OLYMPIA — Two bills filed in the state Legislature would update the statute for dissolving rural library districts.
Senate Bill 5824 was introduced at the request of Secretary of State Steve Hobbs after the effort to dissolve the public library serving Dayton and Columbia County highlighted what some officials called potential faults in the process.
The current statute allows only voters in the unincorporated county to participate in the petition process and vote for the ballot measure, an oversight that disenfranchises city voters annexed into the district who rely on the library’s services, a court official said when blocking the issue from Columbia County’s general election ballot.
“When the judge stopped the vote from going forward, we just took that language to clean up the statute to make sure that those who are being serviced by the library should have an opportunity to vote and decide on whether they want the library dissolved or not,” Hobbs said Tuesday, Jan. 9, at a hearing before the Senate Committee on State Government and Elections.
SB 5824 expands voter eligibility to include all qualified residents of a library district to vote when a proposal for dissolution appears on the ballot.
It also increases the petitioning threshold from 10% of county voters to 35% of qualified voters in the district.
Hobbs said the 35% threshold was chosen because that is what is required to remove someone from office.
Dayton resident Elise Severe, chair of Neighbors United for Progress and one of the individuals who filed a lawsuit to block the measure from going to the ballot, testified in favor of the bill at the hearing.
“Last year, a small and aggressive group tried to censor books at the rural library,” she said. “When they failed, they tried to close our library. Under existing law, they only needed 10% of voters from outside city limits to sign a petition and get it on ballot.”
Severe said about two-thirds of the district’s voters reside in the city and would have no vote on the matter.
“Raising the petition signature requirement to 35% ensures that the will of voters is better represented,” she said. “Groups are using this law as a loophole to close library districts in their organized efforts to ban books. This is an important political issue in our state, and we need to send a message with good governance, but it will not be easy to tear down democracy.”
Committee lawmakers recommended 4-3 that the bill pass, taking action on Friday, Jan. 12.
Among the three lawmakers signaling that the bill be referred to the next committee without recommendation was Walla Walla’s District 16 Sen. Perry Dozier.
The senate bill has been passed along to the Rules Committee for a second reading.
A similar bill filed in the House would adjust the statute language to allow qualified voters in the unincorporated county and annexed area to vote on a dissolution ballot measure, and all district voters to participate in the petition process.
HB 2106, which does not address the petition threshold but adds a requirement that annexed areas have representation on a district’s governing board, was heard by the House Committee on Local Government on Wednesday, Jan. 17.
Columbia County Commissioner Marty Hall testified in favor of the bill at the hearing, describing the turmoil the process wrought in the county and saying the bill would address the oversight of residents being taxed for a service and then having no say in its future.
“We’ll heal here locally, but maybe we could prevent this elsewhere,” he said.
Hall said he was unfamiliar with the Senate bill on the same topic.
“I would just ask, one way or another, that we take advantage of this opportunity to right this wrong,” he said.
Asked by the committee whether the Columbia County library board already had representation from the city and the county, Hall responded he thought it did.
Interim Library Director Ellen Brigham confirmed by reaching out to board members Wednesday that three of the boards members reside in the county and two reside in the city.
The House committee is scheduled to review the bill in executive session on Friday, Jan. 19.
