Gag order?

The Hood County Library Advisory Board could soon be disbanded, in part because its president has publicly criticized a county commissioner who said he has been “dissed” by the group but who also claims to support free speech.

Events this week could foreshadow ultimate victory over the board by Dave Eagle, who was recently elected to the Place 4 seat on the Commissioners Court and is former vice president of the now-defunct Hood County Tea Party.

Eagle has been a frequent and vocal critic of the volunteer board, ever since a controversy in the summer of 2015 over what many viewed as a censorship attempt. The situation involving tolerance-teaching children’s books made national news.

Two significant events involving the 13-member LAB and its possible fate happened on Tuesday. One incident involved the regular meeting of the Commissioners Court; the other, a meeting that night of the Republican Executive Committee.

At Commissioners Court, with LAB president Nancy Sutherland standing at the podium, Eagle spoke for 12 minutes, detailing – again – his issues with that group.

The reason the LAB was on the agenda was because the court was to vote on the group’s new bylaws, in which board members had incorporated modifications requested by the court.

During the 30-minute discussion, Eagle read aloud a resolution that he said the Republican Executive Committee was to vote on at its meeting that night. The resolution called for the LAB to be disbanded.

“Negative attacks in the media” was listed in the resolution. Other accusations included claims that the board “does not reflect the political will or the moral character of either the community or the Commissioners Court.”

The will of the community might be debatable.

At a standing-room-only three-hour Commissioners Court meeting in July of 2015, 42 people expressed their views at the podium about the books “My Princess Boy” and “This Day in June,” which explains the Gay Pride parade. Of that number, 31 favored leaving the books alone.

At Tuesday’s meeting, when the vote was taken to approve the LAB’s revised bylaws, Eagle voted “nay” and County Judge Ron Massingill abstained. The bylaws were approved with the votes of the other three commissioners.

In explaining why he abstained, Massingill said, “I want to see what the Republican Executive Committee does with their resolution.”

The resolution was adopted that night, according to newly appointed Republican party chair David Fischer, who authored it.

Sutherland feels sure she knows what will happen next.

She said she feels that Eagle will “absolutely” put a question of abolishing the LAB on an upcoming court agenda.

“He told the library director last year that he wanted to get rid of the LAB,” Sutherland said. “Since the judge abstained from the vote in court, that tells me he’s with them.”

Library Director Karen Rasco on Thursday confirmed to the HCN that Sutherland’s claim about Eagle having a goal to abolish the board was true.

“That’s been on his agenda,” Rasco said. “He came and told me that that’s what he wanted to do. Even before he took office, he relayed that to me.”

WHAT EAGLE SAID

Eagle’s comments during Tuesday’s Commissioners Court meeting included concerns and allegations about the LAB that he has expressed before, including his disagreement over the member selection process and his view that the board has allowed bias, discrimination and politicizing.

Even though it was recently agreed that all board applications will now go to the county judge’s office and then distributed to commissioners so that the court is aware of all who have applied before appointees are selected, Eagle was not appeased.

He stated that Library Foundation member Dominique Inge, acting on his behalf, recently requested a meeting between him and LAB representatives.

Eagle said that Inge reported back that he could speak at the next meeting of the LAB. That meeting occurred last week.

Eagle said that he showed up for the meeting with prepared comments expecting to speak but was “never asked a question.”

While detailing that situation, Eagle commented that it had “been in the newspaper” that “I’m a thorn in their side.” He said that during last week’s LAB meeting, some members “third-party dissed me, like I wasn’t even sitting there.”

“What can we do to put this to rest?” Eagle said. “This shouldn’t be such a big deal. All I want is a fair and unbiased process.”

Before reading the Republican group’s resolution, Eagle stated: “So what is all this really about? I will tell you what it is about. It is about control.”

He added that Sutherland was quoted in the HCN “saying that this is not a political proposition. And I’m here to tell you this is one of the most politically charged issues I’ve ever been involved with, and I’ve been involved with this for four years. I disagree with that statement that it’s not political. I think there is politics involved in this.”

The thing is, though, politics weren’t involved in the LAB before the summer of 2015, according to then-County Judge Darrell Cockerham.

Cockerham stated at that time that the Commissioners Court sometimes had trouble filling the LAB’s seats. He said that after the censorship controversy he received “10 to 15” emails from people asking to serve on the LAB.

The requests, he said, came from people who had opposed the books.

WHAT SUTHERLAND SAID

After listening to Eagle’s remarks and his reading of the resolution, Sutherland stated that she was “appalled” by the decree and viewed it as “a political statement.”

“I don’t know where half of that came from,” she said of the Republican group’s accusations.

She continued, “We have complied with what you all wanted. Your changes are all incorporated, so we are cooperating thoroughly and completely.”

Sutherland said she didn’t know where the criticisms were coming from “other than the fact that it goes back four years ago to trying to ban certain books. The Library Board stands up against that strongly. We support that the library is for everyone. That’s why no books should be banned.”

As for the incident involving Inge, Sutherland stated that she had discussed Eagle’s request with the LAB’s officers but they felt that “because the entire board had been attacked in Commissioners Court by Commissioner Eagle’s supporters that the entire board should be in on any discussion of peace.”

Sutherland said that the group was prepared to have the discussion that Eagle had requested.

“I was expecting a call that he wanted to be placed on the agenda,” she said. “I never got that call, or any communication.”

Six-year LAB member and 15-year library volunteer Martha Walker also spoke during the meeting. She said that she has listened to Eagle for the past several years “and his diatribes on the evils of the American Library Association and his insistence back in 2015 that we strike any association with the American Library Association and any acceptance of federal funding.”

Walker noted that while the Commissioners Court meeting was taking place, the Hood County Library was engaged in a federally funded “children’s services program.”

The discussion continued on for several more minutes, with disagreements about whether there had been calls to burn books back when the controversy was raging.

Precinct 1 Commissioner James Deaver, who was on the court in 2015, said that such statements were, in fact, made.

Walker said she has “extensive notes” from “town hall meetings” in which “books were requested to be not only banned but burned.”

Eagle insisted that such was never his position and that, although “one person or two” had commented about burning books, they had a right to their opinion. He said he is a “staunch proponent” of the First Amendment.

“Let’s talk about freedom of speech, let’s talk about freedom of information,” he said.

Sutherland said Wednesday that she feels the LAB is being punished for her having exercised her own right to free speech when she expressed her frustrations with Eagle to the HCN in April. “For someone who raves about how important transparency is, he sure does not like it when it involves him,” she said.