Anyone who has followed Deena Hayes-Greene’s career over the years —whether as member of the Guilford County Board of Education or chair of Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Center and Museum–knows she is a master of spin.

Hayes-Greene channels that mastery in an op-ed in yesterday’s N&R proclaiming “history makes it clear that the founders have not benefited from the museum financially….. (y)et, in some people’s minds, dislike of them, in some perverse logic, equals mismanagement of the museum and its finances.”

Read the op-ed and you’ll see that it does no such thing, than claiming that museum founder Skip Alston wrote a $56,000 personal check to cover the remaining debt on the building:

When those two years were up, Alston wrote a personal check to cover the $56,000 that was still owed. Rather than take the first $56,000 raised by the museum as a repayment, Alston allowed that money instead to go toward operating expenses. He was repaid two years later and charged no interest.

As for the museum’s massive debt, Hayes-Greene writes:

To begin with, in no sense are tax credits used to finance the same as debt in the usual sense because the money advanced is never intended to be paid back. The money advanced is written off and taken as tax credits year by year. The museum is, therefore, is not in the amount of debt referenced in a recent News & Record headline, or as described by the mayor and used as rationale for a city takeover.

Anyone reading the 2012 audit of the museum’s finances would not come to that conclusion. The audit states clearly that the museum is $23.9 million in debt and factors in federal tax credits several pages later without explaining the tax credits’ impact on the debt.

Far as I can tell, the new market tax credits are plays for lenders to invest in risky development like civil rights museums in mid-size cities. Of course the risk is whether or not such an entity can keep its doors open for seven years. Whether or not the civil rights museum can do that without a city takeover is the issue here.

But what’s really laughable about Hayes-Greene’s op-ed is her defense of former executive director Lacy Ward, who canned back in November:

Finally, no one wanted Lacy Ward to succeed more than I. I worked to make him feel at home.
I drove him to appointments, double-dated with him and his wife, even packed her lunch several times when she had to go straight to work after visiting. My husband went to Ward’s apartment parking lot to replace his battery when his car broke down.

Wanting his success as badly as I did, why would I be a part of Ward’s termination unless what he had done was sufficient to warrant this action?

In spite of her professed desire for Ward’s success, Hayes-Greene offers no other reason why he was terminated. As critical as Hayes-Greene has been of the N&R’s reporting, here would be a good time to refute its recent article — citing anonymous sources— that Ward was canned for sexually harassing a female employee.

Stay tuned. Bottom line ids the museum’s financial situation is dire and it’s hard to see how it will keep the doors open on its on. But the public is growing impatient and a city takeover will not be received well.