Capitol Report 6/5/2026

Missouri News Network: Statehouse News for MPA Members

This report is written by Missouri School of Journalism students for publication by MPA member newspapers in print and online.

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Missouri News Network this week has several stories from our Washington, D.C., team on Missouri’s congressional delegation and state stories about library funding and efforts to regulate data centers.

If you have thoughts or questions, contact Fred Anklam at anklamf@missouri.edu.

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Missouri senator leading fight to reform college sports

By Kaleb Anderson, Missouri News Network

WASHINGTON — Congress waded into the fight Wednesday over how college athletic departments pay their athletes and fund their programs.

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt is one of four co-authors of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act of 2026, which, among other things, could require athletes to disclose payments they receive through name, image, likeness sponsorships; require colleges to provide health and safety protections for athletes; limit coaches’ ability to switch teams midseason; and limit the ability of athletic conferences to merge. It would create a congressional commission on the future of college athletes, empowered to recommend more sweeping reforms.

At a hearing of the Senate committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, senators expressed concern that college sports are fallinwg victim to an unregulated bidding war with players and coaches becoming mercenary nomads and classic rivalries falling by the wayside as schools chase money.

Although the bill has an ideologically broad base of support — Republican Schmitt is joined by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; and Chris Coons, D-Del. — it has drawn immediate opposition from the country’s two richest athletic conferences, the SEC and the Big Ten. Mizzou Athletics declined to comment. MU is a member of the SEC.

The bill won praise from an all-star cast of witnesses: College Football Hall of Fame head coach Nick Saban, Notre Dame athletic director Peter Bevacqua, Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, former West Virginia president Gordon Gee and Utah defensive end Lance Holtzclaw. All do have interests, in one form or another, in supporting the bill.

Schmitt, a member of the committee, says that the issue is not just important for Congress but also to the people he represents.

“When you go back home, this is what people talk to me about,” he said in an opening statement. “They said, ‘What the hell’s going on with college sports?’”

Schmitt, who played football and baseball at Truman State, expressed confidence that legislation will move forward despite the SEC’s initial opposition. He said that he’s had great conversations with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and believes they’ll work through the issues, particularly regarding the way media rights to college sporting events can be sold.

“Look, I love Mizzou. I love the SEC,” Schmitt said. “But I want there to be an opportunity for other schools to be able to compete.”

Among other things, the bill would require college athletes to disclose NIL compensation of more than $600 per year to their athletic departments, which will be uploaded to a secure database to protect student-athlete privacy.

In addition to disclosing NIL compensation, the bill bans NIL agreements designed to evade the revenue-sharing cap or disguise pay-for-play inducements.

The bill will also require a baseline eligibility period of five years, beginning at age 19 or high school graduation, and exceptions for pregnancy, religious mission, military service and other approved absences. And it would limit student-athletes to one unrestricted transfer in their college careers.

The bill also looks to even the playing field financially by creating an antitrust exemption to allow schools and conferences to form a covered entity to pool and sell certain college sports media rights, similar to professional sports leagues.

It also looks to break up the conference monopolies by banning certain large-revenue conferences, like the SEC or the Big Ten, from consolidating with or acquiring other conferences.

When asked about why Congress feels the need to be involved in the handling of college sports and entertainment, Schmitt said they’re the only group that can create regulations and guidelines in the NIL era.

“Congress is the only entity on the planet that can provide the antitrust exemption status to empower a government body to set the rules,” Schmitt said. ... “No one else can do it.”

The next step for the bill is to have a markup to add amendments and be voted out of committee, which could be as early as next week.

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Say, "Chess!": St. Louis Chess Club goes to Washington

By Kennedy Voss, Missouri News Network 

WASHINGTON — Two Missouri lawmakers who usually don’t agree on much came together Wednesday to host a kids-versus-politicians competition and to celebrate their hometown.

“St. Louis is the chess capital of the world,” said U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., in a video posted to X from the Bipartisan Congressional Chess Tournament, which he co-hosted with U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell, a Democrat who, like Schmitt, hails from St. Louis.

The event was less of an official tournament and more an opportunity for the children of the St. Louis community to come to Washington and celebrate their achievements in chess. All top players from the St. Louis Chess Club, they ranged between the ages of 8 and 15.

