Link to July 14 libraryjournal.com post, "Michigan Governor Proposes Killing Department of History, Arts, & Libraries, Dropping State Librarian".Excerpt: [Gretchen] Couraud [executive director of the Michigan Library Association] said that, while the library community was open to belt-tightening, the governor’s proposal was shortsighted. “The Library of Michigan is the only state agency that has had the vision, and succeeded, in moving the state forward to a knowledge-based economy with digital information and group purchasing,” she said.
She said that Library of Michigan saved taxpayers $72 million, if the $3.9 million spent on the Michigan eLibrary were compared to the cost of every library in the state purchasing databases independently.
The state Senate will hold a hearing Wednesday on legislation to keep the library functions whole and move them to the Secretary of State’s office, Couraud said, indicating that the future direction of state library services remains unresolved.
As described in a July 12 New York Times article ("In Michigan, Deficits Defy Years of Cutting"), state government in Michigan has been cutting back since 2002.
Excerpt: Long before California resorted to i.o.u.’s to pay state bills, and before New York’s political insurrection made a mess of this year’s budget planning, and even before the recession pushed dozens of other states into their worst fiscal distress in decades, lawmakers here were cutting.
The cuts started in the 2002 budget year, when some prisoners were ordered to sleep two to a cell. Then came cuts to state colleges in 2003, and orchestras, zoos and operas in 2004. Medical payments for the poor were cut in 2005, followed by cuts to a youth prison in 2006. After that? More cuts — to prisons, crime laboratories, libraries and day care programs.
Last month, 100 state troopers were laid off, and the troopers left behind were told to drive around less to, of course, cut costs.
In Michigan, everything in on the table.
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