Present: John Holmes, Doreen Harwood, Randy Hertzler, Andy Johnson, Diana Brooking
Absent: Louise Richards
Legislative Priorities: Andy reviewed the list of proposed ALUW legislative priorities that he emailed to the board earlier. The ALUW Legislative Committee met last week and proposed some more changes.
It seems as if the end of the Washington State Library as set out in Gov. Locke's budget proposal may be a "done deal." Andy pointed out that there are some essential functions that the State Library performs that need to be continued in some form or another, and the Legislative Committee has added a paragraph to the proposed legislative priorities to address that point.
The concern is that the UW Libraries may be asked to (forced to) become the Regional Depository for federal government documents, or that we may be asked to become the distributor for all Washington State documents, and Andy says we have neither the space nor the staff to do these things.
Another change to the proposed priorities concerned the possible increase in employee contributions to health insurance and how that impacts UW Libraries ability to offer competitive salaries AND benefits.
Lobbyist: Andy said that Steve Duncan, the lobbyist for WLA, is available and possibly interested in working also for ALUW. Steve did not see that conflict of interest would be a problem. Joe Kiegel, who is also on the WLA Legislative Committee, highly recommended Steve. And the legislative session in Olympia will begin on Jan. 14. However, serious budget readjustments may not take place until after the spring revenue forecast, so legislators may have time to bring up other things such as "harmful to minors" in the meantime. So the ALUW Legislative Committee recommends not waiting too long to find a new lobbyist. Andy said that we may not be able to afford full lobbyist services, but that we could put someone on retainer. Andy asked the Board to decide what to do about a new lobbyist.
The Board tentatively decided (pending Louise's agreement) to ask Andy to set up a meeting with Steve Duncan, and see if he would be willing to work for ALUW on retainer and how much that would cost. Randy said that in fact the Legislative Fund is pretty much on target and with maybe an extra solication from the membership, we would have as much money as we had when Tom Bristow was working for us.
Next Meeting: Jan. 10, Thurs., 3:45 pm, in OUGL Conference Room.
Submitted by Diana Brooking, Jan. 2, 2002