I agree that public libraries should have a line item in every city and state budget. Small towns particularly need libraries or cultural centers to draw their folks out of a small town mindset into the larger world, and even though this may be accomplished with private ownership, I’d think public funding or tax leniency would be needed to run a library suitable for a whole town or area of a city.
I get the impression that Charles Simic, writing in the blog for the New York Review of Books, is not reading off the page to which my book is open. He writes, “‘The greatest nation on earth,’ as we still call ourselves, no longer has the political will to arrest its visible and precipitous decline and save the institutions on which the workings of our democracy depend.”
It’s more correct to say there isn’t the political will to arrest the negligent spending in other areas–areas where new civil rights have been declared–that are squeezing out the funds for good, but unglamorous, services like libraries. Of course, there are competing voices who say the world of reading is all online for free, and it misses the point to counter-argue that libraries should have computers instead of books. But I don’t think most politicians are anti-library. They just don’t see it as essential “the workings of our democracy.”
Simic waxes nostalgic about his life in libraries, and that’s not winning argument either. Most old things must pass away, so remembering how wonderful libraries have been to you does not contend for their contemporary usefulness.
Or is the financial hardship they face the result of their own poor management? Simic notes that he read recently of the possible closing of all of Detroit’s library branches. If they close, it may not be because the citizens don’t want them, but for gross mismanagement and favoritism. Christine MacDonald writes:

“This nepotism and cronyism has led to the downfall of the city,” said Reginald Amos, a retired Detroit Fire Department deputy chief and resident who said the family hires remind him of ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration. “It’s the friends-and-family plan. It’s not about serving the people. It’s self-serving.”

This is only one example, of course, but perhaps it is the most significant. Let’s not wring our hands over the boarding up of libraries when their closing has nothing to do with their cultural mission. Rather, let’s think creatively about how they can serve their communities.

Unfortunately, this is not a cool American public library. It’s the library in the Hermitage of St Bernardine, Stroud, New South Wales, Australia.