Mayor needs to get hands dirty in BPL upheaval

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s hands-off attitude toward the suspensions of three Boston Public Library managers won’t cut it.

Walsh should intervene to get to the bottom of the mini-scandal before it gets out of control or buried by BPL management. The public, which partly funds the library, deserves answers.

The BPL is run by a supposedly independent board of trustees but in fact it’s under control of the mayor — he appoints all the members. In past administrations, the BPL has been used as a patronage dumping ground.

So while Walsh may claim he has no power over the library and its investigation of the suspensions, he essentially controls it.

Walsh’s refusal to get involved in the suspensions of the three BPL employees is a stark contrast to how he reacted when valuable artworks were found missing from the library’s collection.

When the two art pieces — including a $30,000 Rembrandt etching and a $600,000 Albrecht Durer — went missing three years ago, Walsh, only a year into his first term, assumed a major role in trying to recover the missing objects. He was highly critical of BPL management and raised questions about the leadership of president Amy Ryan.

Walsh’s then-chief of staff Dan Koh appeared before the library’s board of directors and said the mayor was “gravely concerned about what happened and concerned that things are not being taken as seriously as they should be.”

Ryan resigned and even after the missing Rembrandt and Durer were found the next day, Walsh remained critical and did not ask her to reconsider her resignation.

The Walsh administration later commissioned an audit of the BPL, which found major problems with security at the library and the way its valuable pieces were being stored, noting they were exposed to “internal theft.” The audit also found management problems at the library.

“Defending against internal misconduct, if there was any, is a real challenge,” the chairman of the library’s board of trustees, Jeffrey Rudman, told the Boston Globe in 2016. “So of course, we want to do better.”

Well, it looks like the Boston Public Library isn’t doing much better now.

The suspensions of the three managers is a big deal, especially considering the past management issues at the library.

If a major city department faced the same problems as the BPL, Walsh presumably would be all over it. He couldn’t get away with trying to pretend he has no role.

That’s why it’s important he gets involved now. The library is a treasured public resource and should be treated like one — not with a hands-off approach.