Public Employee Press

Workers to pols:
Protect public libraries

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Dozens of DC 37 members and retirees descended on Albany March 2 to voice their outrage over millions of dollars in proposed cuts to the city’s public libraries.

The activists from DC 37’s library locals told politicians they feared the state budget reductions, combined with deep local cuts, would decimate services and cause mass layoffs.

Before lobbying, the unionists rallied outside legislators’ offices at Empire State Plaza with 1,000 library workers and community members from across the state.

The crowd broke into a chant of “No more cuts!” after New York Library Association Executive Director Michael J. Borges said Gov. David Paterson’s proposed budget would raise the total loss in state library funding over the past two years to $18 million and put library aid below 1998 levels.

“Cutting funding for our libraries is cutting funding for literacy, education, our culture and our community,” said Vincent Gentile, who chairs the City Council Committee on Libraries.

Barbara Lifton, who chairs the Assembly Library Committee, blamed the funding shortfall on years of misguided tax cuts. Without the billions of dollars in cuts over two decades, New York State wouldn’t be facing its current fiscal crisis, she said.

City libraries would lose $4.9 million under Paterson’s budget. All told, the three systems would face up to $70 million in reductions in 2010 and 2011 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s preliminary financial plan.

Library officials told the City Council March 16 that in the worst-case scenario, the budget cuts would eliminate over 1,300 positions.

Local Presidents Margalit Susser of Queens Library Guild Local 1321, Eileen Muller of Brooklyn Public Library Guild Local 1482 and Carol Thomas of New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 led the force of members who visited legislators to denounce the cuts.