Arkansas Senate approves State Library Board overhaul after dissolution bill fails

Yahoo

11-04-2025

Sen. Jonathan Dismang (left), R-Searcy, watches the Senate vote on SB 640, which would remove the seven members of the Arkansas State Library Board and allow the governor to replace them, on Thursday, April 10, 2025. Sen. Dan Sullivan (right), R-Jonesboro, sponsored a bill to abolish the State Library and its board, but a House committee rejected it on April 9. Next to Sullivan is Sen. Matt Stone, R-Camden. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas lawmakers are considering removing all seven members of the State Library Board and allowing Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to replace them later this year.
Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, filed the bill Wednesday night, less than two hours after a House committee rejected Senate Bill 536, a proposal to abolish both the State Library and its board and transfer their powers and responsibilities to the Arkansas Department of Education.
Senate Bill 640 received initial committee approval Thursday morning and passed the full Senate in the afternoon. Bills usually are not heard by the full House or Senate until at least a day after passing committees, but the Senate suspended the rules Thursday to hear bills that had passed committee that morning.
The seven-member State Library Board disburses state funds to public libraries on a quarterly basis. It has appeared 'fairly dysfunctional' at its recent meetings, so the Legislature should 'wipe the board clean,' Dismang told the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs.
At a special meeting in March, the board rejected two motions with a 4-3 vote. They would have created nonbinding policies to protect children from 'sexually explicit' content in libraries and detached the State Library from the American Library Association. By the same split vote, the board passed a separate motion aimed at protecting children in libraries while honoring the First Amendment and library material selection standards.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, filed SB 536 in response to the two failed motions, which he had asked the board to pass in order to ensure its survival. Sullivan has targeted the library board for its refusal to adopt policies directing public libraries to keep certain materials out of the hands of minors.
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Dismang told the Advocate that Sullivan's requests were 'not extreme' and should not have been difficult for the board to accommodate, particularly the one regarding content accessible to minors.
'I don't think anyone's innocent in the way that those conversations are happening on that board,' he said. '…The tact both ways was not something that I was really impressed with, so starting over makes sense.'
The three board members who supported Sullivan's requests were all Sanders appointees: former Republican state senator Jason Rapert, who moved to approve the requests; Shari Bales, whom the Senate confirmed alongside Rapert, and Sydney McKenzie, who joined the board in January and is married to Rogers Republican Rep. Brit McKenzie.
SB 640 would require the seven new members to draw lots determining how their terms will be staggered, ending between one and seven years from when the bill becomes law. Subsequent appointees would serve seven-year terms, the current length of time board members serve.
Sens. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, and Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, were the only Senate State Agencies committee members to oppose sending SB 640 to the Senate floor Thursday. Both voted against SB 536 on the floor last week, when the Senate passed the bill with 18 votes, the slimmest possible margin.
King, Democratic Sen. Reginald Murdock of Marianna and GOP Sen. Ron Caldwell of Wynne did not vote on SB 640 Thursday afternoon. The Senate's 27 other Republicans voted for SB 640. The remaining five Senate Democrats, including Tucker, voted against the bill, though Sen. Fred Love, D-Mabelvale, was erroneously recorded as voting in favor.
Tucker told the Senate last week that the Legislature has the authority to reconstitute the State Library Board instead of dissolving it if lawmakers are dissatisfied with it. He said Thursday in an interview that SB 640 'is the least harmful version of anything that we can do,' but he opposed the bill because he didn't believe reconstituting the board was necessary.
The House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs, the same panel that rejected SB 536, will be next to hear SB 640.
All six Senate Democrats and four Republicans, including King, voted against confirming Rapert to the State Library Board in December 2023. King and Tucker expressed concern during Thursday's committee meeting that Rapert might be reappointed if SB 640 becomes law. The bill does not preclude current members from reappointment.
When asked via email Thursday whether he would seek reappointment, Rapert said his appointment to the board was Sanders' choice, not his, and he believes he has 'done the job' expected of him.
'I fight for what is right and will continue to do so in all arenas of government,' said Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a conservative group responsible for model legislation introduced in several statehouses nationwide, including bans on abortion and gender-affirming medical care.
During his tenure on the board, Rapert has repeatedly sought to withhold state funds from libraries where 'sexually explicit' content is within children's reach. The board has consistently voted against this proposal, and Rapert has called for the dissolution of the board.
