Ohio

Ohio County Law Library Legislation is Pending

By Cleveland Law Library

Last Thurday, Ohio Senator David Goodman introduced legislation related to Ohio's county law libraries as SB 345. The full text of the proposed bill can be located at the Ohio Legislative Service Commission's web site. Please read the text of this bill carefully as the joint product of four (4) interest groups consisting of the Ohio Judicial Conference, the Ohio State Bar Association, the County Commissioners Association of Ohio and a coalition of county law library association boards and bar associations. In a nutshell, the legislation would create a 5 member County Law Library Resources Boards in each county.  Each CLLRB would begin its authority 1/1/10 and provide services to municipal corporations, townships, county agencies and courts within the county. The first CLLRB meetings would be within 15 days after 7/1/09. Each CLLRB would employ a Librarian and other staff as determined by the Board, and all of them would be unclassified civil service county employees. The CLLRB could not charge for access, but it could charge for services. Special local CLLRB funds would be established for fines and penalties, county appropriations, and gifts, and no excesses could be declared and transferred to the county general fund. The CLLRB would go through the regular county budget process, and once its budget is approved, it would receive 50 of its yearly funds right away and the remaining 50% by July 15th of each year. The current County Law Library Association boards would serve as advisory councils to the CLLRBs for 2 years from 1/1/09-12/31/10.  After that, each CLLRB could still have a more lose advisory council.  All CLLRBs could contract with other CLLRBs (or create multi-county CLLRBs), a state-wide consortium that would be created, private entities, and public agencies. The bill also gives each CLLRB approval authority over the purchase of legal research/reference materials and the equipment to support them. The state-wide consortium would not start until 1/1/11, after which it would begin to catalog each library's resources, make grants to CLLRBs, negotiate contracts CLLRBs could use, make recommendations, give consulation, etc. A Task Force on county law libraries would also be reinstated to help implement the changes and monitor proper expenditures.

Full post as published by Cleveland Law Library Weblog on June 03, 2008 (boomark / email).