WEST ADA
A Boise-area city council wants the power to fire its library director. It may get it

By Rose Evans February 12, 2025 4:00 AM

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Four-year-old Makenna Kitzmiller walks along a row of books as her mother, Rachel Kitzmiller, looks for a book title at the Meridian Library, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, on Cherry Lane with her children, Claire, 7, and Andrea, 5. Darin Oswald Idaho Statesman

A Treasure Valley city wants to “get rid of a library director,” according to a state representative who presented a bill that could help them do it. ... The proposed legislation, introduced by Rep. Jeff Cornilles, R-Nampa, in the House Local Government Committee, would allow city councils to have the ultimate say over hiring and firing public library directors — a power now vested with library boards or commissions.

Cornilles told the committee Monday that the idea came to him from a city in the Treasure Valley frustrated that elected city officials must defer to appointed library board members on hiring and firing decisions. Cornilles did not say which city, and no committee member asked him.

The bill comes as the Eagle library board has been under scrutiny in the months after a new state law took effect in July governing how libraries must respond to materials deemed “harmful to minors.” After the board voted in September to relocate 23 library books, the City Council removed two members from the board in October for reasons not disclosed. The board and the city are among multiple institutions and people sued Feb. 4 in an attempt to overturn the law.

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