WALLA WALLA — State officials are taking another look at the process for dissolving rural library districts after a lawsuit in Columbia County spotlighted potential faults in the statute.
Under state law, a rural library district can be dissolved by a majority vote of county voters, specifically those residing outside incorporated cities or towns, even when a city has been annexed into the district, like Dayton has in Columbia County’s.
The issue may be placed on the ballot if signatures are collected from 10% or more of the unincorporated county’s registered voters.
In Columbia County, that threshold was met with 107 voters — a threshold too low for comfort for Jay Ball, chair of the rural library district’s Board of Trustees.
“We were faced with a challenge to our legitimacy, the actual right to have a library,” Ball said to Washington State Librarian Sara Jones at the Monday, Oct. 16, meeting.
The measure to dissolve the Columbia County Rural Library District was blocked from the November ballot based on findings of fraud in the signature gathering process and because the state statute excludes city voters.
But Ball said other communities could face similar challenges, putting important resources at risk.
“We’re not the only rural library district in the state,” he said to Jones. “This could happen in many places, many counties.”
He asked Jones, who attended the meeting to talk about training opportunities for the board among other things, what could be done to improve the law.
“Can we change it? Can we raise the bar, make it a little bit tougher?” he asked.
Jones said at the meeting that the state library and Office of the Secretary of State are drafting a bill that would address both the signature threshold and the issue of disenfranchised voters.
“One of the first steps (of revisiting this) was looking at other districts to see what the threshold was, and it’s our understanding that this is a very, very low threshold,” she said.
For example, conservation district dissolution requires signatures from 20% of voters in the district to go to a vote, and water-sewer district dissolution requires signatures from 25% of voters in the district.
Public districts of all kinds — fire, water, hospital, cemetery and even mosquito control — exist in Washington and have statutes guiding district formation and dissolution.
Jones said she doesn’t know what the proposal will be for the increased threshold because the office is still in the research phase.
As for the disenfranchised voter piece, Jones said they’re looking at proposing that all voters in the district have a say in the petition and dissolution process, but that is also still being drafted.
She said the goal is something fair.
“At this point, we’re just trying to do all the due diligence we can of what’s the place that makes the most sense to be fair to the voters, fair to the community that’s concerned about it, and then equitable across other policies,” she said.
The bill draft will be introduced by Secretary of State Steve Hobbs for consideration in the 2024 legislative session, Jones said. The bill would have to be formally introduced by a lawmaker and may be changed before final approval.
Jones said the Secretary of State’s Office is the best office to raise the topic because of its role overseeing library districts and elections. The state library is a component of the Office of the Secretary of State.
“The statute actually affects multi-type, rural and other districts,” she said. “It’s important to make sure that we understand that people are watching, and it has broad implications.”
