Report Slams Sacramento PL

Responding to numerous complaints about California's Sacramento Public Library (SPL) aired publicly and privately, the 2007–08 Sacramento County Grand Jury on May 14 issued a 28-page report slamming the library on multiple counts. Notably, issues included SPL's hiring of a maintenance company that inflated invoices for more than three years and was co-owned by the wife of a library staffer. The report recommended consideration of the removal of library director Anne Marie Gold and a revised SPL management structure that would put a chief executive officer “with proven business expertise and credentials” in charge of the library.

Gold, director of the 27-branch system since 2002, told LJ that SPL would provide a response, as required by state law, within 90 days, to “substantiate, clarify, and correct” the allegations and that she would not resign. “The other picture,” she said, “is of a library that's thriving and expanding, and our community is using it more and more.”

She pointed out that, a day before the grand jury report was issued, SPL won a judgment worth some $2.4 million from those associated with two companies that bilked the library. (The defendants did not contest the civil lawsuit; now SPL must collect restitution via liens on their property. The overbilling totaled $650,000.)

Robbie Waters, chair of the library board and a member for 13 years, told the Sacramento Bee that, while he was not ready to ask Gold to resign, “I've never seen anything this in-depth and this serious.” The Bee editorialized that it was “time to clean house,” recommending that not only Gold and the director of human resources be fired but also that library governance be revamped.

The report said the board has no standing committees overseeing library operations and the Finance Advisory Committee, which is comprised of staff from participating entities in the Library Authority (Sacramento County, Sacramento City, and four other cities), never met with board members.

The grand jury receives complaints regarding all levels of local government. In this case, the report states, “A library employee contacted the grand jury regarding over-billing, improper use of funds, improper record keeping, and mismanagement by senior management of the library.” The six-month investigation included interviews with over 40 people, analyses of more than 1500 documents, and the issuance of over 70 subpoenas.

The report said that, in the investigation, “several other discoveries were made which illuminated larger, more serious and systemic problems” at SPL. For example, staffers sent a copy of a petition of no confidence in library management and also complained that the board “summarily dismissed their petition.”

The director of human resources, the grand jury found, “believed that there was no policy on employee evaluations,” which meant that most library staffers had not been evaluated in more than three years. A “well-qualified interim Fiscal Officer,” who worked at SPL in 2003, “often disagreed with the Library Director” and thus was “disinvited” from further executive staff meetings, the report stated. Gold, according to the report, allowed unsigned invoices to be processed and checks to be written without supporting documents.

Also, the library took financial controls (e.g., purchasing, credit card receipts, and travel requests) from the finance department, which led to several “abuses,” the report said, including multiple late reimbursements to SPL by managers for personal expenses.

Since November 2003, the library has spent over $2.2 million for consultant services, the report said: “[A] number of the contracts were either undated, unsigned by the respective parties, or were missing pages.” Also, in September 2003, “a comprehensive road map” for professional financial management was provided to the board and senior managers, but it “was subsequently ignored or inadequately implemented by the Library's senior management.”

The report also suggested that SPL “has a major problem with uncollected fines,” with about $2.5 million owed, and that SPL has inconsistent policies regarding the handling of money at the branches.