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Citing a proposal they described as “anathema to community banks,” the Massachusetts Bankers Association and 40 other state banking trade groups have signed a joint letter opposing law professor Saule Omarova’s nomination to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The Independent Community Bankers of America sent the joint letter yesterday to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Development ahead of today’s hearing on Omarova’s nomination to become comptroller of the currency.

The ICBA and state trade groups noted in the letter that this is the first of President Joe Biden’s nominees that they have opposed, adding that the groups rarely oppose presidential nominees.

“Our opposition is based on a careful review of Professor Omarova’s record of published scholarship and public statements on the topic of American banking policy,” the letter said. “Her positions are alarming to community banks.”

If confirmed, Omarova would be the first woman and person of color to run the 158-year-old agency. But her nomination has drawn intense opposition from Republicans and the banking industry, with the criticism at times echoing the Red Scare that plagued the U.S. after World War II.

Omarova and her supporters say that, at best, her critics have unfairly mischaracterized her work in academia and, at worst, are conducting a smear campaign against a long-respected expert in financial regulation.

“I have been a critic of the big banks,” Omarova said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “Because I have seen how the 2008 financial crisis came to be and I don’t want that experience to be repeated.”

Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. She has worked primarily as a lawyer and, for the last several years, at Cornell University as a professor of law. Over the years she has testified numerous times as an expert witness on financial regulation. She worked briefly in the administration of President George W. Bush.

Republicans opposed to Omarova say their concerns lay primarily in her past writings and public comments. Last year, she published a paper arguing for an overhaul of the nation’s banking system that would expand the Federal Reserve’s role by allowing the central bank to hold consumer deposits. Proponents of such a move say the Fed could extend credit more quickly when needed to individual accounts during times of economic downturns. Following the Great Recession, banks hoarded deposits and did little lending to rebuild their balance sheets.

Omarova says the paper’s purpose was deliberately ambitious and broad-reaching, setting aside the political realities of the day. It was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, when trillions of dollars of government aid was going to Americans due to the financial repercussions of the pandemic. Her proposals require an act of Congress, she said.

“The purpose of that paper was basically to push the ongoing academic debate on how to make our financial system more accessible to all people,” she said.

The ICBA and state trade groups in their letter said Omarova’s proposal would relegated community banks to serving as representative offices for the Fed. They said the proposal, called “The People’s Ledger,” would make community banks dependent on the Federal Reserve for funding through the discount window. They added that funding would be subject to specified underwriting and other eligibility criteria, which “could easily lead to politization of credit allocation.”

“This proposal is anathema to community banks and would undermine the role they play in driving local economic activity and development,” the letter said. “The core mission of community banks is support for small business and households based on intimate knowledge of borrowers and their communities. We will strongly oppose policies and nominees that would undermine this mission.”

In addition to regulating large national and regional banks, the OCC also regulates community banks with national charters, including Arlington-based Leader Bank and The National Grand Bank of Marblehead, and federal savings associations, including Somerville-based Middlesex Federal Savings and Fitchburg-based Rollstone Bank & Trust.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.