‘Gloves off baby!’: Messages between top TRL administrators stoke outrage
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 29, 2026
In the months since Timberland Regional Library (TRL) announced a $3.8 million budget deficit in January and made drastic moves to rectify its budget, current and former TRL staff, patrons and community members have publicly criticized TRL’s top administrators for their alleged roles in creating the budget crisis.
One top administrator in particular, Brenda Lane — who oversees TRL’s finance, operations, HR and creative services departments — has also been accused of mistreating TRL staff, mismanaging TRL’s finances and retaliating against those who criticized her.
Those accusations gained some credibility on Wednesday after disparaging messages between Lane and Finance Administrator Paige Preston about the TRL Board of Trustees, staff and patrons became public. The Daily World has learned from TRL Communications & Media Coordinator Anna Lisa Rasmussen that Lane is currently on leave.
The messages released on Wednesday, May 27, were part of a public records request made by Reddit user “throwaway-squirrel,” who has frequently criticized TRL in Reddit posts and comments in the months after TRL announced its $3.8 million budget deficit in January.
The user has indicated in posts that they are affiliated with the grassroots advocacy group Patron Coalition for Local Libraries.
The Reddit user made the public records request for administrative Teams chats with keywords including their name, Reddit, and more, for the days surrounding Feb. 10.
TRL had a special meeting on Feb. 10, during which Lane frequently interrupted public commenters to dispute their comments and claim that they were misinformed by the sources they cited in their comments, including The Chronicle.
At the time of the meeting, TRL had just announced its intention to lay off staff, and library workers union AFSCME Local 3758-B had called for an investigation into TRL’s leadership and finances.
The conversations posted online Wednesday included back-and-forth between Lane and Preston about the Feb. 10 meeting.
In her comments to Preston, Lane spoke negatively of TRL trustees, at one point saying that Thurston County representative Mary Beth Harrington needed to “stfu” and complaining about Lewis County representative Brian Mittge contacting the Washington state auditor about TRL’s budget.
Preston used the devil emoji in her message informing Lane that Mittge had contacted the auditor.
Lane replied, “I think we need to keep pushing him back down when he does things that can and will cause liability.”
In a later comment, Preston told Lane that someone had asked her “if I thought Brian was actively trying to dismantle this organization.”
Lane replied, “That is something we need to tell him that we have heard about him. Gloves off baby! I am ready to go back in.”
Preston later said that a list of questions Mittge had sent her about the budget “make me roll my eyes.”
Lane and Preston also disparaged public commenters, saying that members of the public and library staff “have no understanding of how libraries work” and alleging that “comments will be from people who are friends of the staff and don’t have the sense to not speak.”
Lane and Preston pointed out several specific public commenters to each other in the messages, commenting on their presence in the meeting, their comments and how the commenters were related to TRL.
In one message, Lane calls a public commenter “the craziest sounding person.” In another, Lane criticizes Mittge for inviting public dialogue, calling it a “huge mistake.”
One message, presumably referring to Mittge, from Lane reads “WTF is he doing? Yes, invite the crazies to the keep saying s–-. I guess we need to shore up our harassment and hostile work environment policies.”
Lane continues in a second message, “The ‘weeds’ is the public comments. It is what stops conversation and progress when we have to make everyone ‘feel’ better.”
Lane and Preston also spoke about possible retaliation against meeting participants for their comments during the meeting.
In one line of conversation, Lane confirms that one public commenter “is not an employee, her husband is.”
Preston replies, “But she is a patron.”
Lane replies, “Yes. And per my point, she is reading misinformation and social media attacking us, but me saying anything is disrespectful, unprofessional etc.”
Preston then writes, “Honestly I think we need to play hardball with this kind of behavior. We have patron behavioral expectations for a reason and she is really skirting that with personal attacks.”
They specifically called out community members who have been posting and interacting with forums on Reddit. In one message, Lane writes, “F— Reddit. They gotta spin it in a way to keep us the villains.”
She adds in a second message, “They are trying to do damage control because all of this information sounds reasonable and they don’t want that.”
