more funding. However, according to a summary of the bill from the Ohio Capital Journal, the changes to the bill still result in a $90 million cut from what libraries were promised to receive from Governor DeWine over two years.
Penrod explained that public libraries are a staple of a functioning community. Cutting library funding takes away something deeply important and something that Penrod said isn’t dying out.
“Our door count increased 7%….our program attendance last year went up 23%, and that’s on top of 50% growth prior. So our community is using us more and more and in different ways,” Penrod said.
This is in addition to a 7% increase in cardholders last year, including the purge of inactive cardholders, and a 4.3% increase in people borrowing things from the library, built upon a 7% increase the year prior.
Penrod explained that these stats prove that public libraries are still a community staple and a community need. Wood County’s library serves around 60,000 people out of a 130,000 population.
“Anyone who says that we’re (libraries) aren’t busy should visit their local public library. Just come in and hang out for a while, you’ll see all the different things going on,” Penrod said.
And the impact on the community, Penrod said, is something that has never changed.
“We meet people where they are, we never know what the next question will be. We have people coming in who have just gotten a very serious medical diagnosis, and they need to research what they were just told they may have. We have families coming in that have grandma (who) has a serious illness, and how do they explain that to their five-year-old. We have families in every situation,” he said.
Penrod named countless occasions when he felt like he could see the library’s impact. One of those was during recessions, when he said countless community members came in almost daily to depend on library resources.
“I remember one lady, she basically lived at her library for six months every day like it was her full-time job…One day she came in with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers, and she said, ‘I just wanna let you know I got a job an hour and a half away. I moved from town tomorrow, and I wouldn’t have gotten that job without all of you here as a library helping me apply for jobs, helping me gain skills, and helping me…(and) that just really means a lot,” Penrod said.
As for other libraries in Bowling Green, such as BGSU’s Jerome Library, Sarah Bushong, the dean of Library Services, says that the proposed tax cuts don’t affect university libraries as their budget is determined through BGSU.
“Our library doesn’t have any connection to this particular initiative at all. We’re funded by the university, and then we receive an allocation and LA from the chief financial officer when she puts those out,” Bushong said.
However, BGSU’s library is open to the public and offers free library cards for BG alumni, and provides cards for the community for a small charge.
Bushong said that another resource that academic libraries can provide is being a part of the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK). This program was established in 1992 to help provide digital resources and services to help reduce costs for academic libraries and higher education.
As of right now, the updated version of H.B 96 was passed in the Ohio House on April 9 in a 60-39 vote. The bill is now waiting to be introduced to the Senate for review, before eventually reaching Gov. DeWine’s desk.
In the meantime, officials like Penrod are determined to continue working toward the security of funding for public libraries and emphasize the importance and significance of public libraries. To help your local library, the Ohio Library Council urges people to contact their state representatives.
