Museum Merger Foes Question Handouts

Opponents of the Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger are charging that trustees are “buying” support in an upcoming vote by issuing at least 100 free museum memberships.

Memberships in the new Orange County Museum of Art, usually $45 each, were given out free this week to about 100 employees of the O’Melvany & Meyers law firm in Newport Beach, which donated more than $100,000 worth of pro-bono work to the merger effort, museum officials said Friday.

Trustees also offered free memberships to employees of the Morrison & Foerster law firm in Irvine, which also performed merger-related pro-bono work. Museum officials had no estimate of how many were issued, but the firm has about 100 employees. Attorneys from each firm sit on the new museum’s board.

Free memberships are commonly given as appreciation for money or in-kind donations. Recently, Newport Harbor gave 20 free memberships to Allergan Inc. staffers, officials said, for a $5,000 donation from the company.

But opponents who have gone to court to block the week-old merger said the gifts are an attempt to buy members’ votes. On Aug. 5, members are scheduled to vote whether to reverse the merger and oust the Laguna museum’s 21 trustees.

“It is eminently unfair,” Belinda Blacketer, an attorney for the Motivated Museum Members opposition group, said Friday. “It creates an unequal playing field, because we don’t have the ability nor would we want to . . . hand out free voting rights.”

President Charles D. Martin said he was aware of the potential for the appearance of impropriety when trustees decided six weeks ago to offer the memberships, but said they “didn’t think about” making the memberships take effect after the vote.

“This would have been done with or without the [vote] because of the donations made,” he said, adding that the museum recently accepted about 600 memberships from merger opponents and others even though they paid only $35, the pre-merger cost. OCMA now has about 4,000 members.

Blacketer said the matter of memberships is among objections she plans to deliver at a preliminary hearing Thursday in Superior Court in Santa Ana, where her group will seek to undo the merger.

Opponents, who want the 78-year-old Laguna museum to remain autonomous, charge that trustees violated several regulations governing nonprofit organizations.

They charge that trustees didn’t identify the reportedly independent firm that counted merger ratification ballots cast in April, and that they denied the opponents’ request to observe a crucial vote count.

Martin has called these and all charges of illegality “unfounded.”