Phone: Korie Buerkle, Nan Heim, Nate Pederson, Buzzy Nielson

OLA Legislative Committee Monday, July 18, 2016 • 10 AM to 12 noon Oregon State Library Room 202

Attending: Jane Corry, Janet Webster, Sue Ludington, Cathryn Bowie, Ruth Murray, MaryKay Dahlgreen, Elsa Loftis, Abigail Elder, Carol DInges, Diedre Conkling, John Schoppert, Kate Lasky Phone: Korie Buerkle, Nan Heim, Nate Pederson, Buzzy Nielson

1. Review of Previous Action Items Only thing really active is planning for a Statistics Summit. MaryKay and Cathryn will discuss at the next Reference Coordinating Council meeting.

2. Lobbyist Report (Nan) Nan and Carol reported on the latest fro the working group on after school and summer learning. It’s proving to be challenging group, but libraries are coming across as the only statewide program that has a proven record of success. What has emerged is acknowledgment that providers are not communicating amongst each other. A survey of what is available and who is doing what may be useful. The next meeting is Au 2 at noon in Room 470 (House side of the Capitol).

From this review, we discussed what OLA could do to increase funding for Ready to Read. We agreed that summer reading and Ready to Read grant funded programs work well because local libraries control them in response to local needs. We would like to advocate for $2 a child, but were not as sure as to how to allocate that. Possibilities would be to maintain the minimum grant to small libraries and retain the current per capita and geographic size formula, or tweak the formula to give some priority to areas with greater need (not meeting third grade reading benchmarks and high percentage of free and reduced lunch schools.) If there are new funds available from the corporate tax initiative, we want to be ready to ask for increased funding. Abigail, Carol, Janet and Nan will work on a legislative concept to chare with the committee. Katie can be a resource. The concept needs to be outlined by mid-September to submit to legislative council. Nan will start looking at a legislative champion.

Nan called on all of us to get legislators into local libraries during summer reading. Jane will put out the call. We really need to build goodwill if we are going to move ahead with increased funding.

Carol brought up the ballot initiative aimed at reducing high school dropout rates. While a worthy goal, a new funding source is not identified in the proposal so its passage would most likely take funding away from existing programs. http://egov.sos.state.or.us/elec/web_irr_search.record_detail? p_reference=20160065..ASCYYY

3. State Law Librarian Report (Cathryn) Cathryn was recognized as one of the 50 best national advocates for open access to government for the work she lead on making Fastcase accessible to all Oregonians. Congratulations, Cathryn! http://www.fastcase.com/fastcase50-winners-2016/ Oregon is the first state to do this.

4. State Librarian Report (MaryKay) The new OARs were adopted in June and are in place.

The Reference Coordinating Council MaryKay, Cathryn and Mary Beth) are working out details on database subscriptions.

The State Library Board has forwarded a legislative concept to expand Ready to Read from 0-14 to 0-17 and include after school activities in possible uses of the grant funds. The cost would be an additional $200,000 for the biennium. The State Library is also asking for two new administrative positions that would give more capacity in the two units. IT services will probably move to centralized Enterprise Services and this may be a simple budget line change. The Governor’s Budget is due in mid-December so we will have to wait until then to see if the changes are embraced by the Governor.

MayrKay visited Washington over the 4th of July. She visited Wyden’s office and had a productive visit with Trevor. The senator requested suggestions for libraries to visit that were doing great things with summer reading.

5. Access to Justice Committee in Deschutes County (Nate) Sue reported for Nate who had no voice due to a cold. The move of the county law library to Deschutes Public Library has emerged as a model for how it can be done well. There is a newly formed county Access to Justice Committee that include Nate as the designated law librarian, lawyers and public members. Their mission is to ensure access to legal information and expertise. Nate has done a terrific job. We’ll write it up so we can promote this process as a model for other counties.

Sue also mentioned that Columbia County Law Library has reopened with a retired lawyer as the librarian.

6. Report on Management of Libraries (Janet and Kate) The report was reviewed by the OLA Executive Board and is now on the OLA website (under the Legislative Committee’s page).

Related to this, MaryKay reported that Tammy Westergard, the director of the Jackson County Library System, resigned as of July 1 for personal reasons. The board is working on an RFP to study options but are limited by a pretty water tight 5-year contract with LSS&S. Diedre asked MaryKay if the district board knows about the legal resources at Special Districts Association of Oregon. She has passed that onto the board. http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20160512/NEWS/160519834

MaryKay also mentioned that the Douglas County district measure is on the ballot and there’s chatter in the local media.

7. Guns in Libraries (Abigail) Abigail is working on a model policy statement for libraries to use. She has motivation having been approached by the Oregon Firearms Federation about Beaverton’s policy that stated that no weapons were allowed including guns. The State Legislative is the only authority that can make a law to prohibit concealed weapons in a location. Much as many of us have a gut reaction about guns in libraries, we agreed that this is a hard battle right now. Clarification on policies would be useful to avoid a lawsuit. Abigail will draft and Kate, Buzzy and DIedre will review before we share with the OLA membership. 8. Open Educational Resources (John) John updated us on the $700,000 in funds that were approved last session for the creation of open education resources. All have been granted to a variety of community colleges and universities in Oregon. These resources target the textbooks needed for the top 15 transfer classes. Two positions in the Higher Education Coordinating Commission are overseeing the project. This has the potential for huge cost savings for schools and higher education. John will continue to track if additional legislation is proposed to extend the grant program. Haas sponsored the original legislation. We should monitor to see if any of the savings could be directed towards enhancing high school and community college library resources.

Future Meetings: None schedule. Abigail will send out a poll. Kate asked if we could move to another day of the week. We will see what works best for the group.

Action Items:

 Jane will send out call to invite legislators to local libraries.  Abigail, Carol, Janet and Nan will work on a legislative concept for increased Ready to Read funds.  Nate will write up a piece for the Hotline and Libs-Or about the Access to Justice Committee in Deschutes County and the successful model of the county law library program.  Abigail will draft a model gun policy and have it reviewed by Kate, Buzzy and Diedre.  Nan will look at Legislative Day dates in March 2017.  Janet will put out call for committee members and contact those whose term is expiring in August.  Nathan, Sue and Janet will continue to work on the Engage site.  Abigail and Janet will share the Legislative Agenda with the OLA Board at its first meeting of the new fiscal year.  Jane and Korie to weed legislative day gift books, and solicit more for future events.