When then-state Sen. Dede Alpert tried to place a state library bond on the ballot two years ago, she was forced to make a bargain: The governor would support the bond if she agreed to wait until 2006 for it to go before voters.
Alpert, a San Diego Democrat who was about to be termed out of office in 2004, agreed. So she has waited. And so have the libraries.
On June 6, California voters will finally decide whether to invest $600 million to modernize aging public libraries around the state.
Proposition 81 -- the only bond measure on the ballot next month -- has won the broad backing of teachers, businesses, organized labor and the state's major newspapers. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed Alpert's bill to put the bond on the ballot, has not endorsed the proposition, for reasons his campaign office would not explain.)
With little organized opposition, its champions are cautiously optimistic that they can win the simple majority needed on election day.
Still, Proposition 81 won't come close to meeting the massive needs of library systems statewide, which a 2003 survey by the California State Library put at $4.4 billion. As much as anything, the little-known measure illustrates the ongoing struggles of California's public libraries: always competing for attention in a state whose schools, highways and other civic institutions are also scrambling to make up for years of underinvestment.
For years, that has meant waits like Alpert's. It also means that although other ballot measures can draw millions of dollars from supporters, a library bond campaign can plan to attract only about $500,000, campaign manager Les Spahnn said.
Though Proposition 81 is the third state library bond since 1988 -- the others, which were smaller, passed -- it is dwarfed by the more than $80 billion in outstanding debt that the state has accumulated in recent years to pay for upgrades to schools, universities, prisons, water projects and other public works, according to a recent report by the state Legislative Analyst's Office.
It is also a fraction of the $37.3-billion package of infrastructure bonds that state leaders have agreed to put on the November ballot.
"We wish we could do more," said Nancy Mahr, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County public library system, the state's largest, which recently calculated it would cost nearly $850 million to modernize its 84 branches, many of which were built in the 1960s or earlier.
