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Jesse White steps in to local library fight, but new legislation may be necessary

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Illinois

Secretary of State Jesse White said Oct. 25 he stands by the candidate he appointed to fill the vacancy on the Niles-Maine Library District Board and expects to see that candidate, Umair Qadeer, sworn in once the Illinois General Assembly clarifies legislation empowering the Secretary of State to make library board appointments to vacancies open for longer than three months. […]

He said the appointment to the Niles-Maine Library board was not a decision his office had taken lightly.

“When we make an appointment to the library board, we take into consideration all that is required of the individual to not only take on the job and take on the responsibility that goes with it,” White said.

White’s office announced its selection of Qadeer for the board on Sept. 16. Qadeer had also applied to fill the vacancy left by former Trustee Olivia Hanusiak after she resigned in August 2021, and prior to that, Qadeer sat on the Des Plaines Public Library Board before moving within the Niles-Maine Library District boundaries.

* The Sun-Times editorial board…

End of story? Not exactly. A sitting board member filed for a temporary restraining order against White’s pick, preventing Qadeer from participating in meetings, leaving the stalemate in place. On Oct. 7, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alison Conlon made the restraining order permanent. Now, state Sen. Laura Murphy, D-Des Plaines, has filed legislation she told us will be acted on in next month’s veto session to make it clear White’s pick can take his seat.

How does this infighting help the library serve its patrons? We’re not sure. A Niles-Maine librarian told us patrons say they want an end to the conflict — as well as an end to both a hiring freeze and a cutback in hours.

The brouhaha in Niles-Maine feels like a piece of a larger nationwide story in which many of those elected to governmental seats or who are running for them seem to have less interest in making government work than in sticking it to the opposition.

Somehow, America needs to nurture a stronger sense of civic-mindedness, in which we recognize we are all in this together. Political factions will never agree on everything, but they should do a better job of seeking common ground.

* In June of last year, Niles-Maine employees unionized…

Employees of the Niles-Maine District Library are organizing their union with AFSCME Council 31.

Nearly 100 librarians, patron support staff and other library workers will be part of the new union. They filed a majority-interest petition with the local panel of the Illinois Labor Relations Board last week.

Niles library workers are coming together in the wake of cuts to library funding, staff and programs threatened by newly elected members of the library board, who are engulfed in controversy over giving a $100-an-hour no-bid contract to their political supporter, Steven Yasell.

“The staff at the Niles-Maine District Library has spent decades working with different Board leadership to maintain a valuable community space and resource. But within just a few weeks, this new Board majority has made it obvious that they do not understand the functions of a public library and have no interest in learning them,” teen services librarian Rachel Colias said. “Once we realized we weren’t being offered a seat at the table, we pulled up our own with AFSCME. The people who work here have invested too much in this library to be so easily dismissed, and we hope to work as a union to protect our ability to serve anyone who relies on us.” […]

“Our library provides access to every member of our community so they can bridge the digital divide and succeed in the 21st Century. That means not just books and periodicals but computers, printers, internet, video equipment, and most of all the award-winning expert staff,” said Elizabeth Lynch of The Niles Coalition. “When my husband and I chose Niles to raise our family, one of the reasons was the library. Yet immediately upon taking office, the new library trustees began trying to reduce staff and hours, cut funding to programs and outreach, and establish an open-ended contract for their unqualified buddy, all without any input from the staff or the community. The members of the Niles Coalition love our library and will stand with library employees to protect it.”

* AFSCME Union of Niles-Maine District Library staff August letter to the editor…

Ever since the seating of the current board of trustees in May 2021, we have watched the Niles-Maine District Library shrivel. As the library staff, we deal daily with the effects of the board’s actions and inaction, while our concerns go unaddressed.

Nearly 30 resignations are unreplaced due to the ongoing 14-month hiring freeze. […]

Employees’ health insurance contributions increased from $96 to $164 per month — a yearly increase of over $800. […]

While trustees Patti Rozanski, Diane Olson, and Becky Keane strive to see the library regain its former vibrancy, the three others — President Carolyn Drblik, Secretary Suzanne Schoenfeldt and Treasurer Joe Makula — seem to regard us purely as functionaries, not the professional and paraprofessional staff we are. […]

President Drblik tries to justify severe cuts to professional development by saying training could be provided at the library by our own staff. And yet they eliminated our staff day, the one day a year when the library would close for such training. She also suggested staff could watch training videos during their lunch break, before being reminded staff cannot be forced to work during their unpaid lunch. […]

Trustee Makula endlessly parrots the need for cross-training to fill staffing gaps. Staff are already cross-trained. There is no lack of cross-training; the lack is simply in people to perform the work. He says the library has too many staff based on his own analysis, but he never says what the appropriate staffing level would be.

