A little more on Sit-In Movement Inc.
UPDATE: We've posted online the Oct. 24 letter from the nonprofit's outside accountant and the subsequent letter from the nonprofit's treasurer. Links can be found at the online version of the article, here.
A few tidbits I didn't have room to include in the print edition:
- When the state audits a grant recipient, auditors typically meet with the grant recipient afterward to go over questions and concerns before writing up the report. For whatever reason, that didn't happen in this case, and no one I've talked to so far can tell me why. Amelia Parker said the nonprofit sought a face-to-face meeting with auditors after it received a copy of Auditor Les Merritt's Sept. 29 letter to the Department of Cultural Resources, which originated the grant, but had been unable to get one scheduled before Merritt's letter was posted on the Web on Tuesday.
- This fact is particularly important in light of the fact that museum officials insist they have documentation for all expenses covered by the grant money. Because I have been denied access to the state's work papers (at least for now), I can't independently verify or disprove the museum's claim -- I'd have to know what the expenses the state thinks were undocumented were before I'd be able to determine whether the museum actually has documentation.
- I'm sure anyone looking at the state's letter online was particularly intrigued by the notion of "big-screen TVs." But, as Parker said, we're not talking about something you could go pick up at Best Buy. We're talking about plasma screens for interactive audio/video displays -- specialized equipment. It's being stored in Sit-In Movement Inc.'s current administrative offices, up Elm Street from the museum site. And, yes, the storage is climate-controlled.
- One other big-ticket item that was purchased in '04 when February 2005 was still the planned opening date was a quantity of structural steel for the building renovations. Richard "Skip" Moore, president of the Weaver Foundation, speculates that even with the cost of storing the steel offsite since its purchase, steel is so much more expensive now than it was in '04 that the museum might still be better off financially in this regard. Not having precise figures available, I don't know whether that's true, but it's a possibility I hadn't thought of.
I'm writing a story for the weekend that looks forward in light of Tuesday's defeat of bonds for the museum renovation. Any new information I gather about this audit in the course of writing that story, I'll try to include or else blog here. After that, I'm not sure whose coverage responsibility the museum will be.