Editorial: The Privatization Threat

For the past few months, I've been carrying around an email from Sally Reed, FOLUSA's executive director, on the threat that privatization poses to America's libraries. She wrote that outsourcing library services to a private corporation, “perhaps even more than the struggle for funding, is our biggest threat, yet we rarely discuss it.”

She may be right.

The email came roaring back to mind after I read three articles on libraries in PM, the journal of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). The May article, by Danny Jordan Jr., county administrator in Jackson County, OR—which outsourced its library to Maryland-based Library Systems & Services, LLC (LSSI)—touts the savings accruing to the county. (Ironically, the first two articles urge city managers to advocate for libraries because of their crucial role in sustaining communities and in e-government.)

Certainly, Jackson County faced dire times. It had lost its federal timber subsidies in 2006, two library tax levies failed at the polls, and the libraries were closed and staff furloughed. Yet, one of the two proposals submitted to the county came from a local union representing the library employees, which county officials were required by the collective bargaining agreement to help the union prepare. Nevertheless, the county chose to give the contract for providing library services to private company LSSI, which had a much lower bid.

I wonder, however, how hard the county worked with the union to make the bid competitive—and how much of the impetus to go private came from knowing that, under LSSI, staff would be employed by the company, saving the county from paying money into the state pension plan and on other benefits.

Jordan noted that privatization “strengthened the stakeholder role of each of the local governments.” As a result, local libraries can increase their operating hours by “purchasing” additional hours—paying for them themselves—“in four-hour blocks of time.” That solution and other instances of cost-sharing could have been implemented as readily under county governance, too.

New Jersey Library Association director Pat Tumulty, who is no stranger to LSSI's incursions in her state, told me such an article can inflict “tremendous damage” on libraries. In Jersey City, a three-year contract with LSSI was happily not extended when a new mayor put another library team in place, which produced a turnaround. When Jerseyites faced privatization, there was little guidance out there for them, Tumulty said. (Since then, LJ published “When LSSI Comes to Town,” LJ 10/1/04. LSSI in 2006 gained funds for expansion after private equity company Islington Capital Partners purchased a majority stake.)

The American Library Association (ALA) has been notably quiet on the issue, despite a statement in 2001 that it opposes shifting library services to the “for-profit sector.” Individual presidents have criticized privatization, including Loriene Roy and Leslie Burger, who recalls that ALA officials visited Salinas, CA, in 2005, when that system closed, to help dissuade local officials from taking drastic measures like privatization.

In addition to direct action and specific strategies for librarians faced with privatization, said Burger, “We need to be at the ICMA conferences....in meetings...and on programs.” While librarians must be realistic about cost concerns, she said, we must also “make the case that you can't single out library employees for subpar treatment,” on benefits and pensions.

I wish that instead of Jordan, another city administrator had written that piece in PM: one like Lafayette, CA, city manager Steven Falk (also an ICMA member). His op-ed, “Who Says Libraries Are Dead?” (Contra Costa Times, 4/12/08), celebrates the “spectacular rebirth” of libraries in the Bay Area. Lafayette gets most of its services from Contra Costa County Library (CCCL). “I get expertise, economies of scale, deep ties to the community,” through CCCL as my “service provider,” Falk told me. As for privatization, “The incentives that drive a private operator differ from the public [mandate],” he said. “They respond simply to market metrics, which may not be in the best interest of the patron.”

There are far too many examples of privatization of public services to the detriment of the public good to go into here. As the issue relates to libraries, however, our library organizations must take the lead. Where is the strategy, the guidelines, and what Burger called “the SWAT team” to fight privatization? Where is the leadership to counter the damage done by the ICMA article? It's time for ALA to step up.