Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County State legislation in the Ohio Senate takes aim at the future of the Poland branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, above. The library board voted to close that facility and build at a new location last month.

YOUNGSTOWN — As tensions continue to escalate between the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County and local elected officials, an Ohio Senate bill that would seek to penalize the library was met with opposition.

In his closing remarks at Thursday’s regular Mahoning County commissioners meeting, Commissioner Geno DiFabio appeared to take a swipe at the library board of trustees. On Wednesday, state Sen. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, tried to defend his bill that, if passed, could cost PLYMC up to half of its operating budget.

The legislation, introduced April 21 — eight days before the PLYMC board had a special meeting to decide the fate of the Poland library branch — would force the public library to submit any plans to close a library branch to the county board of commissioners for approval. Failure to do so would open up the library to civil lawsuits that could cut its access to Ohio’s Public Library Fund. For Mahoning County, that funding represents 50% of its operating budget.

Sen. Kyle Koehler, R-Springfield, made an amendment to the bill before Cutrona’s testimony, noting that a library branch is acknowledged to be closed on the date that it stops providing services to the community, not when the board of trustees votes to close the branch.

On April 29, following more than a year of public activism in opposition, the board voted to close the 25-year-old building at 311 S. Main St. and relocate the branch to a new building, likely near the corner of Denver Drive and state Route 170. The board and executives cited escalating maintenance costs, prohibitive repair costs and outdated infrastructure.

Opponents of the decision have been outspoken that the building could be renovated more affordably than the library has claimed. Cutrona was among the elected officials who spoke in opposition to the move, and now has taken the cause to Columbus.

However, his fellow senators observed that the bill is narrowly tailored to include only counties with a population between 220,000 and 230,000. That includes only Mahoning County, with a population of about 224,700. That fact was highlighted by several members of the Senate Local Government Committee when Cutrona testified about the bill Wednesday.

“My question is…shouldn’t it be for all of Ohio? Because if they look at your bill, it’s not in there, and they may be thinking ‘is this vindictive? Is it just for Mahoning County?’ because that’s what I thought at first,” said Committee Chair Sen. Sandra O’Brien, R-Lenox. O’Brien serves Cutrona’s neighboring district, which covers parts of Trumbull, Ashtabula and Geauga counties.

Cutrona stated in his testimony that his concern — and his impetus for drafting the bill — was the Poland library branch’s relocation.

“I have a very unique situation going on. I don’t want to overstep on anyone’s backyard, but I think this is a good example where we can open up the dialogue on this and if you guys think this should expand, I’m happy to have that conversation as well,” he said. “I have never seen a situation where you have seen so much collaboration. Party affiliations get thrown out the window immediately when you have issues like this.”

O’Brien pressed Cutrona on the bill’s specificity on multiple occasions throughout the roughly 20-minute hearing.

“I’m just saying that if you’re really looking to get it through, I think it needs to be explained, because it looks like maybe you’re just taking something out,” she said. “I think if you change it to statewide, I think all the other libraries probably will have an opinion and chime in a little bit, and maybe they will recommend something that could make it better, we don’t know. Because that’s their area of expertise, they’re librarians.”

Cutrona called the bill “a pilot program” and suggested it could be tried for a few years in limited capacity, and the state could then refer back to it.

WHAT”S IN THE BILL?

The bill would create a new section under Ohio Revised Code — ORC 3375.94 — which states a board of library trustees in a county with a population between 220,000 and 230,000 may not “shut down, decommission, or make inactive” a library branch without consent from the county commissioners.

Doing so would open the PLYMC to a declaratory judgment lawsuit from any resident of the county, to be filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, naming the library board as the defendant and asking the court to determine whether the board’s action was unlawful.

A finding of non-compliance — acting without the authority of commissioners — would then trigger the punishment: denial of access to Ohio’s Public Library Fund.

Specifically, the bill would amend ORC 5705.32 to direct the county budget commission to withhold PLF money from the library. The bill is unclear whether that punishment would only apply to the affected branch, but it seems to indicate that it would affect PLYMC in its entirety.

The bill’s language contradicts ORC 3375.40, the portion of Ohio law that grants library boards the authority to establish and maintain branches, purchase and dispose of property and carry out other actions in the interest of good budget management.

Analysis of the bill by the Legislative Services Commission states that the forfeiture of PLF dollars, once enacted, would be permanent — the county’s public library system would never again be able to access the money Ohio has allocated for supporting public libraries.

TAKING TRUSTEES TO TASK

Cutrona was open in his criticism of the board on Wednesday, just as he was on April 29, when he addressed trustees before they voted to relocate the Poland branch.

“What’s very unique in the state of Ohio is in Mahoning County…they have a self-perpetuating board. It is a board that has over 15 people on it ,and there is no accountability,” he said. “So what we have is a community — these are taxpayers that are paying for the renovations, that are paying for the buildings that are in the community and their voices are not heard.”