“You look at the young people here participating; in chess, they’re very good, Schmitt narrated on X. “I don’t play them because I will lose badly, like in the first 30 seconds.”

In addition to Schmitt and Bell, a number of Missouri lawmakers attended the event: Republican Reps. Bob Onder and Ann Wagner, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and a non-Missouri chess fanatic, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Emmanuel Etuk, 14, said the club is a good opportunity to learn about chess and meet kids who like to compete, just not on the athletic field.

“It’s just a good place to learn,” Etuk said. “If you just spend maybe an hour at the St. Louis Chess Club, Saturdays, Fridays, maybe Sunday, you can learn so much.”

The young competitors are members of the Select Chess program, which is for K-12 students who show promise in the game. These children receive one-on-one lessons from chess grandmasters, many of whom also participated in the friendly bout.

One grandmaster, Irene Sukandar, said that bringing the future generations to the Capitol celebrates the diverse players the club has.

“Even though they’re only 8 years old, 10 years old, they’re beating everybody,” Sukandar said.

“It just goes to show that we care deeply in every single level of the competency here; not only the elite level ... but also for the kids of our future generations,”she added.

The club was founded in 2008 by Rex Sinquefield, who is the president and was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2020. He said that involving kids in chess is important because it “is very good for them in terms of cognitive development.”

“We take surveys,” Sinquefield said, “and the most common answer from kids is, ‘I like school most on the days we play chess.’”

Sinquefield, who is a major political donor as well as a chess enthusiast, said he hoped the children would up the lawmakers’ mental game.

“We wanted to get the congressmen and the senators’ minds to work,” Sinquefield said. “We brought the youngest kids we could to really challenge them and force them to think.”

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‘They’re already here': Regulating data centers stalls in Missouri

By Sterling Sewell and Max Quinn, Missouri News Network

JEFFERSON CITY — The rapid expansion of hyperscale data centers is far outstripping efforts to regulate them in Missouri and other states.

As a result, communities are left with failed legislation, hastily called moratoriums and divisive local elections to address the massive industrial facilities popping up across rural America.

“Legislation traditionally lags very far behind technology, and that can create some problems,” said Missouri Rep. Mike Costlow, R-Dardenne Prairie. His bill and others regulating data centers failed to get a vote in the Missouri legislative session that ended May 15.

At the local level, St. Louis suburb St. Charles is one of the first cities in the country to enact a local moratorium on data center construction. In Festus, south of St. Louis, voters in the April election rejected a slate of four city council members who supported a local data center.

Weeks earlier, hundreds of residents mobbed a city council meeting, and council members were escorted out by police. Petitions seeking recall elections for the mayor and other council members who backed the project were certified last week. The city of Independence, a Kansas City suburb, voted out two council members who approved tax breaks for a data center company.

Local government meetings around the country have been attended by throngs of residents strongly opposition to data center development in their communities.

Other states are struggling to regulate data centers. Maine would have been the first to pass a statewide moratorium on data centers, but the governor vetoed the proposal. Georgia tried to implement a moratorium, but the bill stalled in the session that ended in April.

Alli Finn, director of community partnerships at AI Now, a policy research firm in New York City, said state and local regulation is desperately needed to moderate explosive growth. According to a Stanford University report, the United States hosts 5,427 data centers, more than 10 times any other country, with hundreds more in development. This rapid growth is driven by cloud computing, streaming services and artificial intelligence use.

The Midwest is one of the hottest growth areas, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Missouri has at least 91 active data centers of various sizes, according to Data Center Map. At least 14 data centers are in various stages of development across the state, according to Missouri News Network reporting.

Data centers use massive amounts of energy and water. One data center can use as much electricity as 80,000 households, according to a report from consulting firm McKinsey and Co. Some have the potential to use up to 5 million gallons of water daily, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

“Our current laws around zoning, economic development, water and energy use were not at all built for this moment of rampant data center buildout,” Finn said.

Missouri’s attempt at legislation

During a February press conference, Rep. Colin Wellenkamp, R-St. Charles, chair of the House Future Caucus, announced his intent to make AI and data center regulation a top priority in Missouri’s legislative session.

Wellenkamp and other caucus members introduced legislation regulating water and electricity use for large-load users, like data centers.

“It’s a bipartisan effort that addresses urgent needs in our state that aren’t going away, “ Wellenkamp said. “They’re only going to get more urgent.”

