Museum Funds Given to Private Group, State Finds

A state audit has found that employees of the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park deposited payments belonging to the state into the accounts of a private foundation controlled by the museum’s director, Aurelia Brooks.

The official who released the audit, John P. Waraas, deputy secretary of state and consumer services, said Thursday that the California Afro-American Museum Foundation will be required to repay the money to the state after it is determined how much is involved.

The audit follows disclosures in The Times on Oct. 19 that the foundation, a nonprofit organization that Brooks heads, had collected at least $30,000 in payments apparently belonging to the state.

According to documents obtained by The Times, the state funds deposited into the foundation included at least $20,000 in rental fees for the use of traveling exhibits and educational films produced by museum staff and at least $10,000 in rent from outside organizations that used museum facilities. An unknown amount in attendance fees for museum-run workshops was also deposited into foundation accounts.

Brooks has said her foundation was entitled to some of those payments because it helped fund the activities that raised the money. But the audit concluded that the foundation’s help did not entitle it to a share of the money.

The audit, dated Jan. 19 but released eight days later, also found that state employees had worked for Brooks’ foundation on state time and that on at least three occasions the museum had overpaid its contractors by as much as $2,300. Waraas, however, said he was unable to detail the scope of that work by employees or name the contractors involved and the total amount of the overpayments.

He said further details would be forthcoming.

While the audit found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing, Waraas said that fiscal procedures at the museum will be tightened and that an outside accountant will be hired “to provide additional expertise” to Afro-American and its affiliated museum, the California Museum of Science and Industry.

Administrative Problems

“They’ve had some administrative problems, there’s no denying that,” Waraas said. “But we didn’t find any (improper) activity that wasn’t centered on any (misunderstandings of) procedures or policies.”

Brooks said the audit “shows that the museum was moving along in a manner which was correct,” adding that “there are procedural problems (here). There are times when you make a mistake and you don’t know it until someone flags it.”

But the museum’s administrative officer, Fred E. Washington Jr., criticized the five-page audit as “almost a cover-up. I’ve seen this too many times before,” he said, referring to previous audits of the museum by the state Finance Department in 1985 and the Internal Revenue Service in 1987.

Washington, who has taken a leave of absence from the museum, has been publicly feuding with Brooks over charges of mismanagement at the museum.

The findings of the latest audit parallel some conclusions in the Finance Department’s 1985 audit of both the Afro-American and Science and Industry museums. That audit criticized Afro-American’s purchasing methods and the informality of the relationship between the museum and its foundation, which then freely used state resources as its own.

That audit led to the adoption in 1985 of a formal contract between the museum and its foundation, but Brooks has admitted that key provisions of the document were not followed.

The most recent audit also criticizes the museum-foundation relationship, and Waraas said that a new procedural manual will be written to further clarify that relationship.

The IRS audit determined that in 1984-85 the museum had failed to pay withholding taxes for 11 employees. The museum was forced to pay a settlement of $6,000, after state negotiators reduced the IRS demand of $30,000 in back taxes.