Bother not a sage among his books...
Florida did it! We won back our libraries!
Once again, ganked this part entirely from fatfred:
Yesterday afternoon, during the Joint Budget Conference Chairs process, the House proposed funding State Aid at $21,253,978 and last night the Senate just came back and accepted, but the Senate was not willing to accept the funding source proposed by the House so state aid funding was left in limbo overnight.
This morning they came back and met through the day. The decision was reached shortly after 7 p.m.
As FLA Lobbyist Chris Lyon explained it, you did what cannot be done. State Aid was not a conference issue. The Joint Budget Conference Chairs weren't even supposed to be talking about this.
So last night Chris was is sitting in bar before going back to the 8 o'clock meeting, and a guy walks up, sees he is working on appropriations spreadsheets. Chris tells him he's working for libraries (and did he ever!). The guy works in the Governor's office and wants to know if they've restored the funding yet. He says everybody in the governor's office knows about it because the phone hasn't stopped ringing on the issue and they've had citizens coming in person on the issue since Thursday.
I wish that everyone in the Florida library community could see my e-mail from the last 2 days. In every part of the state folks stepped up, got engaged, and made this happen. We will never know just how extensive this effort was, but we have seen signs of extensive networks and efforts in the smallest towns in the state. There are so many wonderful stories. So many folks did so many innovative and clever things. And normal Floridians who had never called or e-mailed an official, stood up and roared!
--Charlie Parker for the Florida Library Association
There's also a list of people who deserve our thanks for their efforts in getting this wrong righted. You can find that over here on fatfred's lj. I was pleased to see that Governor Crist was one of the folk who pitched in to get the job done.
Once again, ganked this part entirely from fatfred:
Yesterday afternoon, during the Joint Budget Conference Chairs process, the House proposed funding State Aid at $21,253,978 and last night the Senate just came back and accepted, but the Senate was not willing to accept the funding source proposed by the House so state aid funding was left in limbo overnight.
This morning they came back and met through the day. The decision was reached shortly after 7 p.m.
As FLA Lobbyist Chris Lyon explained it, you did what cannot be done. State Aid was not a conference issue. The Joint Budget Conference Chairs weren't even supposed to be talking about this.
So last night Chris was is sitting in bar before going back to the 8 o'clock meeting, and a guy walks up, sees he is working on appropriations spreadsheets. Chris tells him he's working for libraries (and did he ever!). The guy works in the Governor's office and wants to know if they've restored the funding yet. He says everybody in the governor's office knows about it because the phone hasn't stopped ringing on the issue and they've had citizens coming in person on the issue since Thursday.
I wish that everyone in the Florida library community could see my e-mail from the last 2 days. In every part of the state folks stepped up, got engaged, and made this happen. We will never know just how extensive this effort was, but we have seen signs of extensive networks and efforts in the smallest towns in the state. There are so many wonderful stories. So many folks did so many innovative and clever things. And normal Floridians who had never called or e-mailed an official, stood up and roared!
--Charlie Parker for the Florida Library Association
There's also a list of people who deserve our thanks for their efforts in getting this wrong righted. You can find that over here on fatfred's lj. I was pleased to see that Governor Crist was one of the folk who pitched in to get the job done.