But his bill and identical legislation sponsored by Costlow never made it to the House floor for debate.

House Bills 3362 and 3364 were aimed primarily at utility regulation and customer protection. They would have required large water users, excluding agricultural users, to receive a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. They would have codified requirements for water and electric utilities to create tariff schedules for large-load users and Public Service Commission-approved contracts between large-load users and utility companies.

Wellenkamp’s district covers parts of St. Charles, which in 2025 became one of the first cities in the country to pass a temporary moratorium on data centers, in part due to water supply concerns from residents.

Wellenkamp said the bill was not meant to block data center development, but instead to find a balance between community needs and business needs.

“These things are already here,” Wellenkamp said. “It’s a matter of ‘How do we get the best of both worlds?’ and I think everybody wants that.”

Environmental regulations proposed

Another member of the Future Caucus, Rep. Marty Joe Murray, D-St. Louis, proposed legislation adding several environmentally conscious regulations.

Murray’s House Bill 2239 would have required data centers that use 100 megawatts of power to use a closed loop or other low-water-use cooling system, ensuring that excess water is not used to cool data centers’ electronic components.

The bill would have required data center operators to submit a report on their health and environmental impact to the Department of Natural Resources each year. These reports would be made public on the department’s website.

Murray said he was inspired to put his legislation forward after public meetings on data center proposals in St. Louis called for more transparency.

Among other proposed legislation this year were bills from Rep. Scott Cupps, R-Shell Knob, and Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette. Cupps’ bill would have banned using incentives for data centers, discouraged placing data centers on agricultural land or near recreational areas or state waterways, and created a state board to approve new projects.

McCreery’s bill aimed to increase transparency about data centers’ environmental impacts, including energy, water and noise.

None of these bills had a legislative hearing.

If these bills had reached the Senate, they likely would have been referred to the committee chaired by outgoing Sen. Mike Cierpiot, R-Lee’s Summit. Cierpiot, sponsor of last year’s major energy bill, has signaled reluctance to implement further regulations on large-load users.

Missing tax revenue

Cierpiot has said he doesn’t get the opposition to data centers, especially at a local level.

“I don’t really understand it because (of) the taxes they bring to a district for the school districts and for the local governments. The state really doesn’t get much off of it, but the locals do,” Cierpiot said. “Some communities would really benefit from a large data center as far as a tax base.”

Murray said he is not opposed to the development of data centers, and that Missouri may need taxable data center development.

Missouri, like many states, is under a constrained budget future as federal COVID-19 funding runs dry. Missouri also is expecting lower general revenue after a 2025 law eliminated the capital gains tax.

While data centers could generate tax revenue, Murray said that transparency and environmental regulations should be in place to ensure that data centers provide benefits.

“As a state, we need more revenue,” Murray said. “We have an economic need for business and enterprise in our state, and if this is the lever that they are trying to use, we need to make sure we have some regulations in place.”

That could take a while. 

“The Senate is going to have to come around with this; they’re going to have to treat it one way or the other,” Wellenkamp said.

Local backlash

As state legislation has failed, local officials have dealt with data centers, often facing backlash.

St. Charles Mayor Dan Borgmeyer saw the benefit of the tax revenue that would have come from a 440-acre, $1 billion data center proposed by developer CRG.

“I’d love to have the $9 million a year,” he said. “Our casino generates about as much as the data center.”

But after residents fought back on Facebook and meetings turned into shouting matches, Borgmeyer said there was no hope for data centers in his town. Community members feared a data center’s potential impacts on their already contaminated water supply and rising electricity rates.

“The public does not want it, and so therefore I’m supporting their wishes,” Borgmeyer said.

In St. Charles, the city council approved a one-year ban on data centers in August 2025. On May 19, eight months into that moratorium, the council approved another measure effectively banning data centers permanently.

Borgmeyer believes the resistance to data centers was misinformed and overly reactive to things like nondisclosure agreements, which he said are necessary for sensitive business deals.

“A — it’s a highly, highly competitive situation and B — it’s just not good economics to develop that way where everybody else knows all your business,” he said. “So, the NDA became the villain.”

St. Charles City Council member Justin Faust told the House Future Caucus during its November meeting that transparency is key. He said if data center developers want community buy-in, they need to get ahead of residents’ concerns.

