Lawrence Journal-World 06-05-2016

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FRIENDS & FAMILY SPORTS, 1C

Why Muhammad Ali was truly ‘The Greatest.’ 1B

L A W R E NC E

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SUNDAY • JUNE 5 • 2016

COVER CHARGE Library seeks more funds from city; employee wages called ‘substandard’

$45M budget hole must be filled by June 30 By Peter Hancock Twitter: @LJWpqhancock

Kansas lawmakers from both parties say it may be possible to ride out the final weeks of the fiscal year without making further spending cuts, despite a $75 million revenue shortfall for the month of May. “I’m not the governor, and I don’t know what the budget director is planning on doing, but I know there are a couple ways to handle that,” said Rep. Sharon Schwartz, RWashington, who is vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee. According to the Legislature’s nonpartisan Research Department, the May revenue shortfall creates roughly a $45 million budget hole that

Twitter: @nikkiwentling

Please see LIBRARY, page 2A

Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo

CAMERON BEALS, A MATERIAL-HANDLING ASSISTANT at the Lawrence Public Library, sorts through some books Thursday. The library is seeking additional funding from the city so it can give pay raises to its employees.

Digital collection part of funding request If the library were to receive the $300,000 increase it’s requesting, $250,000 would go toward pay increases. According to the budget request, submitted in May, the remaining $50,000 would be used to boost the library’s digital collection, including e-books and digital music and movies.

Arts&Entertainment 1D-6D Classified 1E-6E Deaths 2A Events listings 2C, 2D

Low: 58

Today’s forecast, page 6C

Lawrence Public Library in 2016 has an annual collections budget of $550,000. Allen said the library adds thousands of physical books to its collections each month, compared with the 40 or 50 digital titles it adds monthly. Resources can’t be taken from growing the print collection,

he said, because the library needs to maintain access to books for those without digital devices. “If you look at our digital collection, it’s pretty pathetic,” Allen said. “We’re certainly not building the collection that we should for this town. We’ve cut into our print budget to try to make some allowances.”

INSIDE

Nice

High: 82

Lawmakers: Cuts not needed despite shortfall ———

By Nikki Wentling

Seated inside his office on the lower level of the Lawrence Public Library on Thursday, library Director Brad Allen said the new, award-winning facility, finished in 2014, was “transformative for this town.” But without adequate staff, “a building is just a building,” he continued. And library employees are enduring what Allen called “subAllen standard,” “below market” and “out of scale” wages. “This building will not continue to be transformative if we do not continue to have fantastic people working at it,” Allen said. “The building is just part of the equation, and the other part of the equation is this amazing staff that works here. You have to pay a fair wage to keep a good and decent staff. “For me, it’s a social justice issue, frankly. We have people who are barely at a living wage, and it doesn’t have to be like that.” When Allen started as director in 2012, the library’s five librarians earned $12.50 per hour, Allen said. By eliminating a position and working in an increase in 2015, that’s grown to $17.10. Now, he’s looking to offer more raises across the board, especially for

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must be filled either with spending cuts or other revenues before the end of the fiscal year June 30. Gov. Sam Brownback’s office said late last week that it does not anticipate ordering any more spending cuts. Instead, Brownback and Budget Director Shawn Sullivan are looking to fill the gap by using fee fund balances held by various cabinet agencies where there is some discretion over how those funds are used. But the governor’s spokeswoman Eileen Hawley said Friday that no final decision has been made and that the administration will continue to monitor revenues as they come in during June before making a decision. Please see BUDGET, page 2A

University learning costly lessons from internet outage By Sara Shepherd Twitter: @saramarieshep

Kansas University has yet to tally the total cost of an internet fiber cable cut that crippled campus earlier this spring, but some sources indicate it may be in the millions of dollars. Meanwhile KU Information Technology is looking at how to prevent such an outage from occurring in the future, and University Senate representatives say funds must be secured to build a backup system. “This simply cannot happen again,” the University Senate’s Academic Computing and Elec-

tronic Communications Committee wrote in its end-of-the-year report. “Specifically, a single communications cut cannot bring down the entire Lawrence campus and parts of EdKANSAS UNIVERSITY wards campus.” Early in the afternoon of March 29, construction crews inadvertently cut through a critical section of fiber between the Price Computing Center and the Ellsworth Data Center on Daisy Hill.

Rolling the dice

4D Television 9A USA Today 4D, 5D 1C-6C

2C, 6C, 4D 1B-8B

Please see INTERNET, page 5A

Vol.158/No.157 38 pages

Theatre Lawrence is closing out its season with a production of “Guys and Dolls,” opening this weekend. Page 1D

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