Grove City library officials warn House Bill 96 would cut funding, add costly censorship duties; council agrees to send letter

Meredith Wickham, a representative of Southwest Public Libraries, told Grove City Council on May 20 that Ohio House Bill 96, still pending in the legislature, would freeze public library funding and add new censorship and monitoring requirements that she said would threaten Grove City Library operations.

Wickham said HB 96 would “maintain our funding for 2026 and 2027 at approximately the same level we received in 2024,” leaving the library with state support that does not keep pace with rising costs. She and Debbie Blair, the library fiscal officer, described both operational effects and the estimated costs to comply with the bill’s access restrictions.

Wickham told council the bill would change the public library fund from a percentage of the state general revenue fund to a single line-item appropriation, a structure she called historically…