NORTHAMPTON — The Forbes Library board of trustees filed a complaint against the city on Friday, requesting a judge to declare that the library and its trustees exist separately from the city’s government.
The trustees claim they have operated independently since the library was established in the late 1800s.
The complaint filed in Hampshire Probate and Family Court claims that the current mayor, David J. Narkewicz, views the trustees as a governmental body and the library as a city department. The trustees disagree, citing the will of the late Charles Edwards Forbes, a former Northampton lawyer and state Supreme Judicial Court judge. The library was established under terms of his will.
“The current mayoral administration is trying to exercise control of areas committed to the trustees under the will of Charles E. Forbes,” said Eric Lucentini, a Northampton lawyer representing the trustees. “The trustees strongly disagree. The library exists as a matter of trust law under the will.”
The complaint claims that the city solicitor, Alan Seewald, urged state officials, including in the public records division and the office of the inspector general, to “adopt the city’s view” and deem the library a city department.
“In the interest of putting this matter to rest, the Trustees seek relief from this Court in the form of a declaration as to the rights and obligations of the parties, including specifically the status of the Trustees,” the complaint states.
Court records state that trustees seek “nothing more or less” than the ability to steward the library “unencumbered by political pressures.” Trustees worry that the city’s current administration is trying to alter the library’s relationship with the city in a way that could “substantially erode their ability to carry out their public trust function over the next hundred years and beyond.”
Narkewicz and Seewald were unavailable for comment Friday.
Elaine M. Reall is the only one of the seven library trustees who responded to a Gazette request for comment Friday. Reall, a lawyer at the same firm as Lucentini, said that the trustees had voted not to talk to the media about the complaint.
The Forbes Library and its trustees were established in 1876 by the will and created with a $220,00 fund following Forbes’ death in 1881.
“It has been my aim to place within the reach of the inhabitants of a town, in which I have lived long and pleasantly, the means of learning … and to enable them to judge the destiny of the race on scientific evidence, rather than on metaphysical evidence alone. The importance of the education of the people cannot be overrated,” Forbes wrote in his will.
The library on West Street operates as a nonprofit charitable organization directly overseen by Attorney General Maura Healey, according to Lucentini.
The library’s board of trustees was determined not subject to the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law in a 2007 decision by the Northwestern district attorney’s office which determined it is “not a part of government.”
Similarly, the state supervisor of records analyzed the structure of the board and the library and determined them “private entities, not subject to the public records law,” according to an opinion cited in the complaint.
“There was no legislative underpinning for the entities’ creation, as the Library and Board were created by Judge Forbes’ bequest. Running a library is not an essentially governmental function,” the supervisor of records’ opinion stated.
Despite the rulings, the board releases detailed annual reports of its meetings and more frequent reports at the request of the city as a condition of the will.