A Limited Review of the Mississippi Library Commission
Executive Summary
Introduction
The PEER Committee reviewed the Mississippi Library Commission (MLC), focusing its analysis on whether MLC:
Background
Role of the Library Commission
In 1926, the Legislature established the Mississippi Library Commission to provide advice to those seeking to establish libraries, operate traveling libraries, collect data from the state’s libraries, and make an annual report to the Legislature.
Today, MLC provides the state’s public libraries with advice, continuing education, and technical support, as well as state grants and assistance in obtaining federal grants. MLC also provides the following direct services to library patrons:
Composition and Staffing of the Mississippi Library Commission
MISS. CODE ANN. § 39-3-101 (1972) created the Mississippi Library Commission, consisting of five members, four of whom are appointed by the Governor. The fifth member is the president of the Mississippi Federation of Women’s Clubs, or a member of said federation recommended by her. Members of the commission serve five-year terms. The commission meets every other month beginning in January.
As of June 30, 2004, MLC had fifty-six authorized full-time staff positions organized into three bureaus: Administrative Services, Network Services, and Public Services.
Revenues and Expenditures
In FY 2004, MLC received $10.3 million in state general funds, $1.8 million in federal funds, and $.8 million in other revenues, including educational enhancement funds. Its total FY 2004 expenditures were $12.9 million. In FY 2004, MLC expended $7.4 million in state general funds on its three state grant programs, representing 58% of the agency’s total expenditures and 72% of its FY 2004 general fund appropriation.
Compliance with Enabling Statutes
While MLC’s activities generally fulfill the agency’s broad statutory powers and duties, MLC has not yet implemented, after two attempts in 1988 and 1992, specific provisions of state law requiring the development of a statewide master plan and an accreditation program for public libraries.
MLC has the systems and activities in place to fulfill all of its statutory powers and the majority of its statutory duties. The two statutory duties that MLC has not fulfilled are its duties to develop a statewide master plan and to develop an accreditation program for local public libraries.
MLC initiated efforts to fulfill these statutory mandates, but such efforts never yielded a public library accreditation program or statewide master plan. In compliance with the Mississippi Statewide Library Development System Act of 1988, MLC appointed two Public Library Standards Committees, one in 1988 and one in 1992. However, neither committee was successful in establishing a master plan or library accreditation program, in part because of controversy over tying state funding to accreditation standards performance.
Because MLC has not developed a statewide master plan or a public library accreditation system, it does not have all of the tools it needs to assist in planning efforts designed to ensure statewide access to efficient, quality library services or in ensuring public accountability for these library systems.
Strategic Plan
Based on the powers and duties of MLC established in state law, the elements of MLC’s strategic plan are both comprehensive in scope and relevant to meeting future needs of the state’s public libraries. However, MLC has not defined critical terms or converted plan objectives into measurable terms.
Strategic planning is a way to identify and move toward desired future conditions. In the context of state government, strategic planning positions agencies to meet their statutory mandates efficiently and effectively. Strategic planning is especially important to MLC to ensure that the agency is able to assist libraries in successfully adapting to the rapidly changing needs of customers.
MLC’s strategic plan addresses major aspects of public library development, management, and operations. The plan also includes objectives designed to improve MLC’s internal operations. However, the plan lacks definitions of critical terms and conversion of plan objectives into measurable terms. Thus an external reviewer (such as PEER) would have to create ad hoc measures to verify the agency’s progress in meeting its stated goals and objectives.
While MLC’s internal reports on program activities may be sufficient for the agency’s own purposes, these reports are not sufficient to allow external reviewers to verify progress the agency is making toward achievement of the goals and objectives of its strategic plan.
State Grant Programs to Public Libraries
Due to MLC’s insufficient oversight of the expenditure of personnel incentive grant funds by the local public library systems, MLC cannot ensure that state personnel incentive grants are being used for their intended purpose of improving the qualifications of Mississippi’s public library staffs. Also, because MLC’s appropriation bills do not specify the amount of general funds to be devoted to state grant programs for libraries, no audit trail exists with which to track the funds and determine whether they are being used for their intended purposes.
