Funding for California County Law Libraries

In April 2018, Sandi Levin of the Los Angeles County Law Library testified before the California Senate Budget Subcommittee regarding the funding crisis of county law libraries.  The Subcommittee is considering the matter of a one time or consistent additional funding for California county law libraries.

Generally, California county law libraries are funded by a small portion of civil filing fees collected by the Courts. Since 2012(ish), due to the increased using of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), increased use of fee waivers in the courts and for other reasons, the civil filing fees have decreased.  This has had a great impact on county law libraries.

Many of our county law libraries have closed their doors and others have limited the services that they offer.

The closures and limited service at county law libraries is concerning.  Law libraries provide an avenue to access to justice without barriers such as income.  We often see individuals who do not qualify for legal aid but don’t have the money to hire an attorney.  Researching at county law libraries may be their only avenue to justice.

Please add your support to the county law libraries request for funding by writing Governor Brown and the State Senators and Assemblymembers on the respective budget committees.  On the lists below, Riverside County legislators appear in bold type.

Senate Budget Committee:

Holly J. Mitchell (Chair),  Jim Nielsen (Vice Chair),  Joel Anderson, Jim Beall,  Steven M. Glazer, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Mike McGuire, Bill Monning, John M. W. Moorlach, Richard Pan, Anthony J. Portantino, Richard D. Roth, Nancy Skinner, Henry I. Stern, Jeff Stone, Bob Wieckowski, Scott Wilk

Assembly Budget Committee:

Philip Y. Ting (Chair), Jay Obernolte (Vice Chair), Dr. Joaquin Arambula, Richard Bloom, William P. Brough, Anna M. Caballero, Rocky J. Chávez, David Chiu, Steven S. Choi, PhD., Jim Cooper, Vince Fong, Cristina Garcia, Matthew Harper, Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, Sr., Tom Lackey, Monique Limón, Devon J. Mathis, Kevin McCarty, Jose Medina, Melissa A. Melendez, Kevin Mullin, Al Muratsuchi, Patrick O’Donnell, Jim Patterson, Blanca E. Rubio, Mark Stone, Randy Voepel, Shirley N. Weber, Jim Wood

Skip to 3:22:00 to see the relevant portion the video: http://senate.ca.gov/media/senate-budget-subcommittee-5-20180419/video