Faust said the data center developer in St. Charles provided limited information, and representatives from the company could not answer basic questions. He cited this lack of transparency as a reason for the moratorium.

“We have to answer to our residents in a timely manner,” he said. “Saying, ‘Trust me, I’ll get that information later,’ is not acceptable on any terms.”

Lessons learned

Former leaders in the Kansas City suburb of Peculiar have had two years to reflect on their rejection of a proposed data center in 2024. The New York Times reported that residents were concerned about increased water rates, traffic, noise pollution, light pollution and the loss of their small-town way of life.

Former Alderman Zach Poland said data center opposition was so “publicly vile” and “vicious” that it led him not to seek reelection.

“I was exhausted, frustrated, discouraged and had determined that public service was not for me, and I would be done after my term,” he said.

Public acrimony led City Administrator Mickey Ary and Mayor Doug Stark to resign.

Poland emphasized that communities should not let opposition shut down discussion. He advised officials faced with data centers to declare their neutrality early.

“If I was to do that again, I think I’d need to be a little bit more bold and say ‘Just hold on, nothing is done,’” he said.

In Festus, new council members will have to deal with the debate over the proposed $6 billion CRG data center, which the company proposed after failing in St. Charles.

Murray said state regulations on local government action may not be the solution to problems posed by data centers — but elections are.

“That’s what elections are for,” Murray said. “If they feel as though their representative isn’t listening to them. ... They always have the means to change that person next August.”

Creating comprehensive regulations

To Finn, of the AI Now Institute, data center regulation needs to be comprehensive.

Finn co-authored the North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit, which provides options for local, state and regional authorities. Suggested interventions include establishing conditional use permits, limiting tax incentives and subsidies, implementing air pollution measures, regulating noise, requiring fair labor practices, promoting grid stability and renewable energy infrastructure.

“We are seeing that it is very hard to move forward all of the comprehensive legislation and protection that is needed at a state level in a way that matches the speed of this buildout,” Finn said.

Moratoriums are a good way for communities to have more time to develop regulations, Finn said. For example, Maine’s proposed moratorium would have created a regulatory body to oversee development.

“Moratoriums are only as good as what happens when they’re in place or after,” Finn said.

Wellenkamp thinks moratoriums will continue as long as cooperation is strained between local governments and data center developers.

“If the industry does not answer citizens’ concerns and start being more transparent, talking to localities, being partners with localities in this buildout, life is just gonna get harder for them,” Wellenkamp said.

Abigail Cornell contributed to this reporting.

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A new exhibit at the state Capitol shows how 250 years of history influenced Missouri

By Lauren Johnson, Missouri News Network 

An exhibit celebrating America’s 250th anniversary will open Saturday at the Missouri Capitol with historical artifacts and images representing the history of Missouri and the United States.

The exhibit was put together with students at the University of Missouri’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, which is planning an opening ceremony from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Missouri State Museum in the Capitol in Jefferson City.

Called “Stars, Stripes and Celebrations,” the exhibit includes artifacts under a broad patriotic theme, such as a quilt from 1976, a wheelbarrow from 1876, grasshopper plates from 1876 and political cartoons.

“We’ve got this fascinating wheelbarrow that some men from Jasper County, Missouri, decided they wanted to be at the big national centennial celebration in Philadelphia and show off what Missouri had to offer the country,” said Lily Santoro, an associate teaching professor at MU and leader of Kinder Public History ASH team.

The exhibit was put together by the Kinder Public History ASH team, a group of student researchers at the University of Missouri who develop projects to communicate elements of history to the public.

Both graduate and undergraduate students began working on the exhibit in May 2025. They were majors in history, constitutional democracy, political science majors, education and journalism.

“That was really wonderful that we had these different experiences from across campus that they could share with each other,” Santoro said. “It was nice to have them be able to support each other.”

The starting point for the exhibit was to define what the anniversary means to Missourians, and to look back and see how the state commemorated America’s founding.

The result explores a series of time periods — the American Jubilee (50th anniversary), the Centennial (1876), the Sesquicentennial (1926) and the Bicentennial (1976).

“Stars, Stripes and Celebrations” will be open for a year, through May 2027. Missouri Humanities was a partner and a sponsor for the exhibit.

“I think it’s nice to see, to be reminded of how much Missouri is a big part of the national story and that the national story is important to us,” Santoro said. “I think we often ignore, and I’ll say this, I grew up on the East Coast and we should not ignore Missouri.”

