Since the June 12 letter, two additional letters have passed between the parties and representatives of each side met in person once, although Driscoll described this meeting as only an “exploratory session” and said that there have yet to be any negotiations between the parties.

As a second strategy to defeat the bill, Casey said that Harvard is trying to show that the bill may have unintended harmful consequences.

“Many other non-profits are very concerned about this bill,” Casey said. He said that the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts has been active in lobbying against the legislation.

Yet Steven A. Tolman, a Democrat who represents Watertown in the Mass. Senate and introduced a version of the legislation in the Senate, said that such a bill was needed to protect the financial stability of small towns against wealthy non-profit institutions such as Harvard.

“This is the only solution to protect small towns,” Tolman said. “We want to make sure that we have a level playing field [with large non-profit institutions]. It’s only an issue of fairness; this is not anti-Harvard.”

While the impetus for the legislation was Harvard’s purchase of the Arsenal property, Kaprielian said that this legislation might be enacted even if Harvard and Watertown came to a settlement on the University’s future payment to the city.

“The horse is out of the barn,” Kaprielian said. “It is not an automatic right of a non-profit that an 1830 statute would not be tinkered with. I would solidly count [the 1830 exemption law] as an archaic statute.”

However, Casey said that he does not share this view of the exemption law, but instead sees it as an important precedent that the legislature should be reticent of breaking.

—Staff writer Daniel P. Mosteller can be reached at dmostell@fas.harvard.edu.