In a later message, Lane referred to a comment posted by a community member online, saying “Putting it in writing doesn’t save her from a lawsuit.”
Preston replies, “That is true, but at least she has the common sense not to attack people personally in a recorded public meeting.”
Lane replies, “I can sue her for libel personally.”
In another message, Lane refers to an attempt to have the Board of Trustees trespass two members of the public from future meetings due to their comments online after the meeting.
Of library staff, Lane wrote, “We have really amazing staff. And we have really terrible staff that everyone is shoring up and funding with little or no return.”
In one comment, Lane refers to a library staffer and says “We hired this old f—!! What the hell was Holly (Paxson, HR staff) thinking?”
Lane and Preston also repeatedly blame the TRL Board of Trustees for causing the budget crisis, claiming their inaction brought TRL to this point.
In a comment about a future discussion with the board about a possible accountability audit, Preston said that she will “remind them that it was not poor decisions that got us here, it was inaction since 2018 that got us here.”
In one message, Preston said that “they,” most likely referring to the Board of Trustees, “literally do not care if we lay staff off. There’s no requirement to communicate that, they have no process, they literally do not care.”
In another message, Lane said that “the majority does not care” about layoffs and TRL’s budget situation.
In one message, Preston said the board has “been rubber stamping for decades.”
Lane replies, “We can’t make them more curious.”
In another message, Preston said she would have “stronger words” for the board the next day, Feb. 12, “about kicking the can down the road.”
Regarding concerns about union action, Preston said the union would likely claim bad faith negotiations, but said “there’s literally nothing that would come up in a PRR (public records request) to validate that.”
She elaborated in a second message, “Because I didn’t ring the alarm bell until the year ended, which is exactly what Eric (Lowell, finance consultant) said was the correct course of action.”
Lane replied, “That is 100% true. Since there was no plan. I mean, sh-–, we still don’t have one.”
When posting the documents they obtained in the public records request to Reddit, Reddit user “throwaway-squirrel” alleged that TRL attempted to block the public records request twice before releasing the documents to them on Wednesday, May 27.
The Reddit user posted a fraction of the messages online Wednesday, saying there were 50+ pages of documents released through the public records request.
“I just spent two hours combing through the 50+ pages I had trying to find screenshots that made sense to share without overloading on context and still had to keep whittling it down to get to the juiciest bits,” the Reddit user wrote in a comment to their original post.
The Thurston Chronicle has not been able to get in contact with the Reddit user for access to the full public records request.
The messages were referenced by public commenters who spoke at the Board of Trustees’ regular meeting the evening of on May 27, and received massive attention online the following day.
Preston has tendered her resignation, effective June 15.
When asked for comment about the released messages and for confirmation of Lane’s employment status, TRL Communications and Media Coordinator Anna Lisa Rasmussen said, “We are aware of the messages released through a public records request and are working through the appropriate process to address this serious matter. This is an evolving situation and involves personnel matters that we are unable to provide additional comment on at this time.”
The release of the messages come as TRL is reworking its entire administrative structure, under the leadership of Interim Executive Director Andrea Heisel.
At the time of former Executive Director Cheryl Heywood’s resignation in March, Heisel and Lane managed the majority of TRL’s 10 departments between them.
Heisel is restructuring TRL’s administrative structure to bring more people to the table, dividing up oversight of those seven departments to 10 administrators.
The positions will all be filled by current TRL employees, according to Heisel.
“These are folks that are already employed, existing, and now at the table with some shifting responsibilities and some salary changes,” Heisel said Wednesday.
The positions would be a public services director, two IT administrators, a collections services administrator, a finance administrator, a human resources administrator, an operations administrator, a communications marketing coordinator, a public information officer/clerk of the board, and a special projects coordinator,
The fleet, facilities and Anywhere Library departments are not affected by the administration restructuring.
The new public services director will also serve as deputy director, which Heisel said only means that that person will be in charge if the executive director is out of the office.
TRL is currently looking for an interim finance administrator to fill Preston’s position, according to Heisel.
