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This is not the column that outgoing Mayor Sylvester Turner wants me to write. He made that much clear on Saturday, minutes after stomping a gold-tipped shovel into a patch of Acres Homes dirt where the North Regional Library will eventually stand. He wants the shovels. The tour of Westbury’s new Dr. Shannon Walker Neighborhood Library we’d embark on a few hours later as the third stop on the day’s “Mayor’s Library Legacy Tour”. The positive spin. 

But in a bus tour orchestrated to promote the legacy Turner’s administration leaves behind on the Houston Public Library system, it’s important to contextualize the state of the Library — a “hostile” and “toxic” workplace, hemorrhaging employees as the greater library system is stripped of materials. My months-long investigation has revealed that library employees jump ship at twice the rate of the city’s other departments, and those who stay have been retaliated against for speaking out. As I asked Turner when he implored me to stick to the topic of the day: “Is that not part of your legacy?”

Last year, the Houston Public Library checked out 1,000 fewer items per day than in 2015, when Turner was first elected mayor, according to data from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. TSLAC data also shows the number of hours open each year has fallen by 34 percent, and visits have dropped by 66 percent. (No, those in-person visits aren’t made up for by website visits, which have plummeted by 2.6 million per year, or 36 percent. The statistics don’t include the library’s digital catalog or digital collection.)

Don’t focus on that, Turner told me. 

“This is my request: spend as much time on these things,” he said, referencing the divot of dirt he’d just upturned behind us with his ceremonial shovel, “as all those negative things that you write about.” 

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I understand his plea. I do. As someone with a deep love of reading, I want our city’s libraries to be celebrated as positive places where our community can learn and grow in a safe and sacred space. But we have strayed from that path. And getting back there will require a critical eye. The truth is the two new libraries on display Saturday will not make up for the 271,000 books that have been removed from the system since 2015. Ignoring that reality isn’t just focusing on the positive. It’s smoke and mirrors. And it has to stop. 

Turner is not the only city leader who has avoided tackling tough questions about the library head on. On Saturday, Dr. Rhea Lawson, the system’s executive director, physically dodged me at several points along the tour. When I approached Lawson at the day’s final stop in Westbury, she refused to look at me; instead, another library employee stepped between us. Every time I moved, the employee moved too, like a malfunctioning satellite resyncing its orbit. The employee told me Lawson was busy and wouldn’t answer questions. So I waited a few minutes and returned. By then, Lawson was standing behind a desk; still when I approached, the employee restarted her satellite game. 

“I am a journalist,” I reminded Lawson, as I attempted to ask questions inside a public building, during an event for which Lawson’s team had sent out media advisories. But the employee shielded Lawson as she backed away, and the library’s deputy assistant director of communications, LaDonna Weems, slid in beside me. 

“Dr. Lawson will not be taking questions today,” Weems told me. She noted that Lawson had not taken any questions from any reporters all day.

“LaDonna,” I said. “I’ve been the only reporter here.”

She nodded. 

This utter avoidance of engaging with the Houston Landing’s investigation into employee concerns about the library isn’t new. It’s been a well established pattern since I first began asking questions early this summer. In the last interview library leaders granted me — in July — Chief Operating Officer Ricardo Peralez blamed staff for misunderstanding a library policy about providing free cashless printing to those who could not pay. 

In reality, I already knew, Peralez and other library leaders had given staff clear guidance to direct such customers to print shops like Staples and FedEx, via a June 15 memo. When I pressed Peralez on this, I was met with, “I don’t know what memo you’re referencing, so I really can’t speak to it.”

I emailed him a copy of the memo. Despite my attempts at follow-up interviews, Peralez never responded. 

Since then, Library leaders have chosen not to answer my questions. In many cases, they have deflected standard questions and told me I must file public information requests for simple answers. It happened most recently on Monday: After four days of asking about the cost of the Library Legacy Tour bus, I was told to file a request for the information. That punts the date that I will receive an answer into 2024, well after I publish this column. 

