Feb/March 2006 RICHMOND, Va. - Buffeted by criticism over his leadership at the financially troubled Museum of the Confederacy, Executive Director S. Waite Rawls is hewing undeterred to his assertion that the museum must move or die.

"If we stay here and don't do anything different, we will not survive," said Rawls. "That is a harsh message that's been difficult for some people to swallow."

Rawls said the museum must leave its century-old location at 12th and Clay streets in downtown Richmond, where he blames encroachment by the high-rises of Virginia Commonwealth University and difficult street access for dwindling visitation.

But he has drawn back from his call to move the museum's adjacent historic building, the 1818 White House, home of Jefferson Davis. Overwhelming opposition means that the subject is "off the table" for months or possibly years, he acknowledged.

"We're still working on it," Rawls said, but the White House will not move "unless and until we achieve a public consensus."

Moving the museum alone, however, is "very seriously on the table," he said.

The disclosure of the museum's faltering finances, together with the relocation proposal, has prompted a wave of recriminations, including some from within. The former treasurer of the museum, David Rankin Jr., said in a letter to a state General Assembly subcommittee last fall that Rawls had been "deceitful," had "fabricated" income figures "out of thin air," and was spending money that the museum "could ill afford."

Rankin, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., resigned in September 2004. Rawls called his figures out of date and said, "Mr. Rankin is simply wrong in all of his charges."

But that hasn't lifted a cloud of concern that the museum was spending beyond its means. Museum member G. Ashleigh Moody III, whom Rawls described as a longtime museum gadfly, accused Rawls of attempting to shift the museum away from being a private nonprofit in order to "feed at the public trough" as a taxpayer-supported institution. Rawls denied the charge.

Moody also asserted that there had been "an exodus" from the museum's two-dozen-member board. "Nobody wants the smell on them," he said.

"It's a joke what they're trying to do," Moody said of Rawls' proposal to move the museum. "Mr. Rawls has done a good job of producing this gloom and doom scenario, but what they've got is a big spending program - spending beyond their means. They need to change their ways."

Rawls, who took the top post at the museum in January 2004, responded, "Any charges of flagrant spending currently are simply misinformed. It's been just as tight as can be."

The staff was cut 30 percent three years ago, and salaries for remaining employees are "the lowest in the city," he said. He declined to cite his own salary, but said it was in "the lowest quartile of my peer group" in the museum field.

Rawls noted that the museum has an annual independent audit, and said the auditor testified to the legislative subcommittee last year that things were "hunky-dory" at the museum, "and we run on a very lean basis." He noted that he was no stranger to financial matters, having served formerly as vice chairman of Continental Bank in Chicago, the country's 10th largest bank, and said he was "widely acknowledged" to be an expert in debt and risk management for financial institutions

Moody charged that nearly half the museum board had resigned or been "pushed out" in the last year or so. Rawls said, however, that Rankin was the only board member to leave due to concerns over finances.

He pointed to the roster of recently named board members, including historians Gary Gallagher and Irvin Jordan; John Nau III, chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; Ivor Massey, former chairman of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities; NASCAR entrepreneur John Hayes; and Wayne Sweezey, managing partner of Darby Dan Stables in Kentucky, who provided the museum more than $20,000 to restore its saddle collection.

"So you can see we've got quality people coming on board," Rawls said.

Critics also point to money spent on a fundraising consulting firm that did a feasibility study for a capital campaign to move the White House. The consultant cost more than $100,000, according to Rawls, but he asserted the study was "still useful" although any plans to carry it out have been scrapped for the present.

Rawls has turned his hopes to the General Assembly, which was poised to decide whether to support his request for $500,000 to tide the museum over for another year, plus $200,000 to fund a long-term strategic plan. The museum hired a lobbyist to press its case. Rawls said he was optimistic, given the positive recommendation by the subcommittee in November.

Meanwhile, Rawls said he is studying the idea of moving the museum and not the White House, including the issues of the additional staff and transportation costs for running a "split site." Critics who believe the museum should stay in downtown Richmond were not "dealing with reality," he said.

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