Here is what I wrote to Congressman Carter this a.m.: Good morning! I am not sure if any other public libraries have written about their concerns with the current Consumer Product Safety Commission's stance on testing for lead and phthalates in books. These materials are tested by the book publishers using guidelines promulgated in the past.
My understanding is that books used by children under the age of 12 may need to be prohibited for use by children in the best case, or destroyed in the worse case. With over 75,000 children's books contributing to over 1/2 of the library's circulation, this $3 million investment by the city of Round Rock might have to be thrown away. This is ludicrous. Representative Chris Lee (New York) has been attempting to get the Commission to make a definitive statement on children's books in public libraries. It appears that the Commission has not made a statement, two weeks from the required implementation date. My recommendation to the city will be to NOT do anything with the books and to wait until someone challenges us as that is an option in the legislation. At that point, legal, with their costs, will come into play. This is all poor use of taxpayers' funds. I also had a local merchant, Terry Myers, owner of Kaleidoscope Toys, an independently owned small business, drop by to share her concerns. This could shut her down. The legislature has often grandfathered situations that have not been proven to be harmful to large groups of people. This legislation should, indeed, grandfather purchases made by businesses and all political subdivisions prior to the date of passage of the legislation, at least. While the legislation has merit, it is economically irresponsible without a grandfather clause. Regardless, my fiduciary responsibility as a city government director is to inform you of the consequences of implementation of this legislation and its impact on city government, whether it be the destruction of materials paid for by the public or the loss of sales tax revenue to the city if a business has to trash its inventory and possibly close. All businesses are running on a narrow margin right now. See the link below for more information on Rep. Lee's current attempts: http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=1671 I certainly hope this discussion finds favor with your pro-business and fiscal conservative viewpoint and you are able to put into motion changes to what may be a disastrous implementation for not only your constituency, but all businesses and public and school libraries nationwide. Sincerely yours, ________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Laurie Mahaffey [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 11:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ctls-l] FW: I-Can! E-File Has anyone used this? Can you give Lupe some feedback? Thanks. Laurie Laurie Mahaffey, Deputy Director Central Texas Library System, Inc. 1005 West 41st Street Austin, Texas 78756 www.ctls.net<http://www.ctls.net> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 512-583-0704 x18 800-262-4431 x18 ________________________________ From: Lupe Herrera [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 11:08 AM To: Laurie Mahaffey Subject: I-Can! E-File Laurie, we wanted to ask if you’ve had any feed back on the use of the I-Can! E-File program. We’ve seen some websites with postings of people with concerns about it. On the security and accuracy of the program. We were wanting to put it on our website, but wanted to see if you had any thoughts on it. Lupe