It’s important to note that my editors and I have been pushing back on this heightened dependence on public records requests. And it’s also important to note that it has not stopped the Houston Landing from obtaining critical information. While I’m still awaiting the release of results from the city’s most recent employee engagement survey conducted this fall, I have obtained results via employees who have followed my reporting this year. 

Employee survey data presented at the library’s “holiday town hall” earlier this month shows that more than 30 percent of library workers do not “feel welcome” at work. (Weems, for her part, smiled and rebutted, “That tells me that 60 percent do feel welcome.”)

I’ve been told by several employees that the library is such an unwelcoming place to work that there has been an increase in the number of requests for time off citing mental health concerns over the past couple years. In a meeting last November between concerned library employees and Lawson, a recording of which I obtained via public records request, employees told Lawson about this point blank. And while the way FMLA requests are filed meant that public records requests to verify this assertion turned up blank, I’ve found a lot of supporting evidence. In addition to interviewing one such employee who took an extended leave due to mental health concerns that the employee says were “absolutely triggered by library leadership”, I ran an analysis of the number of employees out on FMLA at any given time. According to that analysis, the rate of library employees who have filed for FMLA in 2022 and 2023 is 29 percent higher than the rate for employees across all city departments. 

But back to that survey: More than 40 percent of library workers said it isn’t safe “to challenge the way things are done in my department,” and exactly 50 percent said “I believe the Executive Leaders in the City will take action on the results from this survey.”

None of this surprised me, given what I’ve learned these past several months. Honestly, what would surprise me at this point is an acknowledgment that the library system needs to address its issues, rather than shifting blame. In October, shortly after publishing my most recent library column, my email pinged with an influx of forwarded emails from library employees. Lawson had sent a note to the entire staff, decrying my columns, which she wrote “portray a negative and undeserved image of our entire department targeted specifically on the leadership of the Houston Public Library.”

The email went on to tell library workers that “you do not deserve this.”

And she was right. Library employees do not deserve to feel unwelcome at work. They do not deserve to be thrown under the bus when tough questions are directed at leaders. They do not deserve to feel as though they’re forced to quit their jobs. And they certainly do not deserve to be retaliated against for speaking out, as several have in recent months. 

They deserve solid leadership that doesn’t distract from the facts by waving shiny shovels. 

Mayor-elect John Whitmire said last week that my library coverage “made a huge impact” on him. 

“I don’t tolerate bullies,” said Whitmire, adding that he read the “articles about the employees that were unhappy and felt like they weren’t respected. We intend to address that sooner than later.”

Watch the first week, he said. 

I’m heartened by Whitmire’s response to our coverage. And I will, of course, be watching the first week — and the second, and the third. But it shouldn’t take the clean slate of a new mayor to fix this. We have a mayor who is fully capable, but who seems to prefer zipping around on a charter bus to control the narrative of his legacy. 

As Houston’s Vice Mayor Pro-tempore Martha Castex-Tatum told a grinning Turner from a microphone in front of the Dr. Shannon Walker Neighborhood Library on Saturday, “Legacy is not what you leave for people. It’s what you leave in people.”

Share your Houston stories with me. We can start on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you can email me at maggie@houstonlanding.org.

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Correction: A library spokesperson challenged the accuracy of several points in this column. The Landing takes accuracy seriously and corrects mistakes when they happen. 

A previous version of this column incorrectly stated how the mayor’s bus tour was funded. The spokesperson had previously stated in an email to the Landing that the library paid for the bus. After publication, the spokesperson later told the Landing that while the library paid for the bus, the funds originated from private sources.

This column has also been updated to reflect that Ricardo Peralez’s email address was not included in an email chain referenced in an earlier version of this column. Additional context has also been added to make clear that the drop in the number of visits to the library’s website does not include usage of the library’s digital catalog or digital collections.

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