In 2010, the Pennsylvania Auditor General expressed deep concerns over PHMC’s handling of artifacts.   The report’s opening letter to Gov Ed Rendell states, “Our auditors found an environment of lax oversight and accountability that is conducive to theft and potential fraud. Specifically, more than 1,800 artifacts could not be located and are considered missing. In addition, physical inventories are not conducted properly and routinely.”

If PHMCThe Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) is the state agency that stewards the U.S. Brig Niagara and Erie Maritime Museum. The PHMC is responsible for the collect... is lax in their own professional sphere, why should we trust them in maritime affairs? Why should we trust them with the operations and maintenance of the U.S. Brig Niagara? 

In reply to the Auditor General’s report, PHMC defended its practices and denied there was anything wrong with their management choices. Can we really expect them to be transparent and accountable to the public in their care of the U.S. Brig Niagara? 

Behaviors I witnessed while employed on site at the Erie Maritime MuseumThe Erie Maritime Museum (EMM) is a cultural institution located in Erie, Pennsylvania, dedicated to preserving and showcasing the region's maritime heritage. Established in 1997, ... from 2020 – 2022 suggest that things at PHMC haven’t changed much since that 2010 audit. In addition, since PHMC took complete responsibility for Niagara’s maintenance and operations in January of this year, it seems like we’re seeing more of the same behaviors. In January 2024, PHMC claimed by spring they’d have a Captain and shipwright hired, and would take the Brig for the Coast Guard’s mandatory spring shipyard. It is now October. PHMC has finally hired a Captain but no other positions. This summer the Coast Guard put Niagara into inactive status so now deck tours at the museum aren’t even allowed. In a press release and a local news article PHMC suggested shipyard would happen in August (another missed shipyard deadline), then said they would not be publishing a timeline for anticipated activities because this sort of thing is “too fluid,” and most recently announced they wouldn’t have the ship ready in time for Tall Ships Erie 2025 (one year from their announcement). In addition to concerns over ongoing delays, the Captain and crew are being interviewed and hired by the same PHMC staff who have created this mess over the past several decades, and more specifically, the mess of the past four years.  There are concerns about the hiring practices PHMC staff used for the Captain’s position. And furthermore, any newly hired mariners will report to and be supervised by these same PHMC staff responsible for the state we’re in now. So how much has really changed since this Auditor General’s Report?

This article is broken into two parts. The overarching question in both parts is whether PHMC’s management has improved since the Auditor General’s scathing 2010 report on their deficiencies handling state historical artifacts. Part 1 explores the findings in the Auditor General’s report, and provides examples of PHMC behaviors that I witnessed as a Flagship Niagara League (FNL) staff member, and how those behaviors are consistent with what the Auditor General’s report describes. Part 2 will dig deep into the people and culture: what’s happening now, which PHMC staff were involved (before and during) in the Auditor General’s investigation, how that relates to our concerns about the U.S. Brig Niagara, and finished with some of the most egregious excerpts from the Auditor General’s report.

The Auditor General’s Report:

The full PA Auditor General’s report is available on their website, or as a PDF at this link.  A Special Performance Audit of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission: Accountability of Historic Artifacts, released October 2010 by the Bureau of Departmental Audits.

The report’s opening letter to Gov Ed Rendell states:

“Our auditors found an environment of lax oversight and accountability that is conducive to theft and potential fraud. Specifically, more than 1,800 artifacts could not be located and are considered missing. In addition, physical inventories are not conducted properly and routinely. Collections Management, a section within the commission’s Bureau of the State Museum responsible for artifact accountability, lacks sufficient authority over the curators to ensure proper accountability of the artifacts. The manual card inventory needs to be replaced… Moreover, the commission’s organizational culture fails to stress the importance of artifact accountability and there is inadequate oversight of artifacts that are on loan.

