[MSN] Former Milwaukee Public Museum official charged with misconduct

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Former Milwaukee Public Museum official charged with misconduct 

(Published Thursday, October 12, 2006 10:54:21 AM CDT)

 
Associated Press

MILWAUKEE - A former Milwaukee Public Museum official was charged Wednesday
with criminal misconduct for helping run the museum into debt.

Terry Gaouette was the museum's top financial officer until he resigned in
April 2005. A month later, the museum laid off 56 employees and announced
that all but about $500,000 of its $4.7 million endowment had been spent.

A four-count felony complaint filed Wednesday by the Milwaukee County
district attorney's office accuses Gaouette of illegally transferring
endowment funds and falsifying records.

Gaouette, 50, of Greendale, has acknowledged transferring money from the
endowment but said he did so to keep the museum running.

Attorney Dean Strang, representing Gaouette, said even the complaint, while
alleging theft, acknowledged Gaouette did not get any financial benefit.

"Not a nickle here went to anything other than ordinary, reasonable expenses
of the museum," he said.

"Terry is being blamed alone for something that was not his doing and indeed
was not the doing of any single person," Strang said, adding it was "the
culmination of years of declining revenues and institutional problems
there."

The museum's financial problems came to light as county officials were about
to finalize a 20-year lease-and-management deal committing more than $70
million in taxpayer funds to the nonprofit group that operates the natural
and human history museum.

A county audit done last year found that former museum president Michael
Stafford ignored warnings that the museum was in financial trouble even as
it accumulated almost $29 million in debt.

The audit recommended the county consider selling some of the museum's 6.5
million artifacts to help get it back on solid financial ground.