LIBRARIAN CANNOT SERVE ON LIBRARY BOARD. March 29, 1973, to Dean C. Gross, State Librarian.
K.S.A. 12-1222 prescribes the composition of library boards created pursuant to K.S.A. 12-1218 et seq. It directs that "no person holding any office in the municipality shall be appointed a member while holding such office." You inquire whether the librarian is deemed to hold a public office of the municipality, so as to be ineligible for appointment to the board.
The librarian is not, in our view, an officer of the municipality, but an employee. K.S.A. 12-1225 empowers the board "to employe (sic) a librarian and such other employees as the board shall deem necessary and to remove them and to fix their compensation." Accordingly, a librarian is not rendered ineligible for appointment to the board by virtue of K.S.A. 12-1222 alone.
There remains, however, the question whether the positions of librarian and member of the library board are not incompatible. The board is empowered to employ and remove the librarian, and to fix compensation of that position. The positions, are, in my view, incompatible, and for that reason a librarian should not be appointed to serve on the board of a library by which that individual is employed.
K.S.A. 12-1222 also provides thus:
"No person who has been appointed for two (2) consecutive four-year terms to a library board shall be eligible for further appointment to such board until two years after the expiration of the second term." (The current law allows reappointment one year after the expiration of the second term. - Chris Rippel)
You inquire whether a person appointed to complete an unexpired term remains eligible for two consecutive four-year terms upon completion of the unexpired term. In our opinion, a person so appointed to complete an unexpired term remains eligible for two consecutive four-year terms upon completion of the unexpired term.
- Quoted from Kansas Public Library Laws, Attorney General’s Opinions and Rules and Regulations, State Library of Kansas, March 1979.