Not only has the library as an institution been diminished, but the staff continues to be disrespected and devalued. We are not pieces on a gameboard. Our morale should be a valid and critical concern to the trustees. If employees are continually devalued, there will come a time when they say enough is enough and choose to join an organization that values their talents, skills, and abilities.

The icing on the cake came at the July board meeting when these three trustees said they would not pay the new fiscal year’s bills until they have the budget in place. (There is, of course, no legal reason for this and until a few years ago the library routinely passed its budget in August.) Since they have so far been unwilling to compromise with the other trustees on the budget, on top of everything else it seems we now have to wonder if we’ll even get paid.

By all indications, Drblik, Schoenfeldt, and Makula are content to see the library wither. Is their ultimate goal to close the library?

* Jesse White appointed Umair Qadeer in September. Journal & Topics…

[Library Trustees Olivia] Hanusiak’s departure left two equally and bitterly divided voting blocs of three library trustees each. Although more than a dozen candidates filed applications to be appointed to the library board, shortly after Hanusiak’s resignation, board members were unable to reach an agreement on who to appoint.

Typically library board trustees would vote to make their own appointment to fill a vacancy. Because of the deadlock on the appointment, State Sen. Laura Murphy (D-28th) who represents a large section of Maine Township, introduced legislation, last spring similar to what exists for local school boards, mandating that, if the library is unable to make an appointment within 90 days of a vacancy being declared, or of the legislation becoming law, the state’s chief librarian, Secretary White, would then have 60 days after that to make the appointment. That legislation passed the Illinois General Assembly on unanimous votes and was then signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker.

The timing of the appointment is also significant. The library is set to hold a hearing on its final budget, where a vote could also be taken, at a special library board meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 26.

Discussion on the tentative budget was contentious. The tentative budget was adopted after a five-hour meeting with Library Board President Carolyn Drblik saying she would not pay library bills without the tentative budget in place. She also indicated library trustees in the other voting bloc could amend the budget, “When you have control” of the board.

* A legal wrench was thrown in the Sept 21 meeting where Qadeer would’ve been sworn in.Niles Herald-Spectator…

The Niles-Maine District Library Board had its shortest meeting in many months just hours after a Cook County judge issued a temporary restraining order against Secretary of State Jesse White that prevented a seventh, tie-breaker trustee from being seated on the board at the meeting.

Umair Qadeer’s seating on the board would have broken the 3-3 deadlock that has plagued the board since August of last year, hindering decision-making about staff, spending, legal fees, repairing the roof and many other significant matters.

Board Treasurer Joe Makula’s decision to file for a restraining order that prevents Qadeer from joining the board came just five days before the library was scheduled to have its budget hearing on the spending plan for the coming year. That budget hearing was scheduled for Sept. 26, and the restraining order remains in effect until Sept. 30. Illinois law requires the library to have a budget in place by Sept. 27. […]

The decision on the restraining order came down Wednesday from Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alison Conlon, Secretary of State Spokesperson Dave Druker said.

* More on that meeting from Journal & Topics…

As Library Board President Carilyn Drblik arrived for Wednesday’s library board meeting she walked past a line of protesters, many from the Niles Coalition, chanting that she needs to go. Protesters did not see Makula enter the building.

As the meeting got underway, during the public comment portion of the meeting, residents railed against the injunction, including a 13-year-old named Dana, who said, “We need education of the youth, which helps history from repeating.” She criticized board members for cutting spending and said she would form a group at her school to protect the library against trustees.

Former Maine Township Trustee David Carrabotta told trustees he thinks the proposed budget should be reduced.

Niles Mayor George Alpogianis weighed in on the situation at the library: “Once again (Joe) Maukla and his cronies are being disrespectful to the library and its citizens. We all have been elected to do what’s best for our community. Lawsuit after lawsuit (by Makula) does nothing but costs all of us money.” He concluded, “As elected officials when we enter the board room, all of our personal agendas should be left at the door.”

* On Sept 27 the Board approved a $6.6 million budget a day before a legal deadline and after months of argument. The Tribune…

President Carolyn Drblik, Treasurer Joe Makula and Secretary Suzanne Schoenfeldt pushed to cut spending, including on such items as preventive building maintenance, and to preserve a hiring freeze enacted in May 2021.

Trustees Becky Keane and Dianne Olson voted for the plan but called it “mediocre” for not funding the 35 vacant staff positions at the library. Vice President Patti Rozanski voted no.

Rozanski, Keane and Olson have vocally opposed the spending cuts made by Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt for more than a year. The Rozanski-Keane-Olson bloc has advocated for funding to prevent the roof from leaking and for hiring traditional levels of staff, deferring to the leadership of library professionalson operational questions and funding items like overnight cleaning for bathrooms.