“Additionally, our auditors found that the commission’s inadequate preservation and physical security of historic artifacts expose the artifacts to damage and potential theft… Furthermore, it is imperative that the commission undertake a more forward-looking approach to improve operations and ensure proper preservation of Pennsylvania’s historic past because the commission is faced with looming challenges such as reduced funding for operations, an increased volume of artifacts, with withholding of capital project funding, and the anticipated retirement of critical personnel.“

That is a pretty big indictment, and it strikes at the core of what the PA Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) exists to do.

The mission statement on PHMC’s website says: “As the state’s history agency, it is our mission to discover, protect and share Pennsylvania’s past, inspiring others to value and use our history in meaningful ways.” Artifacts and historic sites are the bedrock of their work.  It’s what enables the discovery and sharing components of their mission.  Artifacts are the tools used to inspire people and convey meaning.  And that’s what Auditor General’s Office was concerned about.

The Auditor General’s investigators consistently refers to PHMC, but the report is focused specifically on the Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums (BHSM) – the specific branch of PHMC that houses, cares for, and interprets artifacts.  The U.S. Brig Niagara and the Erie Maritime Museum fall within BHSM.

Is this still relevant?

The field work for this audit report took place in 2009 – a long time ago.  No organization is perfect, and audits exist to help us notice and correct issues.  But based on my experiences interacting with PHMC from 2020-2022 through the Erie Maritime Museum and the U.S. Brig Niagara, in my opinion I’d say the culture at PHMC is very much the same as it ever was, and that means their decisions and behaviors have probably remained consistent over time.  One reason is that the staffing at PHMC hasn’t changed much since that time, which we’ll explore in depth in Part 2 of this article.

The 2010 Auditor General’s report includes many eyebrow-raising issues. Commenting on all of them would be unwieldy. Below you will find two detailed examples of my personal experiences with PHMC’s recent management. At the end of Part 2 I will included a handful of other points from the Auditor General’s Report. But I encourage you to read the entire report. It’s very enlightening.

Why do I feel qualified to express these opinions? I had ample opportunity to observe PHMC’s management choices. From November 2020 – March 2021 I had almost daily business contact with PHMC staff. I served as the Flagship Niagara League’s (FNL) bookkeeper and interim museum store manager, both of which placed me onsite at the museum, interacting directly with Site Administrator Jim HallJames E. Hall is the Site Administrator for the Erie Maritime Museum and a PHMC staff member. He replaced Walter Rybka in December of 2020. His background includes 13 years with th..., other Maritime Museum staff, and volunteer museum docents on a frequent basis. My role also gave me frequent direct contact with FNL’s senior staff and some FNL board members. In addition, I lived onsite at the museum as a shipkeeper for the Lettie G. HowardThe Lettie G. Howard is a historic schooner currently operated by the Flagship Niagara League(FNL) in Erie and owned by the South Street Seaport Museum(SSSM) in New York City. Buil..., and was affected by a variety of aspects of PHMC management that a normal “9 to 5” worker would not have witnessed or experienced. From April 2022 – December 2022, I transferred to the ship-based side of FNL’s staff, during which time I was still affected by and aware of PHMC behaviors, though less directly impacted by them.

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AG Report: The lack of proper inventory processes and implementation

Anyone who has worked at any business that carries stock knows you need to have accurate counts of the products on hand, for both financial and customer fulfillment reasons. Museum artifacts should follow the same rules, but they don’t have the same pressures from disappointed customers and lost revenue as a business does. In fact, most museums don’t even list artifacts as financial assets. (The author Malcolm Gladwell has a fascinating podcast on this subject.) Ideally, museums are taking regular and adequate inventories because it supports their mission, and because they are committed to an ideal and are acting as stewards. Let’s see how PHMC’s Bureau of Historical Sites and Museums (BHSM) does at it…

The auditors note that: “Instead of using the inventory records to verify that the artifacts are physically present, Collections Management visits the sites and creates a detailed list of artifacts at the site and then will compare the artifact list to the cards in the manual card inventory system.” (page 12) The proper method would be the exact opposite: start with the collection list, then go to the site and ensure you have the physical item. The way PHMC was doing it (make a list of physical items present, then see if they are in the master inventory list later) only checks that the item is on the master list. If an item was never added to that master list, this method would correct that error, but only that error. On page 22 of the report the investigators said, “This method would never identify if an artifact is missing; it only determines whether a card exists.” It’s a faulty process that creates opportunity for things to go missing, without any reliable way to even notice they are gone. That should be a pretty basic part of their job.

