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Longtime Boston Public Library president Bernard Margolis, breaking his silence within hours of his ouster yesterday, lashed back at Mayor Thomas M. Menino, accusing him of an "anti-intellectual" bent that threatens the city's cherished library system with too much parochial politics and too little funding.
In an interview filled with both pride and frustration, Margolis recited a litany of what he considers Menino's transgressions. He accused the mayor of starving the city's 27 branch libraries of adequate funding and interfering with library operations. He said Menino runs the city as if it were an authoritarian state.
"I didn't think this was Venezuela," Margolis said.
Since Margolis, 59, took the helm of the library system in 1997, he asserted, Menino aides have directed him to hire certain people, ostensibly for political favors. He also said that the mayor rebuffed Margolis's effort this year to help stem youth violence over the summer by keeping neighborhood libraries open on Saturdays.
Margolis said he fears that articles from the library's treasured collection of historic documents may be sold off to satisfy the whims of City Hall. Margolis declined to say whether Menino or his aides asked him to sell any pieces, but said he was so worried that he pushed through state legislation last year to help protect them from sale.
Finally, he said, when he sought clarity from mayoral confidants on why Menino was trying to force him out, he was told: "The mayor is fixated on this. He hates you."
Menino declined to address Margolis's specific charges yesterday, saying, "I'm not getting involved in 'he said, she said.' "
"It's not about me, it's not about Bernie," said Menino. "My goal is to make this a better library system, a better library system than it is today."
He referred further questions to his aides, who portrayed Margolis as out of touch and overly concerned with academic considerations instead of service. Aides also directly contradicted Margolis, saying that the library president focused on the central library in the Back Bay, the crown jewel of the city's library system, at the expense of the branch libraries in the neighborhoods.
Judith Kurland, Menino's chief of staff, said Margolis, who was paid $167,000 last year, was treated just like every other department head, but that he expected to run the library as if it were a personal fiefdom.
"It's hubris and entitlement, thinking that he owns the job," she said. "Nobody owns the job."
The library's Board of Trustees, which is filled with Menino appointees, formally voted, 7 to 2, yesterday to remove Margolis.
Several high-profile members of Menino's administration have left in recent years, including Fire Commissioner Paul Christian, Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole, chief of staff Merita Hopkins and chief operating officer Dennis DiMarzio. Not all departed on the best of terms, but Margolis is the first to publicly criticize Menino on the way out.
In the interview yesterday, Margolis - fidgeting in a navy suit with a tie featuring shelves of red, yellow, and green books - recounted in detail several clashes with the mayor and the episodes that led up to his removal.
Margolis said he knew in May that his contract would not be renewed, when Kurland visited him at the library. After taking a tour and perusing 17th-century documents from the Bay Colony, she delivered the news.
"She said, 'I want to tell you that your contract will not be renewed when it's up next year,' " Margolis said. "She said, 'If the trustees don't go along with it, they will be removed.' "
Kurland confirmed that she had told Margolis his contract would not be renewed, but she denied that she had talked to him about replacing trustees not willing to go along. "What I said was, 'We do have the votes not to reappoint, if you want us to take a vote on it,' " Kurland said.
Margolis said he did not know the reason for the hatred that his sources described as Menino's motivation for ousting him. "It manifested pretty early in my tenure," he said.
During his first week on the job, Margolis said, he and Menino clashed on library Internet policies. Menino wanted software installed to filter out websites inappropriate for children, while Margolis worried about impeding public access to information. The decision was made to put filters on computers in children's areas and require parental consent forms for minors to use the Internet.
Relations have been chilly ever since, Margolis said.
Conversations directly with the mayor have been rare; Margolis said dictates have arrived through aides such as Kurland and sometimes in public announcements that Margolis said he wasn't aware of until reading about them in news reports. He gave as an example the city's decision to replace two branch libraries in East Boston with a single facility.
Margolis carried on running the library, buoyed by assurances from people close to the mayor that he wasn't being singled out and it wasn't personal, he said. But several months ago, something changed.
"This year it was, it seemed to me, a little different," Margolis said. "Things began to escalate in March."
That's when he went to City Hall with a proposed library budget for the next fiscal year, an annual rite that Margolis says is a "grueling experience designed to maximize embarrassment for everybody."
At the meeting, Menino denied funding for Margolis's proposal to keep branch libraries open on Saturdays during the summer, an effort to help stem youth violence.
According to Margolis, the mayor dismissed it in the "the most casual, offhanded way," saying, "Oh, those kids just want to be at the beach."
Menino also expressed frustration with comments Margolis had made to residents and community leaders disparaging City Hall, the library president said.
"He got very huffy with me and accused me of criticizing him," Margolis said. "He accused me of telling other people the library didn't have enough money."
Margolis said he is speaking publicly about what happened because he wants to "open the door" to public discussion about the library and what services it should provide.
"My record speaks for itself," he said.
Since Margolis took over in 1997, the library has increased circulation of its collection from 2.2 million items per year to 2.8 million. He has overseen the creation of local history centers in eight branch libraries, homework assistance programs in all branches, the expansion of a higher-education information program to four branches, and the development of a collection preservation program.
At the same time, city funding of the library has increased an average of only 0.26 percent per year since 2000, from $28.1 million to $28.8 million. Margolis said full-time staff positions have been cut from 603 in 2002 to 483 in 2007, with only four of those jobs lost from the branch libraries.
A 2006 report from the Boston Public Library Foundation ranked the Boston system near the top among all libraries in per capita budget, branch density, and the number of books per residents. But the report put Boston only at 59th out of 77 urban library systems in terms of circulation.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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