When is the S.C. General Assembly going to fix the mess it’s made and stop undermining this county’s future?

Nearly 20 percent of all working-age adults in Union County are unemployed. They need all the help they can get to find a job. One place they’re turning is the Union County Carnegie Library. They’re using the library’s resources to look for jobs, job training programs and information on changing careers.

Then there’s the children and teenagers who use the library to continue their education after school. They’re using its resources for a homework assignments, school projects and term papers. Even when they’re just there for their own pleasure it’s still a learning experience because nothing stimulates a young mind like reading a book, regardless of whether it’s a hard copy or on-line.

Sometimes they’re using the computers to play games on-line but even that can stimulate their intellectual development.

Spartanburg Community College is working with LSP Automotive to provide the company’s employees with an apprenticeship program in mechatronics. The goal is to train multi-skilled technicians who can maintain the robots that build the automobile parts LSP makes for BMW.

Dave Just, vice president of corporate and community education for SCC, said these technicians use industrial computers to maintain and control those robots. They’re using the same high-end, problem-solving and analytical thinking used playing computer games.

So what we’ve got in Carnegie is an institution that’s not only helping unemployed adults try and find a job but also helping prepare their children and grandchildren to get good-paying jobs — as much as six figures a year according to Just — in the workplace of the 21st century. It’s a vital part of the intellectual infrastructure we need if Union County is to enjoy the success and prosperity that comes to communities able to attract the LSPs of the world.

Yet the library is in danger of being diminished just when we need it to be in full vigor because of the (in)actions of the General Assembly. During the economic summer, the legislature, like all fiscal grasshoppers, failed to prepare for the arrival of economic winter. But where Aesop’s grasshopper bore the consequences of his foolishness himself, the legislature is passing the cost of its folly onto the rest of the state.

Because they didn’t prepare for the future, the legislature has to cut the state budget and those cuts are falling especially hard on communities like Union County. Nowhere is that more apparent than at the library, where cuts in state assistance have forced cutbacks in purchases of new books and other materials and may soon force a drastic reduction in its operating hours. Just when Union County most needs the library’s resources and services we’re in danger of losing them because of a fiscal mess made in Columbia.

I’m not saying the legislature has completely ignored the library. When Carnegie was named America’s best small library, the legislature passed a resolution in its honor. Unfortunately, you can’t buy books, software or pay your staff or your utility bill with a resolution from the General Assembly.

The General Assembly could have honored the library by restoring its funding. Instead it engaged in feel good rhetoric while dumping the responsibility for the library’s future in Union County Council’s lap.

The General Assembly’s practice of making politically popular commitments in good times without taking steps to ensure it has the means to continue to meet them in bad times is no way to run a state. However, it’s an excellent way of crippling a local institution and the community it serves.