State OKs $1.6 million for museum not for sale

The recession forced state lawmakers to slash more than $3 billion from budgets this year, but legislators were able to scrape together $1.6 million to buy and renovate the Albany Museum of Art.

Apparently the General Assembly didn’t see the “not for sale” sign on the property before approving the money in the state budget.

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The allocation has left museum officials befuddled.

“How does that get approved?” asked Charles Williams, a member of the museum board and an assistant arts professor at Albany State University.

Gov. Sonny Perdue included the purchase of the museum and land in the budget recommendation he gave legislators in January because it was on the Board of Regents’ priority list.

Two-year Darton College in Albany wanted to turn the property into faculty offices and space for arts programs, according to officials with the University System Board of Regents.

The talk in Albany was that the museum would move downtown.

However, the museum board voted during the session to stay put, Williams said.

While the General Assembly included the museum in the budget, it stripped out money to design an arts facility at Albany State University, the four-year college in town.

A spokesman for the Board of Regents said the University System didn’t know the museum wasn’t for sale when the General Assembly approved the 2010 budget on April 3. Neither did Perdue’s staff.

Williams raised the issue in a letter to the Albany Herald a few days after the session ended.

“If economic times are too tough to appropriate funds for a clearly laid out plan backed by the governor and Board of Regents, how is the imaginary purchase of a building approved?” Williams wrote. “If this is how things work, I am going to a bank to borrow a few million to buy Darton’s gym so I can open a spa.”

Bert Brantley, spokesman for Perdue, said the state could still try to negotiate a sale with the Museum of Art and lease it back to museum officials until they move. Or the state simply won’t sell the bonds approved to pay for the project.

Perdue is reviewing the $18.6 billion budget that lawmakers approved earlier this month, and he will decide whether to sign it by mid-May.