A Library With Nothing to Hide vs. a Company That Hides Everything

In a recent letter to the editor, candidate Cameron Williams claimed he’s not anti-library, he’s just “pro-accountability.” That’s a nice talking point. But here’s what matters: facts, not slogans.

Samuels Public Library has served this community for 225 years. It operates as a public-private partnership governed by a nonprofit board. It provides a line-item budget for every cent of the $1.024 million in county funding it receives. It complies with Virginia FOIA law, holds public meetings, and undergoes annual independent audits.

That’s not just accountability. That’s transparency.

Now Cameron supports replacing Samuels with Library Systems & Services (LS&S), a for-profit vendor headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. LS&S:

Is not subject to FOIA

Does not publish a public line-item budget

Shields operations behind proprietary protections

Takes up to 28 percent of public funding as profit

Has a record of lawsuits, censorship disputes, and backlash in other states

Supporters of this plan say LS&S will be “accountable” to the Warren County Library Board, but here’s what they’re not telling you:

LS&S is a private company, which means even the Library Board might not be able to see what’s really going on.

They can legally refuse to share:

• How much profit they’re making off your tax dollars
• Who they hire and fire, how much they pay staff, and why
• Who they subcontract work to, and for how much
• Why certain materials or programs are removed or changed
• What software or systems they use to manage data
• What their actual day-to-day policies and procedures are

They can hide all of it, even from the people supposedly overseeing them. Once the contract is signed, the public and the Library Board may be completely shut out of how the library is run.

Samuels never had a fair shot. As a nonprofit governed by a 501(c)(3) board under a long-term lease, it was not legally allowed to submit a bid under the county’s created RFP process. The process was built to exclude them, and then it was blamed for not participating.

And the cost?

• Over 15 million dollars for a 10-year contract with LS&S
• 600,000+ dollars in legal fees to break Samuels’ lease
• 4.5+ million dollars to replace the collection and infrastructure the County doesn’t own because under 501(c)(3) law, Samuels legally owns it

That’s more than 20 million taxpayer dollars to dismantle a functioning, award-winning library and hand it to a private company that gets to decide what the public is allowed to see.

Unlike Samuels, LS&S is not obligated to preserve community programs, local history collections, or public input.

And let’s be honest. Some of the very people now calling this “accountability” once described this exact plan as a “recipe for disaster.”

They said it would be “wrapped up in litigation until the end of time.”

They admitted it would “cause more problems than it solves.”

They even said the better path was to “renegotiate the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)” instead of pushing a takeover.

That perspective was right. It still is. But now it’s been replaced with campaigning lies.

Samuels doesn’t need fixing.

It needs defending from people who knew better, and chose political expediency over principle.

Kris Nelson
Front Royal, VA

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