State lawmakers have voted to remove the entire Arkansas State Library Board.
Members of the Arkansas House of Representatives approved Senate Bill 640 in a meeting Tuesday. The bill fires all seven members of the board, directing Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to appoint their replacements.
Conservative lawmakers and activists have called on the board to do more to protect library-goers from “sexually explicit” materials, though librarians say no such materials exist in libraries. A previous bill would have dissolved the library board and the Arkansas State Library entirely, moving their responsibilities to the Arkansas Department of Education.
The bill’s House co-sponsor, Rep. Howard Beaty, R-Crossett, said the move isn’t targeted at any specific member of the board.
“I’m not after anyone. I think we all know, in this chamber, we could’ve been voting on that other bill that was in committee. This is a far better solution than what we were going to do, to move this under the state Department of Education,” Beaty said.
Speaking on the House floor, Rep. Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, said the bill shows that lawmakers will “allow our boards to be bullied and then dismissed.”
“To fire a board because it doesn’t bow to the whims of one of us is just not the way this process is supposed to work. They genuinely were doing their job in the way they thought was best, and that’s what we should expect of any board,” Collins said.
Collins appeared to reference Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, the sponsor of the earlier bill to dissolve the library board. Sullivan has said in legislative meetings that board members were not receptive to his calls to pass a non-binding resolution to shield children from harmful materials, and to dissociate themselves from the American Library Association.
The bill passed on a vote of 60 to 29, with 10 members voting present or not voting. It now heads to the governor’s desk for a signature.