Think about going to the grocery store with your grocery list. You cross items off your list as you put them in your cart, then after you get through the store you can clearly see that you forgot to grab the cereal (because it’s not crossed off). Imagine instead if you went to the grocery store and left your list at home. You put things in your cart and the receipt lists the items you purchased. Then when you go home you can cross check it against your list. Cross checking is not a big deal if you’ve got only 30 items on your list at home (oh darn, I forgot the paper towels). It’s a big project if you bought 200 items, but still doable. Now, imagine if you bought $1,000 worth of groceries. And instead of just a grocery list at home, it was an entire “life needs list” containing thousands of items, and it’s a mix of groceries, home goods, auto repairs, personal care items, medications, books you think you might like, clothing, etc. all mixed into one long list, in whatever order you happened to think of them when creating this ongoing list. How are you supposed to know if you missed something on your grocery trip? That was PHMC’s inventory process at the time of this audit. Like the example list of hodge-podge goods for all aspects of life, PHMC listed their artifacts by the date the item was entered into the collection. And… they aren’t even broken out by individual collection. On page 12 of the report: “The commission does not organize the manual card inventory system by collection at the State Museum; it organizes the card by the date of the item accession. As a result, the commission is unaware of what makes up a complete collection.” And because it was a card catalog (Yes! I said card catalog in 2009! Even in the 1990s my suburban library had a digital catalog.)… because it’s a card catalog they couldn’t just “sort” the list to see only the artifacts from one specific collection or location. A card catalog with what appears to be hundreds of thousands of cards, in date order. How are the curators supposed to compare their “grocery receipt” against this, and figure out whether they missed anything? That’s certainly how the Auditor General’s investigators felt about it.

PHMC’s recent inventory adventures

I find the 2010 report’s description of the inventory process particularly fascinating because of the PHMC-run inventory I got to witness in December 2021. PHMC sent two staff from the Drake’s Well Museum to Erie for “a general inventory of tangible assets now located at the site – without any favor or regard to “ownership” of the items.” Hmm… Isn’t that odd language to use… We were sent that information the morning their staff arrived to begin their inventory. (No advanced notice. Apparently they feared the Flagship Niagara League would be hustling things out of the building on them? Is that what they think partners who are deeply invested in caring for Niagara and all she stands for were likely to do? It gets used for the ships. What would we do with it elsewhere?) These PHMC staff, from a different historic site, were expected to make a full list of everything in the entire building, and on the ship. That seems like quite a daunting task. Especially because these people had no familiarity with maritime equipment. They had absolutely no idea what they were seeing. Did they just make things up? Did they just write “rope?” Black rope? Really thick rope? Very big pile of really thick rope? (Instead of a list like: # feet of 3/4” manila rope on a spool, # feet of anchor rode, Foresail halyard, etc.) These PHMC staff were housed in hotels for over a week, fed with per diem meals, and kept away from their families during the holidays (their first day of inventory was Monday, 12/20/21, and they were cranky about it!), and it took several days longer than PHMC anticipated to complete it (they were still working after the Christmas holiday).

Why was this something necessary to expend resources on? Why now? And why in this manner?