The Mississippi Library Commission administers three programs that provide state general fund grants to public libraries: personnel incentive, health insurance, and life insurance. In FY 2003, these programs provided $7.4 million in state general funds to local public libraries, comprising approximately 19% of these libraries’ total operating income.
Personnel Incentive Grants
MLC’s Personnel Incentive Grants Program was designed to enable the state’s public libraries to compete with other states for trained professional librarians and to encourage those already employed to upgrade their educations. MLC allocates its Personnel Incentive Grant funds using a two-tiered formula. The commission distributes a portion of the funds on a per county basis and the remainder of the funds on a per capita basis. Since 1971, according to MLC’s records, the state has provided $84.3 million in general funds for personnel incentive grants to local public library systems.
Health and Life Insurance Grants
MISS. CODE ANN. Section 25-15-15 (1972) requires the state to provide 50% of the cost of the state’s life insurance plan and 100% of the cost of the state’s health insurance plan for all active full-time employees, including employees of public libraries. Subsection (2) of MISS. CODE ANN. Section 25-15-15 (1972) further requires the state to provide annually the funds necessary to pay the health insurance costs of public library employees by line item in MLC’s appropriation bill. Through FY 2004, MLC distributed the funds to the state’s forty-seven library systems on a two-month reimbursement basis--i.e., every other month each system submitted a claim for reimbursable health and life insurance payments made by the system. On July 1, 2004, MLC began distributing the funds on a monthly basis.
Oversight of the Grant Program
Due to MLC’s insufficient oversight of the expenditure of personnel incentive grant funds by the local public library systems, MLC cannot ensure that state personnel incentive grants are being used for their intended purpose of improving the qualifications of Mississippi’s public library staffs.
MLC does not have adequate standards with which to govern the expenditure of personnel incentive grant funds.
Currently the only requirement for personnel incentive grants concerning staff qualifications is that the library system administrator must have a master’s degree in library science from an American Library Association-accredited school. The absence of specific MLC standards regarding qualifications of library staff below the level of the system director weakens the link between funding of personnel and improvement of the quality of library personnel.
MLC does not have adequate auditing of personnel incentive grant expenditures.
While PEER determined that all library systems submitted audit reports to MLC in FY 2003, none of the reports contained auditor’s comments relating to compliance with Personnel Incentive Grant requirements, which was a stipulation of the Terms and Conditions of the Grant Agreement. Without this assurance, Personnel Incentive Grant funds could be used for library expenditures that are not related to personnel.
Because MLC’s appropriation bills do not specify the amount of general funds to be devoted to state grant programs for libraries or the specific purposes of these programs, no audit trail exists with which to track the funds and determine whether they are being used for their intended purposes.
MISS. CODE ANN. Section 25-15-15 (1972) requires the state to provide annually the funds necessary to pay the health insurance costs of public library employees by line item in MLC’s appropriation bill. Historically, MLC’s appropriations bills have included a single amount for “subsidies, loans, and grants” which included all federal and state grant monies, rather than showing health or life insurance funds for library employees or personnel incentive grants as a line item.
In FY 2004 appropriations bills, the Legislature began including MLC’s appropriation with funding for education (“K-12 and other related educational activities”) and changed the format of MLC’s appropriation to a lump sum for general funds and a lump sum for special funds. Therefore, MLC’s appropriation bill has even less detail than in the past and still does not include a line item showing health or life insurance funds for library employees or personnel incentive grants.
While MLC’s budget requests include a specific amount for each grant program, including the Personnel Incentive Grant program, the only legally binding language with regard to agency spending authority is the language contained in the agency’s appropriation bill.
The current method of appropriation does not comply with CODE Section 25-15-15 because it does not specify by line item the funds to be expended on health insurance costs of public library employees. Also, because the appropriation bills do not specifically express the Legislature’s wishes regarding the exact amounts to be expended on state library grant programs, accountability for these funds is reduced. Neither MLC nor an independent third party can track grant amounts back to the appropriation bills and assure that the amounts the agency expends on grants programs are the amounts that the Legislature intended.
Recommendations