A lawsuit is asking a judge to order that this historical marker honoring the life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a Concord native and labor leader who had been a member of the Communist Party of America, be put back up.
A lawsuit is asking a judge to order that this historical marker honoring the life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a Concord native and labor leader who had been a member of the Communist Party of America, be put back up.
A governor has the right to take down a historical marker, a state attorney told a judge Wednesday in a hearing over whether the state acted legally in removing a plaque honoring a national labor and Communist Party leader from the early 20th century.
“Is there any check on the governor’s ability to say, ‘You know, I’ve decided that a historical marker needs to be removed’?” Judge John Kissinger asked during a hearing in Merrimack County Superior Court.
“Politics,” answered attorney Michael DeGrandis, of the state Attorney General’s Office.
In May, Gov. Chris Sununu ordered the marker near the Concord birthplace of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn — known as the “Rebel Girl” — taken down after two Republican executive councilors objected to it.
DeGrandis said the commissioner whose department oversees decisions on historical markers serves “at the governor’s pleasure.”
The judge held a hearing to rule on the state’s request to dismiss a lawsuit on the grounds that two activists challenging the marker’s removal lacked legal standing to bring a court action.
Kissinger took the issue under advisement following the 30-minute hearing.
Andru Volinsky, a former Democratic executive councilor from Concord, brought the suit in August on behalf of historian Mary Lee Sargent of Bow and retired American Friends Services Committee Director Arnie Alpert of Canterbury, who organized a petition for the Flynn marker in 2019.
Those two sponsors should have standing partly because they arranged for the marker’s dedication last May 1, Volinsky said.
“They spent time, effort and organizational talent to arrange for the dedication,” Volinsky told the judge.
And taxpayers dollars were used: a couple thousand to fabricate the marker and additional funds for the Department of Transportation personnel to install it, he said.
“That expenditure has now been negated because the sign is locked away in someone’s closet at DOT,” Volinsky said
Under the judge’s questioning, Volinsky said he first would like Kissinger to rule that the two sponsors have standing for the case to proceed.
“And quite frankly, we would be tickled pink if your order says they (state employees) were wrong, period,” Volinsky said.
Volinsky hopes to later win an order to reinstate the marker.
“We’re a rule-of-law country and for the government to violate its own laws is wrong,” he said.
DeGrandis said the court can’t make an order against an executive agency when the agency’s decision is discretionary.
He said decisions on what is considered a historical event or figure “requires just a judgment call.”