As mentioned above, Flagship Niagara League (FNL) staff, including those of us living onsite, were not notified of this onsite inventory by PHMC staff until the morning of their arrival. (Click here to see the full email notifying us.) They had access to all spaces except the Lettie G. Howard which is not Commonwealth property. I stumbled on the pair of PHMC inventory staff in the crew break room, taking photos of our well-worn dishes in the cabinets. Perplexed, I asked if they were counting the number of tampons in the restrooms as well. The male member of the team turned his head, looked at me, and matter-of-factly replied, “No. We’re not counting any consumables,” then returned to taking his photos. I knew the female member of the team, as she had been at the Maritime Museum a few times to lend assistance with PHMC’s new admissions ticketing software when reopening from covid that summer. She seemed relieved to tell me about this farce of an inventory. They had been given zero instructions beyond “inventory everything.” That’s it. Just “inventory everything.” They didn’t know what that meant. They didn’t know how to go about it. They have no idea what anything is. They came up with the idea of taking photographs themselves because they had no direction from their leadership. They didn’t want to be there, they didn’t want to be doing this, but that was the job. And they were making the best of it.

This is PHMC to a T: exquisite planning and execution, as usual! Seems like in late 2021 their management and operation of inventory methods weren’t all that different than they had been in 2009. Make a list of what you find and… do something with it?

FNL Executive Director Billy Sabatini asked for a copy of the final inventory. (Click here to see Sabatini’s email. Note: You can see that as of Tuesday 12/28/21 EMM Site Administrator Jim Hall says they are “still plugging away at it.” It took a long time to complete this asset inventory…) As far as I know, that final inventory list was never provided to FNL. Protect Brig Niagara received copies of these emails through one of our Right to KnowA Right to Know (RTK) request is a request for information from a state or local government body in Pennsylvania. You are allowed to request any kind of information, and aside from... Law requests. If PHMC ever did provide a final inventory to Sabatini, they either provided a paper copy or it was withheld from our request (which would have been improper as it wouldn’t fall under any of the protected categories of material). I would be surprised if PHMC ever ultimately provided the inventory list to FNL. It’s likely too embarrassing and barely usable, especially considering the wasted time and expenses of hosting their staff in Erie over the holidays, with no clear objectives or direction, instead of allowing them to spend that time with their families.

That seems to be how PHMC and their Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums (BHSM) manages things. When they say they have a plan, what they mean is they plucked two employees from another site, sent them to EMM and said “inventory everything.” That appeared to be the extent of their “planning” for this activity. And leadership expected it to take two days, not two weeks of hotels and per diems. BHSM leadership seemed to think their level of planning and resources was adequate to the task. And that the resources dedicated to it were a good investment. I assume their “inventory” ended up as an excel sheet listing things with vague names and counts, and a thumb drive filled with pictures to match up against the list of vague descriptions. Not very usable in any practical sense. And certainly not helpful in determining financial or replacement value for the enormous number of highly specialized materials and equipment for Niagara.

This is the sort of behavior that leads the volunteers to question PHMC’s ability to manage and operate the U.S. Brig Niagara. When PHMC says they have a plan, I want to see that plan. Because in my experience this is what their “planning” looks like.

For what purpose did PHMC leadership send these staff to make a list of things they didn’t have names for and couldn’t value? Why? What was their goal? Their intended use? I wonder what beneficial things PHMC has done with that inventory list since then? I mean, if they are in the business of accounting for objects, they must have had a plan for how this would be useful to them after recording it, right?

Let’s see if the Auditor General’s report can shed any light on that question…

“In other words, although Collections Management created a list of artifacts at a site (e.g., in 2004), Collections Management still has not taken the time to compare the artifact listing to the inventory records to determine if there are artifacts not recorded in inventory or if there are inventory records in which artifacts cannot be found. As a result, conducting a physical inventory in this manner is absolutely useless. Furthermore, given that it is the curators’ responsibility to resolve inventory discrepancies, the longer Collections Management waits to perform the justification, the longer it will be for the curators to investigate discrepancies. This lax accountability promotes an environment conducive to theft and potential fraud.” (page 14)