Cutrona stated that he, along with county commissioners, U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, and all of Poland Village Council, as well as former U.S. Rep. and state Sen. John Boccieri, all publicly opposed the move. Since they are elected and could not sway the board, Cutrona reasoned, then the board is accountable to nobody.

“I think there needs to be some layer in these unique — very unique — set of circumstances, where you can hold accountable perhaps county commissioners…and why county commissioners? This is the same group of people who ascertain whether a levy for the libraries is going to be on the ballot,” Cutrona said.

While commissioners unanimously supported keeping Poland where it is, and spoke in a united front at the April 29 meeting, only DiFabio was willing to comment on Thursday. During his closing comments at the end of the meeting, without specifically mentioning the library, DiFabio stated:

“We’re responsible to the voters. We’re responsible to the people that put us here. There are some boards that reside very close to us…but they have no responsibility to anyone else, it’s very unfair. There’s no accountability and that’s something we have to look at changing.”

Asked specifically about Cutrona’s bill and whether commissioners would want to shoulder that responsibility, Commissioner Anthony Traficanti declined to answer, while DiFabio again spoke.

“If it is the only way to get accountability for our residents, and for taxpayers’ dollars, to get accountability on that board, then yeah I’d be for it,” he said. “Because there’s no accountability and if that’s the only way to reign it in, then I would have to seriously consider it.”

THE LIBRARY’S REBUTTAL

But PLYMC officials take issue with DiFabio’s and Cutrona’s assertion that the trustees are not accountable.

Chief Stakeholder Relations Officer Zak Kozberg said Cutrona’s statements were highly inaccurate and that the senator did not seem to have well-informed answers for the committee’s questions..

“He could have had all these questions answered if he’d reached out to the local library. That’s what we do; we provide people with information,” he said. “We are community servants and public servants, just like Sen. Cutrona. We wish he would have reached out to collaborate with us on something that would really help everyone, but he didn’t. He introduced this bill with no warning, eight days before the board met to discuss and vote on Poland, and that’s not lost on anybody.”

Kozberg concedes that Mahoning County’s board is unique in the state, but he said there are valid reasons for that and the library is, in fact, highly accountable.

Kozberg notes that every five years, Mahoning County residents vote on a levy that provides half the library’s funding, a ballot measure that must first be approved by commissioners.

He also notes that the other half of the budget — the Public Library Fund — was recently altered and is subject to the budgetary planning discretion of the Ohio legislature and to line-item veto by any governor. Kozberg said the state also audits the library every two years.

The library also files an IRS 990 form annually, which describes the library system’s executive compensation, governance structure, major expenditures, grants, and other fiscally accountable matters.

That governance structure, Kozberg said, was implemented with the board’s formation in the 1880s, with one overarching idea in mind.

“The board was assembled the way it was precisely to prevent political influence,” he said. “The entire idea of an independent board is to protect intellectual freedom and access to information for everyone.”

The board of trustees is set up per ORC 3375.32 regarding organization of boards, and ORC 3375.40, regarding trustees powers. The language that governs contracts between counties and association library boards is found in ORC 3375.42. There are 18 other such library boards in the state.

Mahoning’s 17 members may include nominees from the Youngstown State University Foundation, the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees, the Ohio state senate, Mahoning County Commissioners, Friends of the Library, along with at-large community seats.

Kozberg said it is important to note that, in order to maintain its independence, the board has the authority to reject any nominee it deems would not serve the library well.

Cutrona lamented during his testimony that the state senate seat, currently filled by Delores Crawford, has been continually occupied since 1993 without any state senator between himself and the office holder at the time having any say in it. The state senator at the time was either Harry Meshel or Joe Vukovich.

Kozberg said Cutrona’s assertion is not accurate – Crawford was not actually appointed by the senate, noting again that the board does not have to approve a nominee.

Kozberg said the fundamental problem with the entire bill and the idea behind it is that Mahoning County’s system is designed and fully intended to serve every citizen across the county. He said different branches meet different needs, depending upon the social and economic conditions in that community.

The Michael Kusalaba branch on the West Side, for example, may not largely fulfill the same interests and community needs as Austintown, and vice-versa.

“We are not the only association board in Ohio, but we are the largest, and that’s because we serve as well as possible, across every rung of the county, all of the social, economic, intellectual and other needs of the communities,” he said. “This is not the first time we have closed or moved a branch, and it is not the first time we have made a controversial decision. This is the first time, I’m aware of, that a fiscally responsible decision has sparked state legislation.”

Kozberg again noted that the executive team, including Executive Director and CEO Aimee Fifarek and Chief Operating Officer Jordan Shaver, spent a year or more studying all the numbers and made their best recommendation to the board.

He reiterated his previous statement that PLYMC’s responsibility is to properly serve all of Mahoning County, and said Poland will still have a fully-functional library branch that will meet all the needs of the community.

“What’s on the table here is a situation where, if we do not comply with this legislative mandate, we risk losing half of our annual budget and we will still be asked to do more with less,” he said.