FY2008: grants-in-aid remained level funded in the governor’s supplemental FY2008 budget proposal. There was no reduction in grant-in-aid in the FY2008 supplemental budget proposal.

You will recall that the individual municipalities’ grant amounts for FY2008 were held level (i.e., to the FY2007 amount) by amending RIGL29-6-2 to push the reference year back to 2005 (the third preceding fiscal year instead of the second preceding fiscal year as originally stipulated in the law) for one year only ending June 30, 2008. That way, OLIS could apply the 25% factor to determine this year’s grant amounts while maintaining the bottom line at the amount it had been in FY2007.

FY2009: Although the Department of Administration in its budget submission had proposed to the governor restoration of the grants-in-aid for library services to 25% of the second preceding year’s funding as originally in the law, the total grant-in-aid was again level funded in the governor’s FY2009 budget proposal. For FY2009, however, the reference year has been restored to the second preceding year and the individual municipal grant amounts refigured accordingly.

Title 29-6-2 provides that “The amount of the grant payable to each municipality in any year in accordance with this section shall be reduced proportionately in the event that the total of those grants in any year exceeds the amount appropriated that year for the purposes of this section.” Indeed, because the sum total of municipal and allowable endowment support of public libraries rose between 2005 and 2007, but the budget amount for all grants-in-aid stayed the same, that is the case in FY2009.

In FY2008, the total amount in the budget for grants-in-aid was 25% of the sum of all municipal and allowable endowment funding in FY2005, the reference year. In FY2009 with the new reference year, the total amount in the budget for grants-in-aid, although the same amount is only 22.86% of the sum of all municipal and allowable endowment funding in FY2007, the reference year.

OLIS has applied the reduced percentage to each city or town’s municipal and allowable endowment funding in FY 2007 to determine the individual municipal grant-in-aid Because the amount of municipal and endowment support changed differently in each city or town, some municipal grants-in-aid were increased slightly, others decreased. The bottom line in FY2009, however, remains the same as it had been in FY2008 and in FY2007.