As I wrote here, several states are facing education funding lawsuits. Apparently West Virginia is too, with a bit of a twist:

In a special act, the legislature required nine counties in the state, including Kanawha, to use a potion of their state education funding to provide for public libraries. Public libraries in the 46 other counties are funded through voluntary donations of school boards, county commissions, cities, fundraising and grants.

In this fiscal year, the board is set to give the Kanawha County Public Library $2.9 million. The funds make up just over 1 percent of the county board’s budget; but are 40 percent of the library’s total budget for the year. The rest of its budget is made up of funds from the county commission and city of Charleston.

The county school board initially protested the act by saying it diverted state education funds collected from taxpayers from the classroom to an entity outside of the education system.

“The problem is that there’s two to three million dollars a year that we have to give to the public library. The non-special act counties don’t have to give that $2-3 million a year to their library. They can give basically all of it to their classrooms,” said Al Sebok who represents the board.

“So what that does, your honor, is create a lack of uniformity in the educational finance system.”

A decision from the state Supreme Court of Appeals is expected soon.

Washington’s public libraries are not funded this way. According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, there are 63 public libraries in Washington. (The Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington maintains a list here.) Of those, 58.7 percent function within city government, 39.7 percent within a library district, and 1.6 percent within county government.

Of total operating revenue for Washington’s public libraries in FY 2009, 96.4 percent came from local sources, 0.3 percent from federal sources, 0.1 percent from state sources, and 3.2 percent from other sources (e.g. donations and fines). By contrast, of West Virginia’s libraries’ operating revenues, 26.4 percent came from state sources.

Washington’s public libraries ranked 10th highest in the nation in total operating revenues per capita, 44th in state operating revenues per capita, and 6th in local operating revenues per capita.