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Garfield County commissioners on Monday unanimously selected attorney and former Glenwood Springs City Council member Tony Hershey to represent the city on the public library board amid ongoing controversy over the selection process and whether book restrictions should be considered at the county’s six libraries.
The library seat has been open since Jan. 1 after Commissioners Tom Jankovsky and Mike Samson were unable to agree on whether to reappoint incumbent trustee Susan Use, a former librarian and teacher who served on the library board for the past four years, or another of the nine applicants. Instead, they reopened applications for the position and pushed a selection until after newly elected Commissioner Perry Will took office.
After the latest round of candidate interviews, conducted Feb. 27, the library board once again recommended that the commissioners reappoint Use out of the four recent applicants. Hershey received the next highest number of top-pick votes from trustees, and when discussing their top second choice, a majority selected Maureen Biermann, who helps manage the library at Colorado Mountain College’s Spring Valley campus.
Although Hershey’s last experience working directly with libraries was in high school, where he was a library aide, he’s a current and long-serving prosecutor with the district attorney’s office in Glenwood Springs and served on the Aspen City Council and, most recently, the Glenwood Springs City Council.
In 2023, he lost his reelection bid after denying calls for his resignation from fellow City Council members over a range of allegations, including unethical behavior during an executive session; creating a hostile work environment; and not fulfilling his role on the council. He sued the city of Glenwood Springs in November 2023 alleging that the council violated the open meetings law in how it handled the firing of a former city manager. A judge ruled in Hershey’s favor and required the city to turn over the recording from an executive session.
Asked by Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio about his controversial history, Hershey acknowledged his reputation as “a pot-stirrer,” but he said he sees value in speaking his mind.
“I raised issues that they didn’t like, so I’m not going to be silenced by either side on any issue. So, yeah, they did ask for me to resign, and I said, ‘No, thank you.’ And it was over,” Hershey said.
He added: “As an attorney, trust me, that's a different role than I have as a board member on the library board and as a city council person, which is, I think, a more political, you know, advocacy role than this one.”
During both Monday’s decision, which Hershey was not present for, and in his interview last month, the BOCC did not address the calls for him to resign or the lawsuit and complaints he has filed against the city of Glenwood Springs in recent years, but Will said he was impressed with Hershey’s interview for the library trustee position. Jankovsky agreed, highlighting Hershey’s background in government and law, along with a track record of voicing strong opinions.
“I think that we’ve seen that in where he stood when he was at city council and as a lawyer,” Jankovsky said at the meeting. “He’s promised to mediate and compromise as a fresh perspective, and he wanted to work together with the other board members.”
Although the commissioners thanked former trustee Use for her service, they also expressed disappointment that she and other members had not made certain changes in response to a citizens petition led by two local residents to restrict or remove books with parental advisory warnings.
“I wish the library board would have just met the desires of, I believe, the vast majority of people in this county concerning the issue at hand,” Samson said. “But they didn’t, and it came to a loggerhead, and now we’re here, and we’re making the decisions that we’re making.”
According to library district Executive Director Jamie LaRue, the libraries haven’t had any complaints from parents who have had an issue with their child trying to read or check out adult books, but the petition nonetheless prompted commissioners to take a more active role in the board appointment process.
The commissioners have also received a counterpetition from the citizen-led group Protect Our Garfield County Libraries. The group, which posits that the local controversy targets LGBTQ-related books and is fueled by a national book-banning effort, has been calling for the commissioners to reinstate the library board’s ability to lead the selection of its own members.
The issue has taken center stage during all four of the trustee appointments over the past year, including in the last round, in December, when commissioners chose local author Stephanie Hirsch over the library board’s recommendation to reappoint incumbent Carbondale trustee Jocelyn Durrance, who had worked at local libraries for decades.
During applicant interviews for the Glenwood Springs position last month, Hershey and the other three candidates were again asked to share their views on restricting kids’ access to books with mature content.
“Children shouldn’t have access to adult material — I think 99% of people can agree to that,” Hershey said during his interview Feb. 27. “But how do you do that without impeding other people’s rights to access the things that they want to do?”
Hershey made several suggestions to commissioners and the library board, including using technology to apply the same policies that libraries have for protecting kids from certain material on the internet, although he did not provide specifics about how such a system might work when it comes to books.
“We have adult sections, we have library staff, and I wish we had more, but that can ensure that books for adults are seen only by adults, and they’re not in the children's area,” Hershey said. “It’s also incumbent on parents and teachers who take their kids to the library to ensure the kid is not looking at things that aren’t appropriate.”
With Hershey’s appointment Monday, four of the seven trustees are newcomers to the library board, but he told commissioners and the library trustees that he hopes to bring a fresh perspective to ensure that the county’s libraries continue to thrive.
“I am not looking to go into this board and, like, set the place on fire. … My goal is to bring people together and resolve some of these issues. You know, let’s get to the bottom of what some people say is not an issue, and other people say is a big issue, and then let’s move forward,” Hershey told Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio. “I think the last thing we want to do is just fight and fight and fight and get nothing done and jeopardize funding and waste money and chase away staff or chase away users of the library.”
This story was produced through a social justice reporting collaboration between Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio, which is supported by the Aspen Daily News Journalism Fund.