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As overdoses in schools rise, many are keeping reversal medications on hand

By Kayla Gleason, Jack Bordeleau and Xavier Asher, Statehouse Reporting Project

Kansas City firefighter Josh Magaha teaches fentanyl and opioid overdose awareness at schools in Kansas.

“Every single school I’ve presented in, we’ve had an overdose,” he said while testifying in favor of a Kansas bill that would require school districts to provide fentanyl abuse education programs and have overdose reversal medications in every school. The bill didn’t make it out of the committee stage.

Most states allow schools to carry overdose reversal medications. Now, some states are beginning to require it.

Magaha said all of the schools he’s worked with in Kansas have a supply of Narcan, a brand-name version of naloxone.

Overdoses among adolescents are on the rise nationwide. More than 700 teens died from overdoses in 2022 and 2023, according to KFF, a source for health policy research and news. That figure was just 282 in 2019.

Overdose reversal medication was not administered in 70% of fatal overdoses for adolescents ages 10 to 19, despite a bystander being present in two-thirds of the cases, according to a review of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A new Ohio law allows schools to carry overdose reversal medications.

In Ohio, legislation clarifying that K-12 schools may carry and administer naloxone or Narcan was signed by the governor and went into effect in January.

State Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, one of the cosponsors of House Bill 57, said the legislation was proposed by a constituent whose school-aged son died from an overdose.

“The reality is, we are seeing more and more younger kids getting their hands on substances,” Jarrells said. “Whether it’s vapes, marijuana that’s laced with fentanyl or other products, students are unknowingly taking substances that can cause an overdose.”

In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved naloxone nasal spray as an over-the-counter drug, safe to use for opioid overdoses.

Since then, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have expressed support for keeping it in schools.

Some schools in Ohio stocked Narcan and similar medications before the bill took effect, but the lack of legislation surrounding it created a grey area about what was allowed and what was not.

“It was a no-man’s land in terms of what was allowed or permitted,” Jarrells said. “One of the first steps was level-setting with schools.”

While Ohio’s law only states schools may carry drug reversal medication, he said the legislation could be revisited to further encourage its implementation.

According to Summit County Public Health, there are currently no schools in the county that directly distribute naloxone. Several have NaloxBoxes, which are wall-mounted cabinets that have naloxone and instructions on how to respond to an overdose, according to Megan Scott, a Behavioral Health Services supervisor.

Kansas bill dies in Senate committee

In Kansas, HB 2489 would have required school districts to have naloxone supplies available. It would also have ordered the state Board of Education to develop guidance for instruction on the prevention of the abuse of fentanyl and other opioids. The guidance would be distributed to each school district. The bill passed the House in February, but died in a Senate committee in April.

Stacey Rogers, who lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2022, said the bill addressed the crisis in a realistic and lifesaving way. “It combines prevention through education with preparedness through access to naloxone,” she said.

Fentanyl is extremely lethal. Counterfeit fentanyl may be mixed in or cut with other drugs, like cocaine and Percocet.

“A lot of the people who are dying don’t know that they’re taking fentanyl,” Kansas state Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Leavenworth, said, who one of the bill’s sponsors.

He said the money to provide naloxone to schools would have come from opioid settlements at the national and state levels. The responsibility for providing fentanyl education and keeping a stock of naloxone would fall on the state Board of Education.

All students should have equitable access to overdose reversal medication if an overdose occurs in a school environment, the National Association of School Nurses said in a statement. Registered professional nurses’ expertise is necessary to implement the procedures for overdose reversal care, the statement said.

Missouri bill clears House, but not Senate

In Missouri, HB 3113 would have mandated that public buildings keep Narcan on hand and make reasonable efforts to notify occupants of its location.

“It is a vital piece of legislation designed to address the escalating crisis of fentanyl poisoning in Missouri,” bill sponsor Rep. Ann Kelley, R-Lamar, said at a committee hearing in February. “Deaths due to fentanyl have increased by over 300% in recent years, with thousands of lives lost to this silent killer.”

The bill would also have modified the Drug-Free Schools Program, calling for the development of education programs about fentanyl poisoning for students in grades six through 12.

“Each day that we delay action is another day that lives are at risk,” Kelley said. “By enacting House Bill 3113, we’re not just passing a law, we’re taking a stand against the public health crisis that threatens our families and communities.”

