Libraries’ lessons for T-Paw: Regional savings won’t work with Wisconsin

If Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants to use greater regional cooperation to save Minnesota money, he should look to the state’s half-century of success with regional library systems for a how-to in sharing resources across county lines. So writes Mark Ranum, the Minnesota Library Association’s legislative chairman, in today’s Star Tribune letter of the day.

As for the other government-efficiency idea Pawlenty proposed in last week’s State of the State address – combining or coordinating operations with Wisconsin – the lesson from the state’s latest experiment in combining libraries is less rosy. Economies-of-scale savings have been miniscule since the City of Minneapolis merged its troubled public library system with Hennepin County’s.But then such savings weren’t expected, former Minneapolis library trustee Sheldon Mains tells the Minnesota Independent. Both the Minneapolis and Hennepin library systems were big enough (and financially stressed enough) to have already extracted the best prices from vendors.

Mains sees the same phenomenon holding out as state department heads in Minnesota and Wisconsin follow orders from Pawlenty and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle to merge or cooperate. He’ll be “shocked,” he said, if the two states find any advantage in going in together to buy, say, road salt — which they’ll be buying the same amounts regardless.

The library merger was supposed to save money on pay for the Minneapolis library director and trustees, whose positions were all eliminated. More significant savings were supposed to come from combining computer systems, but that requires buying a new one both could share and Pawlenty vetoed funding for that. It’s “very typical” in mergers like these, Mains says, that “you have to spend money to save money.”