November 5, 2001
When you think "librarian," you might not think dynamic, crusading public official. Indeed, when you think "public official," you might not think dynamic or crusading.
Jacobs |
Not so, says Governing, a monthly magazine for the politically minded.
The Washington, D.C., magazine recently named Seattle City Librarian Deborah Jacobs one of the top public officials of the year. Jacobs is the first librarian to receive this national award, launched in 1994.
When Jacobs, the former director of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library in Oregon, took on the job as Seattle librarian in 1997, voters had just rejected a $155 million library bond issue that civic leaders hoped would be a centerpiece of the city's future.
Jacobs believed that Seattle residents had rebelled because they felt left out of the planning process, according to a profile in the November issue of Governing magazine. "She visited every corner of the city, held 100 meetings in three months -- and when she was finished, Seattle overwhelmingly approved a bond issue bigger than the one it had defeated," the article says.
Jacobs is leading Seattle Public Library's massive $235 million construction program, which includes a $159 million new central library designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas' firm OMA. The associate architect for the central library is LMN of Seattle.
Other winners of the award are: Idaho director of environmental quality Steve Allred; Michigan Gov. John Engler; Texas state Rep. Garnet Coleman; Maricopa County, Ariz., administrator David Smith; Boston Mayor Thomas Menino; Kentucky Chief Information Officer Aldona Valicenti; Kansas Insurance Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius; and Chicago Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg.
"These nine people found ways to innovate and to govern impressively at a time when skeptics were warning that large public institutions had grown unmanageable," said Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing.
More than 100 nominations for the award were submitted this year. The magazine's editors select the winners.
Sponsors of Governing's 2001 public-official-of-the-year awards are Microsoft, Compaq, PeopleSoft, ACS State and Local Solutions, and MasterCard.
Governing has a circulation of 85,000, according to Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.
It is published by Congressional Quarterly, a subsidiary of the Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg, Fla.
