Yes, it’s true: the big day is finally here and at its 5 p.m. meeting Long Beach City Council will finally consider the first of two audits of Long Beach Museum of Art. (The second audit comes next month.)

And in case you’re wondering, the meeting will be in Council Chambers at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.

In this morning’s Press-Telegram, reporter Joe Stevens talks to some of the folks who were on deck when, as City Auditor Laura Doud writes in the museum audit, “The [Museum] Foundation inappropriately spent $1,588,000 of restricted Capital Campaign contributions on its daily business operations.”

That’s one of the audit’s major issues; because that nearly $1.6 million was spent on business operations, it can’t go toward retiring the $3,060,000 construction bond debt the museum incurred in 2000 when it had a new gallery built.

“At the heart of the struggles, former executive director Harold ‘Hal’ Nelson and members of the LBMA Foundation Board say they did not fully understand the museum’s financial problems and the misuse of funds Doud estimates at $1.5 million,” Stevens writes, and this is interesting because they were the very folks charged with running the museum.

The museum’s current Executive Director Ron Nelson said this to Stevens: “In hindsight, I certainly think that everyone would have probably had a lot of questions they could have asked and/or were asking themselves. But they never asked them to the proper person or at the right time.”

Stevens didn’t get an interview with former director Hal Nelson (no relation to Ron), who was fired by the Foundation in 2006 and is suing the Foundation, former Foundation board president Pamela Munzer and unnamed board members for breach of contract, wrongful termination, defamation and age discrimination.

But Stevens did talk extensively to attorney Nancy Bornn about her client Hal Nelson.

“I think the board used Hal as a scapegoat, and now the city is trying to do the same thing,” Bornn told Stevens. “The fact of it is that the board was just as apprised as Hal to what was happening financially. The board failed in its responsibilities.”

Wow! Then there’s this, from Stevens: “Bornn took exception to the fact that she and her client were not contacted by Doud, or her office, to contribute to the report.”

And this, from a real live Foundation board member: “Hal should not have done the things he was doing, and he should have done things he wasn’t,” said board member and artist Jim Morris.

Makes you wonder how it will all end up–how the City Council and city staffers will manage to handle that huge, looming deficit. That’s how Stevens’ story ends:

“But many say the new Nelson is the person needed to make a change.

” ‘I’m like Barack Obama,’ Ron Nelson said. ‘People aren’t quite sure where I’ve been, and they’re not quite sure what I’ve done. But the overall feeling is that we’re going to be all right.’ “

Tags: art museum audit, Barack Obama, California, Hal Nelson, Jim Morris, Joe Stevens, Laura Doud, Long Beach, long beach museum of art, Long Beach Museum of Art Audit, Nancy Bornn, press telegram, Ron Nelson, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas