The Bishop Museum lost $2.2 million in Federal Funding this year, and then turned around and cut 13 jobs right away. The Museum has laid off 13 administrative and management employees. This was 6 percent of its workforce.
Bishop Museum had been performing very well through the early part of the year. Through January the museum’s financial performance was running ahead of its goal, but the loss of its federal earmarks “was a very large amount to lose at one time,” said Blair Collis, Bishop Museum president and chief executive officer.
“We’re ahead of our revenue goal for the year, which is great,” Collis said Tuesday. “But if we were to continue, we would have run negative. It’s frustrating because the staff has been doing such a fantastic job.”
The layoffs affected every part of the museum, as it was something that apparently had to be done.
The cuts are part of the $321 million in federal earmarks for Hawaii that were lost after President Barack Obama pledged in his 2011 State of the Union address to veto any bill containing earmarks, which are often characterized as pet projects by members of Congress to their home districts.
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