The BPL’s dirty laundry

The Boston Public Library has quietly settled litigation with a lawyer-lobbyist who the library alleged was secretly paid by its former president for doing no work. The settlement offers few details, but a deposition taken as part of the case offers some of the back story.

Records indicate the BPL agreed in September to pay $16,001 to lobbyist Maryanne Lewis in return for dropping a lawsuit seeking $32,000 she says she was owed under a contract negotiated with the library’s former president, Bernard Margolis. In return, Lewis agreed to pay the library $1 for dropping a countersuit seeking $138,000 — the $46,000 Lewis had already been paid plus another $92,000 in damages.

Neither party admitted wrongdoing. Lewis, a former state representative who ran unsuccessfully as an independent for Congress in the 10th district this fall, declined comment, as did BPL spokeswoman Gina Perille. Margolis, who is now the state librarian in New York, is on medical leave and was not available for comment. CommonWealth first reported on the lawsuit back in April.

The story would have ended with the settlement but for a public records request to the City of Boston, which turned up a June 15 deposition of Jeffrey Rudman, chairman of the library’s board of trustees. (No deposition of Lewis was apparently taken.) The Rudman deposition provides a glimpse into some of the intrigue going on at the BPL before and after the ouster of Margolis in November 2007 after a nasty rift with Mayor Thomas Menino.

Margolis, who had been the BPL president for 10 years, was accused by the mayor of focusing too much attention and resources on the flagship Copley Square library at the expense of neighborhood branches. The deposition, conducted by Lewis’s attorney, Glenn Hannington, is surfacing as the BPL is considering closing four neighborhood branches.

In his deposition, Rudman alleged that “Mr. Margolis in effect created slush funds using donor funds.” He also said: “Because of the way Mr. Margolis mishandled money, he may have paid for this [the Lewis] contract with money that should not have been used for this purpose.”

BPL trustees apparently learned of the payments to Lewis sometime in the spring of 2009 – about three years after they had begun — and then moved to halt them. In a Sept. 24, 2009 letter to Lewis that surfaced in connection with the original lawsuits, Ruth Kowal, BPL’s administration and finance director, said the trustees never authorized any contracts with Lewis nor any payments to her, and were not aware of any services she had rendered to justify the payments.

Lewis never registered as a lobbyist for the BPL. She told Kowal she didn’t need to register because she was registered to represent the Massachusetts Library Association, of which the BPL is a member. It’s unclear whether that’s legal, since lobbyists are generally required to identify the specific clients paying them.

In his deposition, Rudman said Margolis had been gone from the library for some time before Lewis contacted the library “saying that she wants more money” for her services.

Rudman said he asked Kowal to sit down with Lewis to see if she could determine what services the lobbyist rendered to the library. “It was reported to me that Ms. Lewis could not offer anything specific or coherent,” he said. “She was described as being ‘all over the place.'” Rudman said he then suggested that Lewis prepare a memorandum to document her work, but he said he was told she declined to do it.

At one point during the deposition, Rudman disagreed emphatically when it was suggested any problem with the contract was due to Margolis and not Lewis. “One, she’s not getting paid because she didn’t render any service, OK?” he said. “Two, she’s not getting paid because if she rendered service, she won’t tell us about it. Three, she’s not getting paid because the contract’s unlawful.”

Rudman then suggested a fourth reason – that Lewis was not in the dark about what Margolis was doing because she would have gained knowledge of his actions through Rep. Angelo Scaccia of Hyde Park, a former member of the BPL board. Rudman said he had seen Lewis and Scaccia together at some library events and been told by Kowal that the two of them were very friendly. Lewis and Scaccia served in the House together as well.

Rudman said one cannot “pretend that Ms. Lewis did not have as much insight or more insight into how Mr. Margolis was handling money than I did because there is one person on that Board of Trustees in whom Mr. Margolis confided deeply, and that was Angelo Scaccia, the only member of the board aside from [William] Bulger . . . to vote to keep him, and the only member of the board who argued tooth and nail. . . for a severance package for Mr. Margolis. And he, Mr. Scaccia, knew because he blurted it out at that May 2008 trustee meeting that Mr. Margolis did have monies in boxes where they did not belong.”

Scaccia did not respond to requests for comment.

Rudman dismissed a suggestion that Lewis was the victim of guilt by association with Scaccia. “She may be guilty, but it’s not by virtue of association,” he said. “This contract shouts the corruption in my view that is part of the State House process.” He later said the contract “stinks to high heaven.”

There is another connection between Scaccia and Lewis, which is not mentioned in the deposition. In August 2008, Scaccia held up action on a bill that would have granted a liquor license to the town of Westwood for a proposed supermarket. Scaccia – who represents Hyde Park, not Westwood – said at the time that he blocked action on the bill because the new supermarket would hurt an existing Roche Bros. market in the town. Lewis represented Roche Bros. as a lobbyist at the time.

Rudman conceded he never asked Margolis about the Lewis contract. “Mr. Margolis and I don’t talk to each other. He’s very angry with me,” he said. When pressed further, Rudman said he didn’t ask Margolis “because I don’t think he’d give us a straight answer.”

Rudman stressed, however, that the former BPL president did not use any library funds for his own enrichment. “I allege no misappropriation personally, but it was a violation of trust, a breach of trust,” he said. Rudman went on to say that Margolis “governed behind my back. I learned about things through the back door that I should have learned about at the front door.”