Washington Hotline


C&RL News March 2016 158

Nancy Gravatt is press officer of the ALA Washington 
Office, email: ngravatt@alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eNancy Gravatt

Federal dollars on the line for state 
library programs
It’s the start of “appropriations” season again 
in Washington, that time every year when 
the President submits a budget to Congress, 
and then Congress drafts, debates endlessly, 
and eventually votes on bills to provide 
federal funding for everything from tackling 
the Zika virus to supporting libraries. Librar-
ies in every state in the nation benefit from 
funds allocated by Congress for the Library 
Services and Technology Act (LSTA), the 
only federally funded program specifically 
dedicated to supporting libraries. Last year, 
libraries received just under $183 million in 
LSTA funding, about $156 million of which 
flowed to states as matching grants. 

Around the time you are reading this, 
individual Members of Congress will start 
signing letters addressed to their influential 
colleagues who sit on the powerful Appro-
priations Committees in both chambers of 
Congress. Those letters will ask the commit-
tee to provide specific dollar amounts for 
specific programs, including LSTA. The math 
is easy: the more Members of Congress who 
sign a “Dear Appropriator” letter asking for 
significant LSTA funding, the better the odds 
of that money actually being awarded by the 
Appropriations Committee and eventually 
flowing to your state. 

Members of Congress are more likely to 
sign a letter urging level funding for LSTA if 
they hear from constituents back home. We 
urge you to reach out to your Members of 
Congress, request a meeting when they’re 
in the home district where you can speak 
with them and ask them to add their name 
to the LSTA “Dear Appropriator” letters that 
are now circulating. For more information, 
contact Kevin Maher in ALA’s Washington 
Office at kmaher@alawash.org or by phone 
at (202) 463-8236.

ACLU spearheading privacy reform 
campaign
ALA and our privacy-minded coalition part-
ners from across the political spectrum have 
been lobbying hard for years to change the 
outdated 1986 Electronic Communications 
Privacy Act (ECPA). Under its terms, once your 
electronic records are more than six months 
old, the authorities don’t actually have to get 
a judge-issued search warrant to compel your 
phone company or Internet service provider, 
for example, to hand them over. ALA is ac-
tively backing bills, such as the Email Privacy 
Act (H.R. 699) in the current Congress, which 
would grant full Fourth Amendment protection 
to all online communications as soon as they’re 
created. However, H.R. 699 has faced some 
roadblocks, and there’s reason to believe that 
opponents will try hard to weaken it. 

Faced with Washington’s increasing 
congressional gridlock, the American Civil 
Liberties Union (ACLU) has chosen to take 
control of the issue at the state level by spear-
heading a new nationwide privacy campaign,  
#TakeCTRL. To advance state legislation, ACLU 
has coordinated the introduction of ECPA 
and other privacy reform bills in 16 states 
and the District of Columbia with the goal of 
upgrading personal, student, and employee 
data privacy protections across the country. 
They already had success in California, which 
signed CalECPA into law late last year. ACLU is 
seeking to replicate that success in other states 
by passing state ECPS bills in Minnesota, New 
Mexico, New York, and Virginia, and by pass-
ing several other kinds of pro-privacy legisla-
tion proposed in other states. ALA continues 
to support #TakeCTRL. 

In the meantime, ALA still hopes to see 
federal ECPA reform passed. Please be sure 
to subscribe to District Dispatch for the latest 
on ALA’s privacy advocacy efforts in Congress 
and how you can further them, as well. For 
more information, contact Adam Eisgrau at 
aeisgrau@alawash.org or by phone at (202) 
628-8410.