I guess… maybe they don’t have a plan for its use?…

PS – In Part 2 you will learn that Brenda Reigle, Director of BHSM from 2014 – 2021 (overseeing the entire bureau of historic sites), and Western Division Chief of BHSM from 2010 – 2014 (directly supervising EMM and Niagara), was made BHSM’s Eastern Regional Curator in 1993 and then Chief of Collections Care in 1999. She had leadership roles in Curation and Collections for 18 years leading up to and during this Auditor General investigation. Then, after this scathing report on those specific departments in 2010, she was placed in a leadership role overseeing sites like EMM and Niagara and finally put in charge of the entire Bureau. Yes, you read that correctly. A leader from the two departments vilified in this Auditor General’s report was chosen to lead the entire PHMC Bureau responsible for artifacts and their presentation. Charlie Fox, was a Site Administrator at the time of this 2010 report, managing a rural museum with a collection of buildings and artifacts and about to transfer to Site Administrator of a larger PHMC site. In 2014 when Reigle was promoted to BHSM Director, Fox replaced her as Western Division Chief (directly supervising EMM and Niagara), and reported to Reigle directly for six years till she retired, then continued to serve until his own retirement in October 2023. This odd inventory process I described at the Erie Maritime Museum took place in December 2021, nine months after Reigle retired and still in the prime of Charlie’s Fox’s direct supervision as Western Division Chief. The same people, operating as they had for decades. They were in BHSM leadership positions leading up to and during the Auditor General’s 2009-2010 investigation and reporting, and Reigle specifically spent almost 20 years in Curation and Collections leadership roles leading up to the report. Given this continuity of BHSM leadership staff, it’s not particularly surprising that their recent inventory management choices reflect the same kinds of issues decried in the Auditor General’s 2010 report.

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PHMC: on the cutting edge of technology

This item in the Auditor General’s report also caught my attention:

“In 2000, the commission purchased an electronic database system, known as Cuadra STAR (database). However, as of 2010, ten years later, the database is not complete, is not considered the official inventory system, and is not considered reliable by several curators. For example, one curator indicated that, of the 45,000 artifacts included in the database for his collection, only 200-300 were reliable.” (page 15)

On that same EMM/Niagara inventory visit I described in the previous section, the same visiting PHMC staff person also wanted to unburden about the chaos that was PHMC’s new admissions ticketing software, Recreation Dynamics (as seen in the photo above). In addition to her primary role at Drake’s Well, she was also involved in PHMC’s IT implementation and planning (which is why I knew her before this inventory visit). PHMC commissioned this new software during covid lockdown, so that all their sites would have a new admissions ticketing system when the sites reopened in 2021. Only… it wasn’t ready when they reopened. PHMC said over and over the BHSM sites wouldn’t reopen before late July 2021, then suddenly all sites were given five weeks notice before being required to open on April 30th. According to the associate agreement in force at the time, the Flagship Niagara League (FNL) was supposed to handle all admission ticket processing and payments for PHMC. However, one week before reopening to the public, Erie Maritime Museum Site Administrator Jim Hall sent FNL an email confirming that the system wasn’t ready and they weren’t sure when it would be ready. He said he was fine operating on a cash donation basis; however, we hadn’t received their cash handling policy either, despite our repeated requests. What’s more Hall had refused to allow us to see even a draft of his covid safety policy until April 15th. (That’s one week prior to this notification on ticketing, and only two weeks before opening to the public. ) Please recall, I was the interim museum store manager at this time, as well as FNL’s bookkeeper. I was trying to put together our own new policies and procedures for a store that had been closed for over a year, figure out staffing, coordinate our own new POS system… We bent over backwards to meet their deadlines, in spite of all their delayed information. We were ready. They were not. Six days before the opening, FNL had to send PHMC an email stating that if we didn’t receive software training and the cash handling policy by Wednesday, we wouldn’t be able to operate their admissions two days later for opening weekend on Friday, even on a cash basis. (Note in the email: Site Administrator Jim Hall cheerfully replies with thanks. Prior to this he used to ignore almost all of our communications, but it appeared that his leaders told him this was unacceptable and he needed to at least acknowledge receipt of our communications. Whether he followed up as promised was always a different story… It also highlights the tone-deafness and forced cheer he brought to interactions that had been basically stonewalling us for over a month.) We gave PHMC a lot of opportunity to solve this issue, but it got to a point where FNL had to protect itself from risk, especially in the context of all PHMC’s actions since summer 2020, which came to boiling point in April 2021. All in that one month, while trying to reopen the Museum and ship to the public, is when PHMC issued the cease and desist on Niagara’s cover removal after giving permission for it, canceled Niagara’s intended summer 2021 sailing season, misrepresented that situation in a press release, announced the Lettie G. Howard sailors could not live onsite days before they arrived… among other direct issues with Site Administrator Jim Hall). On that Tuesday morning (one day before our deadline for receiving the training and cash handling policy), EMM Site Administrator Jim Hall announced the museum staff would be running admissions themselves and wanted their starting cash from the safe.

