The bill's sponsor also tried to introduce a requirement for criminal background checks of library employees last year.
The bill would make library systems set policies for employees’ background checks, or lose state funding.
After a brief discussion Thursday morning, the House Education Committee unanimously voted to move the bill forward. Dan Johnson, a retired school principal, introduced a version of this bill in 2022, but it never left committee. Since then, Johnson told The Tribune, he met with librarians statewide to rewrite the bill to a point where they might support it.
The bill specifies that Utah’s smallest counties, designated fifth- and sixth-class by population, be given the financial assistance for paying for background checks. The sixth-class counties in Utah are Daggett, Piute, Wayne and Rich; the fifth-class counties are Garfield, Beaver, Kane, Grand and Emery.
“From a large library perspective, you might look at those costs and say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ but when you’re running a small rural library, literally every dollar counts,” Cummings said.
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