After a rural library district was at risk of being dissolved last year, Washington senators voted 49-0 on to improve the process that could close libraries. The measure also would not leave people out of the dissolution process.
For more than a year, some people called books at a library in southeastern Washington “pornographic and offensive.” Dayton library leaders refused to remove the books, so frustrated residents tried to dissolve the Columbia County Rural Library District by trying to take it to voters.
However, only certain county residents would have been allowed to vote – not people in Dayton proper, where the library sits just off Main Street. Superior Court Commissioner Julie Karl temporarily banned the measure from being placed on the November 2023 ballot and later struck the measure from the ballot.
The voting conundrum was what bill sponsor Sen. Sam Hunt, D-Olympia, called a glitch in the system.