Drug Test Policy Deters Volunteers

FL library loses valuable service, hopes for revision

By Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 11/01/2006

The five-branch Levy County Public Library System, FL, located southwest of Gainesville, serves a population of only 36,000, with per capita funding under $10, so volunteers “do anything and everything,” Director Bonnie Tollefson told LJ. But the library’s volunteer pool has nearly evaporated, from 55 to two, after the mostly seniors volunteer force objected to the county’s strict drug-testing policy for volunteers and employees.

“An 80-year-old woman is not about to pee in a cup,” Tollefson told the Williston Pioneer Sun News. “It is an affront to her dignity.” Indeed, the procedure adopted by the county requires that the testing be done while a laboratory employee lingers in hearing distance, apparently to preclude the switching of samples.

The Gainesville Sun quoted an unnamed volunteer who observed, “It’s not like we are a high-risk group for coming in drunk or high or stoned or whatever.” Levy County coordinator Fred Moody blamed the situation on the county’s public risk management insurance, which directs the county to treat volunteers no differently than employees. He told the Sun that the county would consider less-intrusive tests like mouth swabs, which other agencies use.

Alachua County Library District director Sol M. Hirsch, who is also president of the Florida Library Association, told LJ that the government requires due diligence regarding volunteers, but “I don’t know any other library that drug-tests volunteers.” (His library requires a background check.) As for the flap in Levy County, he said he hoped it would be a “cause to revisit the policy.”