Library Legislative Day

Just a quick note about Library Legislative Day, an annual lobbying event at the Washington State capitol organized by the Washington Library Association, which I attended yesterday with a group of information school students. I’m working on a longer piece for my school newsletter, which I will link to when published. Meanwhile, here’s what I found particularly interesting about the event.

I have never been that involved in or knowledgeable about the political process. I have a very abstract concept of representative democracy, and while I have a vague sense of participation, I have never thought that carefully about what that means. It seemed strange that I could simply walk into a representative’s office to speak with her aide, or that I could call a senator off the floor to come have a conversation with me.

I was also impressed by how willing legislators actually were to have conversations with us. (Granted, my student group was shadowing Bill Ptacek, director of the King County Library System, who seemed to know all the legislators personally, but even so, this seemed like a process I could do again on my own.) One representative came up to the gallery, where we were watching them vote on bills, and had a long conversation with us about how the decision-making process doesn’t work in the way everyone thinks it does. “We never send a bill to the floor unless we know it’s going to pass,” she said. “Or if we want to force people to take a public stand by voting no. All the real debate happens in committees and caucuses.”

Another legislator, a senator, explained why he didn’t support the bill we were lobbying for, which mandates a certain amount of funding for school librarians. “I agree with you that there aren’t enough school librarians,” he said, “but there aren’t enough counselors, either. The problem is that there’s not enough school funding in general. The answer is not to take power away from local school boards and put decisions about staffing levels in the hands of the state legislature. What we really need to do is figure out a way to get more money to schools in the first place. So while I support your goal, I don’t think this bill makes sense from a policy perspective.”

I was just an observer of this interchange, but I found myself nodding in agreement. And despite the fact that I was supposed to be there lobbying for the bill, I began to wonder if it was such a good idea. I do think local control of schools is generally better than state control, and I understand budgeting well enough to know that money allocated for a specific position is money that can’t be spent somewhere else.

Especially after my recent caucusing experience, and my increasing interest in political participation, it was nice to feel like I could talk to my legislator about what is important to me as a constituent, and that I can expect thoughtful explanations of their positions. I think that too often I tend towards cynicism about government without taking the time to learn about what’s really going on.