The ticketing system was so buggy they couldn’t hand it over to FNL until mid-July. It took PHMC two and a half months after opening to stabilize it enough for us to even be trained! ( More of that good PHMC planning and execution… )

Eight months after the buggy software launch, during that December 2021 inventory farce, the visiting PHMC staff person told me that their IT planning group had finally been given permission to look for a new admissions system. She said it hasn’t functioned properly since it arrived. I replied that it seemed to be operating well on our end (FNL had been handling the Admissions entries since mid-July). She said that the user-end appeared to be working well but the back-end was an absolute mess. And every time they ask the developer to make changes, the developer wanted $10,000 to do it (if that’s an exaggeration, they were her words). Apparently this system relies on the manager of the system to have the ability to execute computer code, and no one within PHMC had that capacity. (More of that detail-oriented PHMC planning and foresight…) She said they’d been petitioning for months to get rid of this brand new system, and Harrisburg had finally given her team permission to go back to the drawing board and start looking for a brand new Admissions software system for all the PHMC sites.

This staff person said their goal was to get it installed before the next busy season (summer 2022), but clarified that the reality is that it probably wouldn’t happen until winter 2022-2023. She said they would have to limp along and live with bad data from all their sites until they would execute a better solution. Turns out, it’s taken then a bit longer than that (surprise, surprise…). At PHMC’s most recent commissioners meeting on September 19, 2024, PHMC Executive Director Andrea LoweryAndrea Lowery, serves as Executive Director and Chief of the Division of Architecture and Preservation for PHMC. said they were in the process of acquiring a new system that would encompass ticketing, sales, membership, allow a better view of visitation, and allow them to do better analysis of metrics. She referenced this as a goal outlined in the strategic plan. (The Commissioners voted to approve this new plan at their June 13, 2024 meeting but PHMC’s website still shows the 2021-2024 strategic plan. The old plan is a rather vague marketing piece and makes no explicit mention of better visitation data or analysis. I emailed Director Lowery’s assistant on September 25, 2024 asking for a copy of the new strategic plan that they approved four months ago, and have yet to receive any response of any kind.)

Presumably when PHMC chose to make this technology investment across all their sites in 2020/2021 they intended that it would be used for more than three years. Just to recap: in 2021 they implemented a new, very expensive ticketing system across all the BHSM sites with poor planning and a failure to investigate what was actually required to run the system and manage it. Eight months after deploying it (with horrible results and large additional expenses), PHMC gave their internal IT group permission to search for a replacement. And it’s taken them almost three years to announce they are procuring a new system.

