Kentucky Contingencies
When “any tax is a bad tax”, the library is an instrument of tyranny.
The Tea Party of Northern Kentucky case against two libraries is set to be ruled on by the state Appeals court any day now.
This appeal follows a loss by the libraries in the lower state court.
The loss would roll back funding for 99 out of 104 libraries in Kentucky
to at least 1979 levels. To date, the Supreme Court has refused to rule on the case, remanding it to the Appeals court. Likewise, the legislature in Kentucky failed to pass a bill at the end of last session to ‘fix’ the points of law at the root of the case. The President of the Senate wanted to let the Courts sort it out. The points of law are pretty thoroughly discussed
in other places. We don’t have a way to handicap the Appeals court
deliberations, but we – and the rest of the national library advocacy
ecosystem – do need to anticipate their ruling.
EveryLibrary has been tracking this case since 2013 for two reasons: If
the Tea Party ultimately prevails, the 99 libraries affected by the
ruling may have to go out for Petition or Ballot to reset their tax
rates to current levels; and, that this is a situation where a small
group of anti-tax ideologues sued libraries, and that technique for
‘shrinking government’ has been proven viable. If the libraries prevail
in their appeal, the funding picture for libraries in the Commonwealth
of Kentucky is more stable, but the underlying anti-tax climate
there – and across the country – has only been handed temporary setback.
When the URL one of the local plaintiff groups is “TaxlessSociety.com”,
they will be back. They are on a mission. Read more....