The bill passed the House in April but did not make it through the Senate before the session ended.

This article was produced by the Statehouse Reporting Project, a collaborative effort by collegiate journalism programs operating in statehouses across the country. Xavier Asher is a student at the University of Missouri. Kayla Gleason is a senior at Kent State University studying journalism, digital media production and fashion media. Jack Bordeleau is a senior at the University of Kansas studying journalism and sports management.

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Missouri librarians brace for possible Trump budget cuts

By Ivy Reed, Missouri News Network

Robin Westphal knows this isn’t the first time the future of federal funding for her library has been uncertain. As the executive director of Daniel Boone Regional Library and president-elect of the Missouri Library Association, she’s familiar with the Trump administration’s past efforts to cut funds to public libraries.

“This feels a little different this time, because I feel like in this world where we have so much chaos and conflict sort of going on, that this is when people need libraries the most,” Westphal said.

The Trump administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 includes a proposal to nearly zero out funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the independent agency responsible for providing federal funds to the country’s libraries.

Congress has previously rejected proposed cuts to the institute, but the most recent proposal comes after a year of legal battles over its existence. Westphal is confident funding will be preserved in this year’s budget negotiations but remains concerned about the message sent by constant threats to the future of libraries.

Last spring, the American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sued to block Trump’s executive order eliminating the institute. Although the settlement successfully preserved the independent agency, the current proposal now aims to shrink the institute’s budget from $290 million to $6 million — a loss of about 98% of current funding.

The Missouri State Library receives more than $3 million in funds annually, which is then distributed to the state’s local libraries through sub-grants. Westphal previously served as the state librarian responsible for administering these funds. She said one of the biggest programs supported by the institute’s funds is the statewide courier service, which allows inter-library transfers.

“Without that courier service that is provided with these federal funds, many libraries, just because of their budget, would not have anything but maybe a few of the best sellers to be able to provide to their patrons,” she said. “They just don’t have the depth and the breadth of a collection that their community would want.”

The institute funding also provides tools that allow libraries to view data and expenditure metrics for similar libraries in different parts of the country.

“They’ve been collecting this for a long time, so it can help you find peers and a side-by-side comparison and benchmarking,” said Jenny Bossaller, program coordinator for the University of Missouri’s Library and Information Science Program.

The Columbia Public Library is part of a large regional system with multiple branches serving Boone and Callaway counties, but the public library in the nearby town of Centralia is much smaller. Centralia Public Library Director Amy Hopkins attested to the importance of library programming in a smaller community and said libraries in extremely rural areas in the state’s southern Bootheel region would be impacted even more by a loss of funding.

“In my experience, and I’ve been here a long time, this library is the center of this community,” she said.

Hopkins has applied for several grants through the state library. These grants fund the Centralia library’s summer reading program, along with educational programming, physical materials, new computers, server equipment, part-time staff wages and mobile hot spots.

Hopkins said their latest grant is allowing them to upgrade their online card catalog system to Missouri Evergreen, a resource sharing consortium run by the Equinox Open Library Initiative that gives patrons access to items across other library systems.

“We had to rebarcode everything in the library,” she said.

“That was an $11,000 grant, and then we had to pay for the Equinox training and other things, and that was a $27,000 grant.”

Along with local public libraries, the institute also supports tribal libraries, universities, cultural organizations and archives. While libraries rely on state sub-grants administered under the Grants to States program, other types of grantees apply for and receive funding directly through the federal agency.

At the University of Missouri, Bossaller and her colleagues in the Library and Information Science Department rely on institute grants to support research and training in public library leadership, health librarianship and public data stewardship. She said there’s concern in the department over losing their main source of funding.

“For the research that we do, (the institute) is the only federal agency that understands exactly what our purpose is,” Bossaller said. She added that grants from other federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institute for Health can be helpful but aren’t specifically tailored to support information science research the way institute funds are.

“You can apply for NIH funding, and you might have somebody reviewing your grant that understands what you’re talking about, but they might not see the value in it,” she said. “(The institute) is going to see the value in this, because the people who are reviewing the grants understand the value of public libraries.”

The federal appropriations process will continue over the summer, with library scholars, rural librarians and library advocates across the country keeping a close eye on the latest defunding negotiations.