Flagler County Library Director Braces for Possible Cuts After Trump Order to End Library Support Agency

Assistant Flagler County Administrator Holly Albanese is preparing the county’s public library system, its Board of Trustees and local officials for possible local consequences of an executive order that seeks to end the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, a mainstay of library and museum funding across the country. 

“My understanding of how the cuts from IMLS are affecting libraries is that if you are or have already received funding this fiscal year, you may be asked to return or lose the remainder of the funds not already distributed,” Albanese said. 




Albanese, who is also the library system’s director, is still evaluating the local impact. Like her colleagues across the state and the county, much of the effect of the order has not been fully calculated, while attorney generals in 21 states (Florida’s James Uthmeier is not among them) have sued to Trump administration to block the order. But most of IMLS’s staff has already been dismissed. (IMLS has placed 85 percent of its staff on administrative leave, according to a lawsuit.)

“IMLS’s largest program, the Grants to States Program, allocates federal funding to State Library Administrative Agencies, which use those funds to support statewide services and/or to distribute through subgrant competitions to public, academic, school, and special libraries in each state,” Albanese wrote in an email. “This may affect State Aid and all grants, including [Library Services and Technology Act] and construction grants in the State of Florida.  We just don’t know how much or when it will start.  Will it include this past year or is it next fiscal?  Will we lose the construction grant and pay back any money we have received to date?”

Flagler County receives just $20,000 in state aid. “Our passport revenue will more than make up for the loss of State Aid,” Albanese said.  In 2022-23, the library processed 3,898 passports, generating over $181,000. (Chances are, 2025 will be a banner passport year: some executive orders make some citizens nervous.)




In the 2023-24 cycle, Flagler County was awarded a $500,000 state construction grant. It is helping to build the $16 million Nexus Center, the South Branch library rising across the street from the Sheriff’s Operations Center in Bunnell. Last year, Albanese secured an additional $4 million grant for the project. It was part of a federally funded broadband program. Though awarded, the status of both those grants is uncertain given the arbitrariness of federal edicts. 

“I, of course, am concerned and watching for any changes to the $4m grant and our E-Rate program, which provides a Federal Discount for Internet access.” Albanese wrote. “ At this time the Department of Commerce (Office of Broadband) for the grant and the FCC for E-Rate have not been affected by the cuts.” 

On March 14, President Trump ordered the elimination of seven agencies, among them the Institute of Museum and Library Services. A federal agency, IMLS last year awarded $266.7 million in grants to support libraries, museums and similar institutions, $180 million of which went to state governments. Last year $9.5 million was awarded to the State Library of Florida, which in turn dispersed much of the money to local libraries. Half a million dollars went to the Florida Memory program, a freely accessible online library that makes Florida history in photographs, films documents, memoirs and other artifacts available at a click.




Some of IMLS’s money is awarded in direct grants. Florida institutions received $1.2 million last year, including a $150,000 grant to the University of South Florida’s School of Information, a $548,000 grant to the Florida State College of Communication, and $250,000 to the Museum of Discovery and Science in Ft. Lauderdale.  

Flagler County’s library system operates on a $1.9 million budget, including $209,000 in capital outlays. It has 18 employees, two of them at the current makeshift Bunnell branch at Marvin’s Garden. 

When the Nexus Center opens in November or December, Albanese is asking for six new employees, who will be supplemented by three employees from the Palm Coast branch and the two working in the Bunnell Branch.  “As a result, we may need to reduce hours at Palm Coast to offset the loss of staff,” Albanese said. “Of course if we don’t get the staff needed both may be at jeopardy of losing hours. “

The order, like many before it and since, is legally dubious. It may not scrap the agency entirely since it’s established by Congress. But the order can effectively end its operations. Within one week, all seven agencies cited by Trump’s order were required to report that they had achieved “full compliance.” 

The lawsuit may yet make much of the anxiety moot, albeit not without considerable disruption in the meantime. 

“If the President disagrees with Congress’s decision to support the Nation’s libraries and museums, and enable the peaceful mediation of labor disputes,” the lawsuit states, “he is free to seek legislation abolishing the agencies that perform these—and many other—vital functions. One option that our Constitution does not give the President is to shutter the agencies himself, in defiance of the administrative procedures that Congress required to be followed, the appropriations that Congress ordered to be spent, and the separation of powers that every officer of our government has sworn to uphold. Accordingly, the Closure Order should be declared unlawful, and Defendants’ actions implementing that unlawful order should be vacated.”