Over the past year, meetings with trustees deadlocked 3-3 have gone on for hours, punctuated by shouting. The board approved a tentative spending plan in August after Rozanski indicated that she’d vote for a budget so the library could start paying its bills but accused Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt of using “bullying tactics.”

* On Oct 6 a Cook County Circuit Court Judge issued a permanent restraining order. Niles Herald-Spectator…

In his request for a restraining order, Makula’s attorney Daniel Kelley argued that the law does not apply retroactively.

Since former Trustee Olivia Hanusiak’s seat was declared vacant in September 2021, Kelley argued that the 90-day clock would have begun then and expired in December 2021, requiring Secretary White to have made an appointment before February 12, 2022 to comply with the law. […]

“We’re going to be working with Senator Murphy; she’s going to do the bill for the veto session,” [Secretary of State spokesperson Dave Druker] said. “We’re trying to clarify the legislation.”

…Adding… Neil Steinberg’s column on the Libarry from July…

That’s the reason I came here. A reader alerted me to what he described as “the cabal of four right-wing library-haters who took control of the 7-member Niles Library board, pushed out the executive director, and are slashing the budget, slashing the hours, cancelling orders for new books and a new roof. They especially don’t want any foreign-language books because people oughta learn English.”

Can that be true?

“It is,” said Niles Mayor George D. Alpogianis. “What they’re asking for, in my opinion, is ludicrous. Big politics are starting to trickle down into smaller communities and are now hitting our libraries. The library has always been a safe haven. I have five children, and we’ve spent hundreds of hours in the library. We’ve always felt good about it.”
Many Niles residents aren’t feeling very good about their library lately. Like all local issues, the complexities and personalities involved can be numbing. […]

The basic situation seems to be four board members applying a Reaganite kill-the-beast approach to their local library, throwing out anything that isn’t about stacking books in a room — no yoga for seniors, no librarians visiting schools. A bare-bones library run by people who hate libraries and hate most of the people they serve.

posted by Isabel Miller
Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 10:34 am

Comments

reading about the NW burbs is both painful and entertaining. this situation seems very much like what went on in Maine Township with the administration before the entire slate went Democratic. Not only were there oddly investigated claims of physical sexual harassment, but there were insider deals, strange tax discussions, very badly chaired (though entertaining) board meetings, and lawyers involved oh so often. It seems to be a toxic combination of very right wing people and a desire for stardom. too bad any government is run this way.

Comment by Amalia Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 10:54 am
Woof. The entire saga is beyond ridiculous. This is why government gets a bad reputation from its citizens–how could anyone have faith in anything these people do after they have wasted so much time bickering at the expense of their staff and constituents. Ridiculous.

Comment by Gen Z Opinionater Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 10:55 am
First. Top shelf reporting and establishing of timelines on this. I’ve been following this for awhile.

Second, this is similar to what happened at the Plainfield Park District in 2014, with some aspects being almost a carbon copy. Especially the behavior of the problematic board members. Thankfully, we just missed the same crowd taking over our library as well. - but now one of them is running for a state rep seat…

The resolution to the issue came when a new state law was passed in 2014 to increase the size of the board.

HB5593 98th General Assembly

ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?GAID=12&GA=98&DocNum=5593&DocTypeID=HB&SessionID=85&LegID=80660&SpecSess=&Session=

There’s always something these little fish in a little pond forget about - every single local jurisdiction is subordinate to the state. They only exist because of state laws which have created them. When a local board becomes dysfunctional, the state has an obligation to step in and address the situation.

Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:04 am
Democracy is messy.

Comment by Bob Meter Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:06 am
I’m close to this issue, and man is that Sun-Times editorial an embarrassment. Again, just don’t write editorials if “both sides” is the most effort you’re willing to put into it. It’s not just worthless it is actively damaging to people’s understanding of what is happening in the world around them, i.e. it is the opposite of responsible journalism. How hard it is to comprehend that some issues don’t have two equally valid perspectives? Did anyone at the Sun-Times think to ask themselves why the republican mayor of Niles is so against what the republicans on the library board are attempting to “accomplish?”

Makula had a 4-3 bloc after the last election and they set about destroying the only real public good this town has, which was the clear intention from the day he filed to run. Hanusiak was pushed to run for the board by her daddy, a local republican activist. When it became clear to her that the citizenry of Niles doesn’t actually want to see a bunch of right wing ideologues destroy its library, she bailed on the position. That left the 3-3 stalemate we currently have.

