Joint Finance Restores Funding to Talking Book & Braille Library, State Law Library

The state legislature's Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) is scheduled to meet again today and tomorrow to complete its work on the 2011-13 state budget.

On May 26, JFC approved one-time funding of $41,000 to the State Law Library for the purchase of West's National Law Reporter System on CD-ROM. On May 27, the committee also voted 16-0 to restore $183,400 for the Talking Book and Braille Library for the biennium. In action in May 3, the committee voted 16-0 to restore $512,000 to BadgerLink.(Restoration of funding refers to changes to the governor's budget proposal, which proposed 10% cuts to all library-related programs in the first year of the biennium.)

Although the State Law Library allocation was provided from general purpose revenue (GPR), other library-related funding is provided via the Universal Service Funds, or SEG funding. Thus far, funding has not been restored for public library systems or the remaining statewide resource contracts (Cooperative Children's Book Center, Milwaukee Public Library or WiLS). In addition, maintenance of effort funding for public libraries is still slated for elimination. WLA seeks restoration of maintenance of effort and library-related funding not yet restored and has issued several legislative alerts to members on these matters.

You can hear or watch JFC proceedings live and archived on WisconsinEye.