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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, February 24, 2002

State art project nearly $2 million over budget

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

A proposed state Art Museum for downtown Honolulu, which just lost its executive director and four board members, is nearly $2 million over budget and a month and a half behind its October deadline, according to state officials.

The museum, developed as a showpiece of Gov. Ben Cayetano's administration, was originally budgeted at $3.25 million but the low bid for the project came in at $3.88 million. The price has risen to $4.67 million with another $500,000 budgeted for the upcoming fiscal year, putting the total at just more than $5 million.

"We're pretty deep in the hole, but we're cautiously optimistic everything will be finished on time," said Ron Yamakawa, interim executive director of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

The grand opening is set for Oct. 2.

Yamakawa said the historic site of the museum — the old downtown YMCA at the corner of Richards and Hotel streets — has posed numerous unexpected problems for construction crews.

"They discovered lead in there, that was a problem," Yamakawa said. "Water supply work for the sprinkler system was also complicated. They had to do work all the way out to Beretania Street for that."

Additional costs have been incurred to make the museum handicapped-accessible, Yamakawa said.

The museum galleries — two of them on the second floor — will showcase some 300 to 400 pieces of art from the state's far-flung collection of about 4,000 pieces.

In addition to money for the museum itself, the foundation is asking legislators for $985,000 to build and operate museum-related facilities on the first floor of the building. There are plans for a visitor information kiosk, a cafe and a gift shop on the first floor, but no money to build or operate them, Yamakawa said.

The cost overruns come at a time when the foundation and its board of directors are in disarray.

Yamakawa, who used to head the Art in Public Places program for the foundation, took over the head job Wednesday when the agency's governing board fired executive director David Farmer after Farmer refused a demand to resign. Farmer held the $71,000-a-year job for just under a year.

Four of nine members of the governing Commission on Culture and the Arts have resigned since December — including two last week who supported Farmer — leaving the board with the bare minimum number of members necessary to convene a meeting.

State Rep. Jerry Chang, D-2nd (S. Hilo), chairman of the House Tourism and Culture Committee, said he's planning to call various parties embroiled in the foundation controversies together for an oversight briefing.

Farmer said Friday that he was a victim of "three or four members of the staff who were resistant to change and from day one were unrelenting in their opposition to me."

In an interview, he said he's taking some time to "decompress" from the foundation job, adding that "it was a very toxic environment to work in." Farmer said he plans eventually to return to legal practice.

Museum problems and staff turnover are just part of the turmoil surrounding Farmer and the foundation.

Farmer is under an Ethics Commission investigation that was started after at least one person at the foundation complained that he was using state time and a state telephone to conduct private legal business. Farmer, an attorney, said he may have used his state phone inadvertently for personal purposes, but any legal business was performed on his own time.

Last week, Moya Davenport Grey, the head of the state Office of Information Practices, told The Advertiser that her agency is investigating charges that the minutes of the foundation board may have been purposely altered — a potential criminal offense.

The allegations of public record tampering come from Paula Helfrich, Big Island member of the Culture and Arts Commission.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the Office of Information Practices and other state agencies, Helfrich charged that minutes of at least three commission meetings last year have been "manipulated, altered and scripted to present a particular perspective with little basis of the facts of the event."

The changes, Helfrich alleged, concerned discussions of "policy governance ... legislative proposals ... progress on the state Art Museum, specific instructions to staff and other initiatives."

The same day Helfrich sent the letter, the state attorney general's office took control of tape recordings of board minutes, according to foundation staffers.

State law makes it a misdemeanor offense to create a false government record or to tamper with an accurate record. It's also illegal to present to a public official a record known to be false.

On Friday, Farmer denied any knowledge of record tampering.

"I can't figure out what (Helfrich) is talking about," he said.

Judy Hee, the foundation's executive secretary, said Friday that she knew of no deliberate or significant mistakes in the official board minutes she helped prepare.

Hee said she prepared draft copies of the minutes and sent them to Farmer for editing. He would then send the edited minutes back to her for typing and presentation to the board for approval, Hee said.

"I know that David does some editing, but I don't have a real deep interest in the details of that," she said.

But Hee said "I certainly would have noticed" if the minutes had been changed in such a way as to significantly misrepresent what actually happened at a meeting.

"I never noticed anything," she said.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2447