News - Advocacy
Close up of Education Muse painted on the interior of the Capitol dome in Lansing, Mi 

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News - Advocacy
Written by Deborah E. Mikula, MLA Executive Director   

$500,000 Added to FY23 State Aid to Libraries

July 1, 2022

MLA Members and Friends,

Your work to advocate for increased investment in libraries has again been rewarded. 

For the third straight year, MLA is proud to announce an additional $500,000 has been included in the State of Michigan budget for State Aid to Libraries. In addition, $800,000 was allocated for the library pilot program that addresses a partnership between public and school libraries. Resources were also included for the Poet Laureate ($100,000), and $1.2 million was awarded through an enhancement grant to the Inkster Library. (One hundred unique projects were identified to receive $205 million in the newly released budget.)

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News - Advocacy
Thursday, June 23, 2022 07:48 AM

HB 5097 Moves Forward to Ban Race and Gender Stereotyping in the Classroom – Challenging Intellectual Freedom

In early June, the Senate Education and Career Readiness Committee took up House Bill 5097, which was first introduced by Rep. Andrew Beeler (R-Fort Gratiot), and referred it to the committee of the whole. The legislation would ban “race and gender stereotyping” from the classroom. Two Democratic members of the committee walked out of the committee meeting in protest. 

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News - Advocacy

State of Michigan Budget Updates

There is still a lot of uncertainty on how the State of Michigan budget will play out overall, but there is definitely a lot of conversation about how to spend the additional dollars that are coming into play. Last week, the Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference revised revenues for the current and upcoming fiscal years upward by $5 billion. For the current fiscal year, revenues were increased by $1.7 billion General Fund and $1.3 billion School Aid Fund. For the upcoming fiscal year, revenues were increased by $1.1 billion for the General Fund and $948.7 million for the School Aid Fund. It should be noted that there is still some reluctance to spend these dollars freely and add more programs or increase the budgets of departments not knowing what the future holds.

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News - Advocacy
Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:00 AM

State of Michigan Budget Updates

All three State of Michigan FY2023 draft budgets have been published – from the Governor, the Senate, and from the House. 

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News - Advocacy
Thursday, March 24, 2022 12:00 AM

Open Meetings Act Update

In late January, Representative John Damoose (District 107) introduced House Bill 5689 which will update Section 3a (MCL 15.263a) as amended by 2021 PA 54 of the Open Meetings Act (OMA) to allow cooperative library boards and local library boards to meet virtually if they choose. The bill was referred to the Local Government and Municipal Finance Committee. 

There is a political reality to the passage of this legislation. It should be noted that there have been a number of proposed revisions introduced to the OMA during the past year. None have moved past the introduction since mid-2021 with the political divisions we now see. (Some of these bills are documented in the MLA Bill Tracker on the MLA website.)

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