Shortsighted Mayor Gives New Orleans PL Board Chair the Boot

-- Library Journal, 09/11/2006

As the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) has struggled to rebuild in the post-Katrina landscape, one constant has been board chair Tania Tetlow, a law professor at Tulane University who has led the effort to restore buildings like the Alvar Street Branch (coordinated by LJ) and the Children's Resource Center. But Mayor Ray Nagin chose not to reappoint Tetlow, leading two of her colleagues to protest and offer to let her serve the remainder of their terms. "It doesn't make sense to throw away this asset," Bill Settoon, the board's vice chair, told the Sept. 2 Times-Picayune.

 Tetlow told LJ she will continue to serve NOPL as a member of the library foundation and said she expected to be nominated as chair. "I'm going to keep working in the foundation and do all the same things," she said. Tetlow, whose term officially expired in June, will be replaced as soon as the city council approves jazz musician Irvin Mayfield, the mayor's choice. While Brenda Hatfield, Nagin's chief administrative officer, praised Tetlow for her work, according to the newspaper, she said the mayor was trying to "refresh" the boards he controls. Nagin refused to let Tetlow—the board's most active member—take over other members' terms, a sign of intransigence. 

In a letter to the Times-Picayune, Tulane University Library dean Lance Query praised Tetlow, saying, "In our desperate effort to rebuild, the last thing this city needs is to lose effective public servants. When we do it to ourselves, as is the case with Ms. Tetlow, it is unforgivable. Recently, I attended a planning meeting of Gulf Coast library leaders and representatives of a major corporation with philanthropic interests in helping our region's libraries post-Katrina. Tania Tetlow was flat-out the most organized, articulate and compelling of those making the case for their libraries."