He said he would have been satisfied with SB 536 becoming law but believed the passage of SB 640 would still be 'a blessing.'
'My hope is that new members on the board will allow for policies to be adopted to encourage our public libraries to ensure that children are protected from exposure to sexually explicit materials inappropriate for their age,' Rapert said. 'That has been my goal since day one… We would not be at this point if the members of that board had listened and taken positive action.'
The State Library Board is scheduled to meet the second Friday in May and in August. If SB 640 becomes law, it will go into effect Aug. 1, and it gives Sanders 30 days to replace the board.
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Board Chairwoman Deborah Knox said in an interview that she was 'encouraged' that the State Library is no longer likely to be abolished but 'discouraged' that she might lose her position.
The board will be more likely to endorse Rapert's efforts to detach from the American Library Association and to 'sequester books' based on appropriateness for minors if all seven members are Sanders appointees, Knox said.
'I do feel that the State Library Board is essential and the Arkansas State Library itself is essential,' Knox said. 'So any way that it can continue, I'm for [that] even if I'm not a part of it.'
Earlier this year, Sullivan sponsored Senate Bill 184, which would have abolished both the State Library Board and the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, the panel that oversees Arkansas PBS. He and the commission chair said in March that they had reached an agreement that kept the PBS commission alive; Sanders appointed Sullivan's wife to the panel last year.
SB 536 would have codified several new criteria for libraries to receive state funds, including minimum hours of operation per year and 'prohibit[ing] access to age-inappropriate materials to a person who is sixteen (16) years old or younger.'
Dismang was one of three senators to vote present on SB 536. He told the Advocate Thursday that despite his concerns about the current board, he believed the State Library should continue to exist, partly because it oversees historical records that SB 536 would have transferred to the Department of Education.
SB 640's House sponsor, Rep. Howard Beaty, R-Crossett, was among the bipartisan opposition to SB 536 during Wednesday's committee meeting. He said the conflict surrounding the State Library Board 'could have been resolved very easily' if people on both sides had not 'dug their heels in and decided they weren't going to negotiate.'
Sullivan amended SB 536 Wednesday, meaning it would have had to receive Senate approval again before going to Sanders' desk. The Legislature will not meet Friday and plans to conclude the session next Wednesday, making it difficult for SB 536 to complete the legislative process if House State Agencies were to reconsider and pass the bill.
The amendment to SB 536 removed a requirement for libraries' collections not to have any materials that state law considers 'harmful to minors' in order to receive state funding. Sullivan said he amended the bill 'at the request of librarians and community members.'
One of those community members was Victoria Kelley of Yellville, she told the Advocate Thursday. She said SB 640 concerned her because she disagreed with dismissing 'entire boards without justifying the 'cause' for what individuals did wrong,' which continues 'a bad precedent' that began in her home of Marion County.
In December, County Judge Jason Stumph and the county Quorum Court dismissed the local library's existing board members and later replaced them all in January. Stumph said the previous board failed to supervise Dana Scott, the director of the Yellville library who was dismissed and arrested Dec. 2 for alleged financial crimes.
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Staggered terms on the State Library Board are 'meant as a buffer to the kind of personal and partisan targeting we're seeing' so that one governor cannot 'overhaul' the body, Kelley said.
Kristin Stuart of Little Rock told the Advocate she had similar frustrations. She sought to speak against SB 640 during Thursday's State Agencies committee meeting, but chairman Sen. Scott Flippo, R-Bull Shoals, denied her the opportunity because she had not signed up in advance.
'I think it's really just insane that they want to dismantle the board after the outright abolition [bill] failed,' Stuart said. 'It's a power grab. It's an attempt to politicize a body that's operated independently for decades without partisan interference.'
Two good things about SB 640, Kelley said, are that the State Library will continue to exist and that new members will not make it easier for the board to 'upend the Constitution.'
SB 536 had similarly 'fatal' language as Act 372 of 2023, Arkansas Library Association (ArLA) President-elect Adam Webb said Wednesday. A federal judge blocked portions of the Sullivan-sponsored law last year on First Amendment grounds, and the state is appealing the ruling.
The ArLA is neutral on SB 640, Webb said Thursday.
The blocked sections of Act 372 would have given local elected officials the final say over whether to relocate challenged library materials some consider 'obscene' and made librarians legally liable for disseminating such materials. Webb and ArLA are among 18 plaintiffs that challenged the law.
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