Has the data been unreliable for the past four years? The same way they left that Quadra inventory technology from the Auditor General’s 2010 report languishing in unreliability for a decade? The ticketing system provides information on visitation numbers and admissions revenue. Can we trust the information they publish to the public and report to lawmakers? If their associate agreements denote that the associate groups staffing admissions receive a portion of the visitation income, were those payments accurate? Who is monitoring PHMC’s income/spending and verifying their reported data? What’s more, how much have they spent on ticketing software within a five year period? On the one hand, if it’s not working I’m glad they are correcting the problem. But it will have taken them four years to do so! And what an amazingly expensive mistake, especially with all the corrections and changes they had to request after it was up and running. How much did that cost the taxpayers? How much will this replacement cost the taxpayers? Will this ticketing system fare any better?

Looking at this Auditor General report, it doesn’t seem like PHMC’s handling of technology has changed significantly in the 11 years between the report’s investigation in 2009 and my firsthand experience with them in 2021. But in fact, that time period is much longer. The collections management software discussed in the Auditor General’s report was originally purchased in 2000, so it appears that PHMC has been behaving this way with their technology for over 20 years…

So tell me again… Why do we think PHMC is capable of caring for and operating a historic sailing vessel like Niagara?

Bonus story: In 2021 the Erie Maritime Museum (EMM) took all volunteer management tasks away from the Flagship Niagara League (FNL) and decided to run all volunteer management themselves. They refused to use the same system that the volunteers had been used to under FNL’s management. The Erie Maritime Museum bought themselves a new volunteer management software called Time Counts to schedule and track hours. It was onerous, confusing, and the volunteers (museum docents and ship volunteers) struggled to the point many refused to even use it. In order to get Niagara ready in time for fall shipyard, PHMC had to re-bestow permission on FNL to contact, schedule, and track ship volunteers directly because their own new system was so broken it was unusable. So PHMC seems to have these struggles with technology at the large scale and small scale.

Can PHMC change?

This report was released in 2010. It doesn’t appear to me that very much has changed since then. I am curious whether there has been any follow up by the Auditor General’s office to see whether PHMC has implemented the recommendations. Do they still have a culture of lax oversight and accountability in relation to their artifacts? Are there still turf wars between Collections Management and the individual curators? Do they now implement proper inventory procedures at appropriate intervals, and follow best practices that would reveal when items are missing? Do they still house artifacts in locations where they could easily be damaged (and have been damaged in the past)?

If those things were happening at facilities located in Harrisburg, right under the commission’s nose, I wonder how the facilities across the state have handled their collections? In spite of having what I’ve heard is the largest collection of maritime artifacts from the War of 1812, PHMC didn’t bother to invest in a professional curator for the Erie Maritime Museum until just this past winter. Prior to that the Erie Maritime Museum, with this rare collection, only had a volunteer curator. For much of the past, the Erie Maritime Museum only had two staff, while nearby Drake’s Well Museum has had seven staff for many years. So… why the sudden investment in the Erie Maritime Museum? Why now? If they didn’t like the way things in Erie were prior to this, why didn’t they make changes back then? Why did PHMC appear to ignore the Erie Maritime Museum and the U.S. Brig Niagara prior to 2020 when Captain Walter Rybka retired as EMM Site Administrator and FNL’s 10-year contract expired? (Remember, the Governor’s funding for Niagara’s refit was provided in 2014 and PHMC has deferred those projects ever since…)

Money Matters:

The Auditor General’s special performance audit took place in the shadow of budget cuts (aftermath of the 2008 global recession), but the investigators say that the concerns they raised in the report are not the result of sudden budget shortfalls, nor the exclusive fault of previous staff. According to the Auditor General’s investigators, these were long-established patterns of behavior and decision-making that the 2009 PHMC staff and leadership had allowed to continue.

