Bishop Museum cuts staff in $2.2M fund loss

The Bishop Museum has laid off 13 administrative and management employees — or 6 percent of its workforce — after losing $2.2 million in federal funding.

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 area of the museum, although not every department, representing education, development, cultural resources and natural sciences," Collis said.

Overall operations and hours will not be altered, he said.

However, the museum will eliminate its regular public access to its library and archives for the next year while it experiments with appointment-only access and looks for better ways to make its collection available, Collis said.

One employee in the museum’s library and archives was laid off last week, Collis said.

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.

Following Obama’s address, U.S. Sen. Daniel Ino­uye — chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — pledged to ban earmarks for two years.

The loss of federal funding comes during a "difficult time, obviously, for the community and for nonprofits," Collis said.

"It was a lot to absorb in one gulp."