Comment by Larry Bowa Jr. Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:15 am
What a bizarre series of events in this story. I had no idea that this legislation had passed allowing IL Sec. of State to appoint library board positions. Does Alexi know about this? ha ha.

Comment by Responsa Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:26 am
All forms of government are messy; Democracy just brings it out into the open more often.

Comment by thisjustinagain Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:45 am
The Sun Times has given this zero coverage and then both sides an op ed. The Republicans are dug in on extreme anti-tax principles. They haven’t moved an inch in more than 18 months. It’s not a matter of working with them it’s a matter of removing them or them killing a public asset.

Comment by P. Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 11:50 am
–it’s a matter of removing–

Can’t do that.

What you can do, is expand the board by two seats. When the children aren’t able to dictate their way to destruction of the library, they will remove themselves and resign.

They aren’t there to be public servants. They are there for their agenda. When their agenda is gone, they won’t be interested in being on the library board anymore. Use their personality against them.

Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 12:05 pm
I love it when people are elected to positions to oversee something they hate in order to exact revenge utilizing their elected status. It’s disgusting.

Comment by Demoralized Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 12:40 pm
==What you can do, is expand the board by two seats.==

Would you point to the statute where this option can be found? Please and thank you.

Comment by yinn Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 12:44 pm
Coming soon to an obscure local government elected board near you. This is an organized effort by right wing groups across the country. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

Comment by 47th Ward Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 12:57 pm
“The Republicans are dug in on extreme anti-tax principles. They haven’t moved an inch in more than 18 months”

Public Library District Board Trustees are a nonpartisan elected office.

Comment by Donnie Elgin Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 1:32 pm
“Former Maine Township Trustee David Carrabotta told trustees he thinks the proposed budget should be reduced.” from the Journal & Topics article. Yep, someone from that kra kra previous episode.(post Nov. 8 look up MT videos from 2017-2021 for 4 years of incredibly badly managed government with popcorn worthy video.))He’s very fiscally conservative but he was not always wrong in the MT nuttiness, preferring opening hiring over the Supervisor hiring her former campaign manager. these tiny governments act much of the time in shadows. Consolidate.

Comment by Amalia Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 1:53 pm
==nonpartisan==

You’d think the library board should be. I think all the evidence is to the contrary in this case, though.

Comment by Demoralized Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 1:57 pm
I’m a library trustee in another district. I’ve asked my fellow board members and our director to watch a few of the Niles-Maine board meetings as an example of how NOT to run a government entity. It’s a sad situation bordering on the absurd in that district, and without a hiring freeze I imagine it could be hard to recruit good staff members in the future, even with all the awards the district has won.

Comment by DirtLawyer Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 2:40 pm
===Public Library District Board Trustees are a nonpartisan elected office.===

In practice, the library board seats have gone back and forth between the more fiscally conservative faction that believes in greater board control over a lot of library minutia and the faction that believes in spending more to expand services, and generally believes in the more hands-off approach to the board. Call them what you want - this is an objectively accurate approach to describe the two factions’ philosophies.

I will say that the current conservative factions make the last time the conservative faction was at the helm look like free-spending librarism. The faction also made the library less transparent than ever - it used to have very detailed meeting packets, and the staff was very responsive to press inquiries.

Signed - the reporter who covered the NMLD for two separate newspapers in 2013-2018.

Comment by Igor Studenkov Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 2:43 pm
–Would you point to the statute where this option can be found?–

You pass the legislation, just like the example with link I gave to the legislation passed in 2014 allowing for the
2-seat expansion of the Plainfield Park District.

That’s why this story has a headline that ends with - ‘new legislation may be needed’.

Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 3:10 pm
correction to my above comment;

The new legislation allowed for a 4-seat expansion of the board, not 2 as I wrote initially.

It ended up being the perfect solution, and has been working flawlessly in the almost 10 years since those events took place.

I hope our local problems and solutions from back then can be used as an example of how to tackle this destructive activity in other areas today. But it is up to the local voters and their representatives to decide how to handle this specific incident.

I’ll include below an easier to find link of the legislation our area worked to pass for the park district to expand the board(if my formatting doesn’t get caught in spam)

ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?GAID=12&GA=98&DocNum=5593&DocTypeID=HB&SessionID=85&LegID=80660&SpecSess=&Session=

Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 3:24 pm
Literacy. We don’t need no literacy in our town. Said no one ever.

Comment by Rudy’s teeth Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 4:16 pm
Sorry the nonpartisan Grover Norquist devotees who swore a facial blood oath to tank their own library. You know what I mean and if you bothered to follow the issue for two seconds instead of trolling comments you’d see their political persuasions is clear

Comment by P Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 6:15 pm
*fiscal not facial eek

Comment by P Tuesday, Nov 1, 22 @ 6:16 pm