Local libraries await fallout of Trump's executive order to cut funding

Bookshelves at the Walla Walla Public Library in August 2024. Library Director Heather VanTassell is concerned about what cuts in federal funding will mean for Washington's public libraries. Greg Lehman, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

In February, the Walla Walla County Rural Library District was awarded six grants of up to $1,000 for district employees’ professional development.

The money came from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Washington State Library and would have reimbursed the district for sending the employees to conferences.

Then on March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order deeming the IMLS and six other entities "unnecessary" and eliminating their "non-statutory components and functions ... to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law."

Local libraries already are seeing the consequences of that executive order. The IMLS has subsidized a significant portion of Washington State Library's annual budget, its funds finding their way to libraries in the form of grants for various activities, projects and supplementary services.

The library district learned that all $6,000 had been canceled, but not before it had already spent the funds set aside for four employees to attend the Washington Library Association Conference in Tacoma in April. The State Library is now trying to find a way to reimburse the $4,000, said Ana Romero, the district’s executive director.

The other two district employees would have used their grants to attend the American Library Association’s 2025 annual Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia this summer.

The district’s budget has a line item for professional development, so it might be able to cover the expenses, Romero said.

“We’ll be OK,” Romero said. “It’s not that we can’t afford to send our people to professional development opportunities — we can — it’s just, we won’t have that support from the State Library that helps alleviate some of those costs.”

Ana Romero, executive director of the Walla Walla County Rural Library District, outside the new public library in Touchet in December 2024. The district recently lost $6,000 in grant funding for professional development because of cuts to the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Columbia County Rural Library District is also slated to lose a grant of up to $1,000 for the Dayton library director to attend the ALA conference, and another of $11,661 for technology upgrades. The Weller Public Library in Waitsburg learned it could lose two grants totaling up to $7,000 for a teen summer internship and a tabletop role-playing games program.

Both rural library districts and the Walla Walla and Waitsburg libraries are paying members of the Washington Anytime Library, a vast collection of downloadable digital materials such as eBooks, audiobooks and periodicals that readers check out with their library card using the Libby app. These materials are supplied by the Washington Digital Library Consortium, which used IMLS funding to purchase additional copies of popular items, so patrons don’t have to wait a long time for one to become available.

The State Library manages this shared collection using IMLS dollars, which also pays for a salaried employee's job.

Heather VanTassell, the Walla Walla Public Library director, said, “At this point we don’t know what that means. We’re kind of just in this holding pattern of waiting to hear back from the state on how that platform will be managed without that employee.”

Washington’s libraries have also learned that, because of the federal funding cuts, the State Library’s Statewide Database Licensing project will end Monday, June 30. For more than a quarter century, the project has allowed the State Library to negotiate on behalf of local libraries bundled pricing on research databases for patrons to access.

Now, if libraries want to keep those databases, such as Gale, they will have to work out individual deals with database companies — and will likely have to pay more for them, VanTassell said.

Romero said she worries about the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, an IMLS-funded State Library program that serves people with reading disabilities. Patrons unable to read standard print can sign up to receive by mail Braille books, large-print books or audiobooks with the equipment to listen to them.

“Some of our branches have a couple of patrons that are part of this program, and we don’t know how they’re going to be impacted,” Romero said.

The Walla Walla County Rural Library District, which has five branches and a bookmobile, gets most of its funding from a voter-approved levy. The Walla Walla Public Library is largely funded by the city.

The Washington Attorney General’s Office has joined a lawsuit to undo the executive order and restore funding to the State Library, which is also facing state budget cuts.

The Washington Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees the State Library, has argued that the Trump administration’s move to kill the funding after Congress had appropriated it is illegal.

Romero said the dismantling of the IMLS will undermine services in some of the state’s most vulnerable rural communities. For some households, a public library is a lifeline, she said.

“We need to do a better job in trying to get people to understand that libraries are not just books and bricks and (mortar),” she said. “We do a lot more than people realize.”

Erick Bengel is a Murrow News Fellow at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin