It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a local blog has scooped the Richmond Times-Dispatch on a news story. Still, the lag time on this one is completely ridiculous.
According to the RTD today [emphasis mine]:
The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation says former executive Brad Armstrong did take a pay cut in 2005, despite what the organization’s latest tax return shows.
Foundation officials say his salary was misstated in the tax return and will be corrected with the Internal Revenue Service.
“What we have here is a clerical mistake, where an informational form was filled out and that form is being amended to reflect the reduction in compensation,” said J. Robert Mooney, a foundation board member and its former executive director.
The foundation is working with the city of Richmond to develop a performing arts center in downtown.
The foundation’s latest form 990, filed in February, says Armstrong was paid $137,500 as president and chief executive officer from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006.
Armstrong resigned Dec. 31, 2005, after Mayor L. Douglas Wilder had spent months criticizing the project’s management and expenses, particularly Armstrong’s $275,000 salary.
In the fall of 2005, at the height of the blasts, Armstrong voluntarily cut his pay to $175,000, foundation officials said at the time.
Because $137,500 is half of $275,000, the tax form suggests Armstrong’s salary didn’t change.
Of course, Save Richmond readers — and the VAPAF — knew the details behind Brad Armstrong’s “phantom” pay cut eighteen months ago. Way back in December 2005, our very own “Eagle Eyes” reported that the figures weren’t adding up:
Through documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, it appears that Brad, Jim & Co. are still up to their same naughty games.
Despite the public pronouncement above, it appears that Brad was paid far in excess of an annualized $175,000 for at least several months thereafter. For those paid twice per month (as looks to be the case with VAPAF employees), an annual salary of $175,000 would work out to about $7,291.67 per paycheck. Bank statements obtained from the Department of Historic Resources indicate he was paid between $11,881 and $11,193 per paycheck (or approximately $277,000 annualized) in the months before the announced pay cut. These records show that in the months following the pay cut announcement he was paid the following sums:
September 14, 2005 - $11,193.25
September 29, 2005 - $11,012.13
$266,464.56 annualized for SeptemberOctober 13, 2005 - $10,563.11
October 28, 2005 - $12,127.41
$272,286.24 annualized for OctoberNovember 16, 2005 - $8,901.11
November 30, 2005 - $8,901.07
$213,626.16 annualized for November
Yes, it’s just a “clerical mistake.” One that was repeated several times, over and over, on many different statements. One that was made despite Save Richmond’s reporting of the “clerical mistake” back in late 2005 — a period of time when at least one of VAPAF’s highest rollers claimed to be an interested follower of certain critical local blogs.
How many of these “clerical” mistakes have we seen come out of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation again?
And how many millions are we about to hand over to them, with little oversight, again?
Of course, the bigger story here — the one that the newspaper decided was not worth your attention — is that these tax documents definitively show that the public-private partnership never had more than a few million in the bank at a time when it was claiming publicly to have “raised” $68 million. I’ll leave it up to your imaginations why this might be just a wee bit pertinent as these folks continue to insist that they have “raised” oodles of private money this time around.
The curiously out-of-date (and incomplete) revelations in today’s article do beg the question: What kind of “clerical mistakes” would a reporter find if he persued more recent financial records from the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation? Like, say, a detailed, projected CenterStage cash flow statement from May 2007. Something like that.
You read that right: It’s Freedom of Information Act time again. Stay tuned next week when this blog will — once again — break news that you’ll read about in the daily paper two years from now.