A follow-up about reporting Employee Benefits on the Public Library
Annual Report.  I had the following question from a library director.
 
"What if benefits are not taken from the library's budget but from
another line (along with benefits from all town employees)in the Town
budget?"
 
According to the federal definition of Operating Expenditures, benefits
should be included (which I verified with a member of the SDC Steering
Committee).  See definition below. 

Operating Expenditures:  Operating expenditures are the current and
recurrent costs necessary to support the provision of library services.
Significant costs, especially benefits and salaries, that are paid by
other taxing agencies (government agencies with the authority to levy
taxes) "on behalf of" the library may be included if the information is
available to the reporting agency. Only such funds that are supported by
expenditure documents (such as invoices, contracts, payroll records,
etc.) at the point of disbursement should be included. Do not report the
value of free items as expenditures. Do not report estimated costs as
expenditures. Do not report capital expenditures under this category. 

Here's how my SDC friend from Wisconsin puts it:  "Since every employee
gets some level of benefits [Here he's referring to town employees.],
clearly $0 is not the correct answer.  The range of benefits as a
percent of salaries is pretty wide. To just arbitrarily pick a
percentage wouldn't seem right (although a minimum of 8% for social
security would seem the least that should be reported.) However, if the
library could get an average benefit percentage from the municipality
and library employees were treated the same as other employees, I would
be tempted to accept an estimate based on that percentage. As a side
note, if the benefits are included even though they are paid directly by
the supporting municipality, I have the library include a like amount as
income."

It would be nice if we could get the benefits problem cleared up.  I
realize there are some people who do not receive any benefits and
reporting zero is correct.  But last year out of 238 libraries who
reported salaries, 103 of them reported zero benefits.  I just want to
be sure, according to the federal data definitions, that all these 103
libraries should be reporting this way.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Thank you for your continued support.

Felicia

Felicia Kennedy
Maine State Library
64 State House Station
Augusta, ME  04333
(207) 287-5620 or 1-800-322-8899
fax:  (207) 287-5624
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