This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 4, 2012 - Members of the board of the Zoo-Museum District who have been highly critical of operations at the Missouri History Museum say they have no confidence in a planned investigation into the possible destruction of documents related to the vacation days of museum President Robert Archibald.
And they have repeated their call for changes in governance at the museum before it receives any more of the public subsidy that makes up 70 percent of its $14 million annual budget.
Late last week, Raymond Stranghoener, who heads the board of trustees at the museum, announced that in response to allegations that museum documents had been improperly removed or destroyed -– allegations he called “unsubstantiated, baseless and contrary to the museum’s policies and operations” -– the board had retained former U.S. Attorney Edward Dowd to investigate the claims.
But Dowd’s connections to the museum, and Stranghoener’s statement that he already believes the claims to be untrue, riled the four Zoo-Museum District commissioners who have been pushing hard for reforms in the wake of reports about the museum’s purchase of land on Delmar and the amount of Archibald’s compensation.
Charles Valier, one of the four, said in an interview Monday that Dowd formerly was with the Bryan Cave law firm, which has long represented the museum. He also noted that Dowd has worked closely in the past with former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, who is a partner at Bryan Cave. Danforth was the negotiator who helped arrange changes in the governance agreement between the museum board and its subdistrict commissioners.
Pointing Strangehoener’s statement, and his earlier statements of support for Archibald, Valier said:
“They said here’s the conclusion of the investigation, and here’s where we stand vis-a-vis the subject of that investigation… . A person who has already prejudged how the investigation will come out has hired the investigator.
“Any attempt to have an independent investigation at this point is doomed.”
At issue is a payment to Archibald for what he said was 410 days of unused vacation -– a payment amounting to $566,827.83 that Stranghoener said last week would be made before the end of the year. He has said that the money would come not from taxpayer funds but from donations by private individuals.
Efforts to verify the claim that Archibald did not use the vacation days have been stymied, Valier said. He was told that the calendar software that the museum head had used before March 2010 was shut down and the server was destroyed last year as part of the museum’s recycling program.
But Valier and fellow commissioners Jerome Glick, Gloria Wessels and Robert Lowery Sr. said they have been told by current and former museum employees that documents have been shredded by Karen Goering, managing director of operations at the museum.
The commissioners said such allegations had been made anonymously because of what they said was a pervasive climate of concern that any negative information about the museum could have serious consequences.
“They’re all afraid,” Wessels said.
The four commissioners said in a statement that at least four employees have said that Goering and another employee have shredded documents and taken them out of the museum in violation of what was then museum policy -– a policy that was later changed so that it would not apply to Goering, Archibald or a couple of other employees.
The commissioners’ statement said they wanted Goering put on administrative leave and Archibald excluded from the upcoming investigation, except to the extent of determining his involvement in the possible destruction of documents.
“The violation of the museum’s security policy,” the statement said, “and then the alteration of the policy to cover up what appears to be the deliberate violation of that policy has created a toxic atmosphere among the employees in the museum…. This action by the chairman of the museum poisoned and chilled any future investigation.”
The commissioners acknowledged that they do not know whether documents were destroyed improperly and if so what information those documents may have contained.
“It could well be that this is all above board,” Valier said in the interview “But why were they doing it at a time when we were requesting documents from them?”
“The truth may never be known,” the commissioners’ statement said. “The documents have been destroyed. But hiring another former Bryan Cave lawyer to whitewash the History Museum is not an acceptable solution.”
In a separate statement, the four said that the situation involving Archibald’s payout for unused vacation is just the latest in a long list of what they consider to be problems with the governance of what is an institution that gets $10 million a year in public money and needs to operate with greater transparency.
Instead, they said, the museum has acted in a way that shows “a blatant disregard for the public, whose hard earned taxes support this institution, but all these actions are indicative of a breakdown in oversight by that very private corporate. Those are all decisions of a private, not a public corporation, that is unresponsive and non transparent to our taxpayers.”
Until the governance structure of the museum is changed, they said, “there can be no further tax support of that institution.” They said that they plan to act accordingly in the spring, when operating money for the museum is up for approval, and next summer, when the museum’s tax rate will be set.