3 years after fight over LGBTQ+ books, an Arkansas community takes up vote to cut library money

The Saline County Library’s newest branch lives in a rented unit in an East End strip mall near a hair salon, an optometrist’s office and some restaurants.

Renting the space costs the library system $56,000 per year. Some Saline County residents fear the branch will close if the typically Republican county votes Tuesday to reduce how much property tax money funds public libraries, Lela Chism said.

Chism is a member of the nonpartisan Saline County Library Alliance, which has been leading the charge against the proposed tax reduction. Alliance members met a few library patrons in August who weren’t aware of the measure, which is printed on Saline County ballots as Issue 5.

But awareness has grown as Election Day has grown closer, Chism said Friday. The Saline County Library Alliance crowdfunded pro-library merchandise, including yard signs, T-shirts and a billboard on Military Road in Benton.

“We’ve had multiple candidates that are running from both sides come out and say that they do not support [Issue 5] and told their people that they would not vote for it,” said Chism, who’s running for a Shannon Hills city council seat.

Saline County has been a primary battleground over Arkansas libraries’ funding and content in the past few years, part of a larger fight libraries around the country have faced over efforts to restrict access to books addressing race, sexuality or other controversial subjects. The vote comes three years after Saline County’s library director was fired in a standoff with conservatives who wanted books about LGBTQ+ topics removed from shelves. 

The library’s Facebook page includes information about voting, but no mention of Issue 5.

“If a ballot initiative had been run by citizens… the library could have come out and defended itself,” Chism said. “They can’t do anything when it’s their own elected officials doing it.”

The all-Republican Saline County Quorum Court voted 10-2 in May, after much public pushback, to allow the public to vote on reducing the Saline County Library’s millage to 1.1 mills. The library currently receives 1.7 mills, or $1.70 for every $1,000 of assessed property tax in the county of more than 131,000 people.

If voters approve Issue 5, the library is expected to lose $1.4 million per year, or about one-third of its projected $5.7 million operating budget for 2027.

Josh Curtis and Keith Kellum, two of the three quorum court members who introduced Issue 5, have been promoting it on Facebook. Curtis said the library potentially losing funding and cutting services “is simply not true,” and Kellum said the property tax revenue “has outgrown the library system that it supplies,” citing Saline County’s growing population.

“This issue is about being better stewards with our tax dollars,” Kellum wrote. “This [is] not about defunding the library or retaliation from any book issues in 2023.”

How Saline County got here

Three years ago, Saline County Republicans decried the county library for having books about LGBTQ+ topics, sex education and systemic racism within children’s reach. In 2024, members of the Saline County Republican Women circulated a petition to reduce the library’s tax millage from 1.7 to 0.9 mills.

Republican County Judge Matt Brumley rejected the 2024 petition on a technicality. This year, he has been one of the most vocal supporters of Issue 5.

Brumley defended both stances during a candidate question-and-answer forum last month in Bryant. He said he gave the library’s governing board advance notice that there would be another proposed millage cut after 2024.

Saline County is not the first Arkansas county to have the people vote on library funding. Craighead County narrowly voted in 2022 to cut its library funding in half.

Craighead County citizens who opposed the library’s LGBTQ+ book display in 2021 shifted their message the following year and claimed the library was overfunded. Saline County residents started to make similar claims in 2023, but that message has died down, Chism said.

“It hasn’t been like it was last time, where you had all those people showing up [at public meetings] and holding books up and screeching about queer kids,” Chism said.

Such materials have been the focus of efforts nationally to restrict access to library books. The American Library Association last year tracked more than 4,200 titles that were challenged in public, school and academic libraries. 

Libraries have also faced efforts to withhold or threaten funding over such materials. The Arkansas State Library Board is expected to vote next week on new rules that hinge public libraries’ funding on ensuring patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior.

The Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library reduced its hours and laid off employees to accommodate the loss of about $2 million in operating funds. An effort to restore some of the library’s funding failed in 2024, while voters in neighboring Lawrence County rejected a library defunding measure the same year.

Saline County’s Issue 5 is Arkansas’ only ballot measure concerning library funding this year. Elsewhere, voters in a New Jersey city will decide Tuesday whether to dissolve their local library.

On Oct. 19, the first day of early voting in Arkansas, some Saline County residents said they voted against Issue 5. Others said they supported Republican candidates and had not been paying attention to ballot measures.

As of 1 p.m. Friday, more than 26,000 Saline County residents had voted, according to a Facebook post from county clerk Doug Curtis, who is Josh Curtis’ father.

Voter turnout is typically lower in a midterm than in a presidential election year, but Curtis said Saline County’s 31% voter turnout after 11 days of early voting is a county record for a midterm.

Republican voters tend to favor policies framed as tax cuts, Chism said, but both the high voter turnout and the opposition to Issue 5 she’s heard from Saline County residents and candidates give her hope that the library will keep its funding.

“I have not run into anybody who wants to defund it, so it’s very promising,” she said.

Potential future ballot measure

One of the two quorum court members to oppose putting Issue 5 on the ballot was Pat Bisbee, who represents East End. Over more than a decade in office, Bisbee used to be the quorum court’s appointed liaison to the county libraries, and he has kept acting in this role even though it is no longer an official position.

Earlier this year, Bisbee suggested to Brumley that the quorum court put a measure on the ballot that would allow the library’s property tax revenue to be used for capital improvements, such as building a permanent East End location, instead of solely for operations.

“We decided to hold off on that because having both issues on the ballot at the same time could be confusing to some people,” Bisbee said in a Friday interview.

He said he hopes the measure will be on the November 2028 ballot, since holding a special election before then costs taxpayer money.

The other quorum court member to oppose Issue 5 was Clint Chism, a cousin of Lela Chism. He was among the quorum court members who said in 2023 that he considered certain books dangerous to children, but he said in May that his constituents urged him to oppose the funding cut.

Later in 2023, Clint Chism joined 10 other quorum court members in voting to give Brumley hiring and firing power over library employees. Bisbee was one of two members to vote no.

Brumley proceeded to fire Patty Hector, who had been the Saline County Library’s executive director for seven years and had refused to relocate LGBTQ+ books at the quorum court’s urging.

Hector sued Brumley and the county, saying they violated her First Amendment right to free speech. The county paid Hector a $275,000 settlement in August.