Elon Musk, whose newly created Department of Government Efficiency has been tasked by President Trump with rooting out wasteful spending and bloated bureaucracy, has finally hit his mark, nailing the summer reading program at the Montauk Library.
“We all collaborate with the New York State Library on summer reading,” Denise DiPaolo, the director of the Montauk Library, said. “We all try to use the same theme. If that goes away, that would be the biggest immediate impact for us.”
On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order that would strip the Institute of Museum and Library Services, established in 1996 and the only source of federal funds for the state library, to its bones. The I.M.L.S. provided $8.1 million to the library in 2024, representing over 80 percent of its operating budget. The state library has 80 employees. If the cuts go through and aren’t “backfilled” by the state, 55 people could lose their jobs.
“It’s not about the sum of the money. It’s the importance of the other work the state library does,” said Kevin Verbesey, director of the Suffolk Cooperative Library System.
The state library is the sole conduit through which state and federal aid flows, providing support services to libraries across the state and reducing redundancies. In other words, it creates efficiency — that Holy Grail sought by DOGE. A shining example? Yes, the summer reading program. Instead of each library creating its own, the program established by the state is used, then tweaked to fit each community.
The same could be said for the New York State Talking Book and Braille Library. “It’s funded through I.M.L.S. grants,” Dennis Fabiszak, the director of the East Hampton Library, said. “It’s for people who are blind or severely vision-impaired. That’s something we can’t, as a library, go out and replicate. It would be way too costly. At least this year, theoretically, the funding couldn’t go away. But it’s possible in next year’s budget that funding gets pulled.”
“It’s not even a rounding error,” Kelly Harris, the director of the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, said of the $8 million the state receives from the federal government. While the $266 million I.M.L.S. budget may sound like a lot to those who live north of the highway, it represents only .00394 percent of the $6.75 trillion federal budget.
“Do we receive a huge amount of federal funding that’s put right into our budget? No,” she said. “But that money is used by the state library and every bit is put to good use.”
Anywhere from 80 to 95 percent of East End library budgets are funded through their local tax bases. Still, the state library provided $104.6 million to its 7,000 libraries for operating aid in 2024 and an additional $45 million for construction aid. If the state library lost funding, it’s unclear who would distribute those funds.
“The New York State Library processes state aid,” Mr. Verbesey said. “If that organization doesn’t exist, local libraries don’t get state aid.”
He stressed that the cuts to the I.M.L.S. shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. It’s not just library aid being cut, but the state stands to lose potentially billions in federal funding across the spectrum of services. “As the federal government stops doing stuff, it’s going to create a cascade of prioritization, which is never a bad thing, in and of itself. But we’ll be left with a slew of bad choices. There will be a lot of competing interests.”
Mr. Verbesey mentioned that statewide $100 million could be lost for E-Rate, a separate federal program that helps fund internet access in schools and libraries. The state couldn’t let something as important as internet access in schools go away and would have to scramble for funding. “On Long Island, $35 million could be sucked from schools and libraries with just that one cut.” He wasn’t confident that Gov. Kathy Hochul would support libraries. Neither was Mr. Fabiszak.
“The governor has consistently cut what library aid was going to be, from the prior year,” Mr. Fabiszak said. “We make a big deal of how libraries are educational institutions for lifelong learning, but the governor’s office, for the last 10 to 15 years, hasn’t represented that when putting in funding for schools and libraries.”
“It will affect us in ways that we don’t really know yet,” said Lisa Michne, the director of the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton. “We need at least one federal agency devoted to libraries to help us. It’s all very alarming. I.M.L.S. is the only federal agency for libraries. It’s congressionally funded and approved and now threatened with elimination.”
“It’s hard to plan and operate in the public realm when you’re not sure if the federal government is going to follow their own laws,” Mr. Verbesey said.
Ms. Michne noted that her library hadn’t undergone a building upgrade in 17 years, and she was hoping to access grant money to help with construction costs.
Likewise, Arielle Hessler, director of the Amagansett Library, wrote in an email that her library had “just finished a building assessment and identified facility work we need to do over the next few years. We normally rely on grants to help fund these large projects. And, of course, if the I.M.L.S. is unfunded and the New York State Library is impacted, that impacts the resources we can offer our community members.”
In the last decade, the state library had directed more than $645,000 to John Jermain, $510,000 to the Montauk Library, and $425,000 to East Hampton for construction grants.
If one were searching for a single overarching theme of the early days of the second Trump administration, uncertainty would be a strong candidate.
Representative Nick LaLota didn’t respond to The Star’s request for comment about I.M.L.S. funding. Ms. Michne received only an autoreply to an email she sent to his office.
“If anything, right now residents should be reaching out to their representatives in the federal government, saying you need to support libraries and museums,” Mr. Fabiszak said. “If it does get cut, those same residents need to reach out to their state representatives.”
“It just seems so shortsighted and going against what they claim are their goals,” Mr. Verbesey said. “It’s hard to imagine what their goals really are.”
