Two months have passed since Mayor Daley slashed the library budget, forcing libraries across the city to trim hours and lay off staff. A handful of activists and scholars protested the cuts, but few City Hall insiders figured the anger would spread, particularly since Daley had framed the issue as a choice between libraries and higher property taxes.
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Daley blames the cuts on Governor Edgar, who slashed state library funds to the city by $3 million. “It’s unfair to blame Mayor Daley for these cuts,” says Noel Gaffney, a press officer for the mayor. “We aren’t the ones who took $3 million out of the system–the governor did.” She points out that Daley actually added $890,000 to the city’s portion of the library system’s $66 million budget; the city now pays $61 million of that budget. “The library system is just one more case where the city is stretching to cover gaps left by the state. It will only get worse if Edgar follows through on his threat to make more cuts in state aid for the cities.”
This argument is echoed by library officials, who remain loyal to Daley. They’ve even ordered staff to remove from checkout counters petitions that call on Daley to restore the cuts. “When people ask why we don’t speak out I say, ‘What do you want me to do? Lie down in front of the mayor’s car?’” says Robert Remer, acting library commissioner. “We didn’t picket the mayor’s house, but there was strenuous discussion. And let me tell you, Mayor Daley was very sympathetic to our needs. But because of state cuts, the city had some painful choices–the blood was on the cutting floor in the budget office. The mayor did all he could to restore the money that the state cut. I don’t know why people are not madder at Edgar.”
The library doesn’t even have enough pages to reshelve books. “We are constantly backlogged,” says Williams. “There are usually thousands of books lying in gurneys or sitting in shelving trucks. The most unpleasant aspect of my job is having to explain to people that the book they’re looking for–the book the computer says should be on the shelf–is probably stolen, sitting in a gurney, or misshelved. Some people get incredulous. They say, ‘You mean I came all the way downtown for one book and now it’s not here?’ Meanwhile, there are ten or more people waiting in line for service. You have to take the heat. It’s like being the social worker who has to tell a welfare client that his benefits have been cut.”
Kreinberg and other members of the Chicago Public Library Advocates support 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore’s resolution that calls on Daley to spend $3 million to reinstate library hours, as well as $500,000 to buy new books and $452,000 to reopen the Municipal Reference Library. “It would not be hard to find $4 million in our current budget,” says Moore. “You could trim some of the fat at the Office of Inquiry and Information, which handles nothing more than public-relations functions.”