This audit took place the same year that the operations for the U.S. Brig Niagara became the responsibility of the Flagship Niagara League (FNL). In the state budget shortfalls after the 2008 recession, PHMC planned to cease Niagara’s sailing for at least two years, but the Erie community rose up to demand that our ship sail. Volunteers and staff involved with the ship at that time have said that Brenda Reigle (who was in curation and collections for a decade leading up to and during this audit, then became Western Division Chief in 2010 supervising EMM and Niagara, and was Director of the entire Bureau in 2014) was from the beginning unhappy with the fact that PHMC no longer had full control of the Brig and its operations. That is hearsay (I didn’t experience it directly), but multiple people involved at the time have expressed that opinion.

PHMC claims that taking Niagara back in-house now will lead to more consistent and stable funding for the ship and her maintenance. However, their behavior over the past fourteen years doesn’t demonstrate any understanding or appreciation of what that entails. They’ve been sitting on millions of dollars to spend on Niagara since 2014 (under Brenda Reigle’s tenure as Director of the Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums (BHSM), as well as several years under current Director Melissa MannMelissa Mann serves as Director of the Bureau of Historic Sites & Museums for PHMC. Starting the role in 2021, she supervises 24 state-owned historic sites and museums along th...). They’ve deferred Niagara’s maintenance for over a decade, even though they’ve been made aware many times, including by external, uninterested parties, that as a ship ages her maintenance needs and expenses increase. Sadly, PHMC and the Department of General Services (DGS) twice attempted to implement those refit plans and failed!  The state excluded Captain Rybka and Captain SabatiniFleet Captain William "Billy" Sabatini is the executive director and fleet captain of the Flagship Niagara League. Sabatini grew up in southeastern Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and ... from any planning and arrangements (both times) and chose to do everything themselves, and look where it got them. In 2015 the state posted an RFP that no one in the maritime industry was capable of executing, and got zero responses. In 2018 they got one response which they chose not to accept.  So they’ve twice demonstrated they were incapable of executing their responsibilities for Niagara’s maintenance. Then in 2020, PHMC announced that they were deferring the refit project for another 3-5 years. Is that capable and responsible management?   Does that support their assertion that they’ll bring more consistent and stable funding?

In addition to their failures to execute the overdue maintenance that the Governor set aside  millions of dollars for, during those same fourteen years of FNL’s management of the ship, the state did not increase their contributions towards Niagara’s maintenance to keep up with inflation, cost of living, increases in materials and labor pricing, etc.  All of this suggests PHMC lacks an understanding of what is required to maintain an actively sailing historic vessel.  They chose to defer major maintenance for several years and rely entirely on a nonprofit partner to handle the increasing costs, at a time when the world’s expenses have changed dramatically.  If by “stable and consistent funding” you mean they consistently give a stable, limited amount that never increases regardless of need, then I guess that’s accurate. I think we deserve to ask PHMC why they deferred that required work.  I think we should also be curious about what will happen to Niagara if there’s another big recession?

Just to be extremely clear, I’m not stating that PHMC should not manage the vessel. Nor am I suggesting that FNL should. What I want is transparency and accountability. If PHMC is going to manage the vessel they need to do the job that the vessel and the citizens of the Commonwealth deserve. That’s all I’m asking for. However, I am deeply concerned because what we see in this 2010 Auditor General’s report is shoddy management of state artifacts – the fundamental basis of what PHMC exists to protect and present. What I saw as an FNL staff member from 2020 – 2022 was continued PHMC mismanagement, poor decision-making, terrible communication, an intense lack of planning, combined with defensive, autocratic, and at times vindictive behavior. If no one shines a light on these behaviors, and no one ever holds PHMC accountable for them, then the behaviors will never change, and the outcomes for our cultural heritage, artifacts, and objects of meaning like Niagara will suffer, degrade, and be lost to us as a result.

I’m only asking for PHMC to be held accountable for the promises they are making.

Deliver on your promises. Or face consequences, just like everyone else has to.

End of Part 1.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will look at PHMC’s current actions regarding Niagara, discuss which PHMC staff have been responsible for the decisions then and now (spoiler alert: it’s the same people), and a few of the most egregious issues called out in the 2010 Auditor General’s report.

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