The Lee County Board of Supervisors has decided to give the Lonesome Pine Regional Library two years’ notice, the step state law requires before a county can leave a regional library system. Supervisors who spoke in September said they support the library and want to reopen a contract they describe as dating from the 1970s.
County Administrator Clint Carter raised the subject at the board’s September 15 meeting, after what the minutes describe as talk on social media and in the newspaper by the Pennington Gap Town Council. The contract requires two years’ notice before a member withdraws, he said, and the board decided to give that notice so the next board would have the option to pull out.
Carter said he personally supports funding the library. With the county facing budget limits, he said, the notice simply creates an option.
“It needs to be renegotiated”
The other supervisors who spoke framed it the same way. Chairman Mike Kidwell said the notice gives the county a chance to renegotiate with every other county in the system, and that in his opinion the contract needs it. He put the county’s cost at around $280,000 a year.
Carter gave a lower figure for this year: just under $240,000, with the board choosing to keep funding level even though the library’s request may have been higher. The county’s adopted appropriations list $237,678 for the Lonesome Pine Regional Library in both 2025-26 and 2026-27, according to the June 29, 2026 minutes and the minutes from June 2025. The minutes do not explain the gap between the two officials’ figures.
Kidwell said other counties are also interested in renegotiating. Josh Flanary and D.D. Leonard each said they support the library but want the contract updated. Carter cautioned that state law sets some of the contract’s language, which makes renegotiating harder.
What the law requires
The rule is one sentence long. Under Virginia Code § 42.1-42, no county or city in a regional library system may withdraw without two years’ notice to the other members, unless those members consent. The section has been on the books since 1970.
The Lonesome Pine system serves Lee, Scott, Wise and Dickenson counties and the City of Norton. Its board of trustees is appointed by those governments, and Nancy Britton and Charlcia Jones are listed as Lee County’s trustees on the library’s board page. The board’s next meeting is set for November 5 at 1 p.m. at the Wise County Public Library, according to that page.
Lee County has been here before
This is not the first time Lee County has questioned its place in the system. A 1990 special report by the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “The Lonesome Pine Regional Library System,” records that Lee, Dickenson and Scott counties passed resolutions in September 1989 asking for an administrative audit and management review of the system.
That report also explains where the contract came from. Lee County joined the system in 1967, and the most recent agreement among the members dated from Scott County’s addition in March 1972, the report says. That fits the supervisors’ description of a contract from the 1970s.
The commission’s staff studied what leaving would cost. Based on 1989 finances, the report concluded that most member localities would lose significant resources if they left, and that replacing them would probably cost more than they were paying the system. It also cited a 1985 Attorney General’s opinion that books stay with a regional system unless the regional agreement provides otherwise. The Lonesome Pine agreement had no such provision at the time, the report noted.
Those findings are more than 35 years old, and the report does not say whether the agreement has been changed since. Still, they show what a renegotiation would have to work through: money, staff and who owns the books on the shelves.
At the Lee County branch
The library’s own records show ordinary business at the Lee County Public Library this year. According to the library board’s February 5, 2026 minutes, the most recent posted on its website as of October 21, Lee County had worked to fix some building issues at the branch, and Mountain Empire Older Citizens had asked to place a worker there for 30 hours a week through a program that helps seniors return to work. The same meeting approved the system’s proposed budget for 2026-27.
