Smithsonian Documents Detail Chief's Expenses

The 17-member Board of Regents, which hires and oversees the secretary, in January dismissed the findings of the inspector general and defended most of Small's expenses, including those for his office and home, as "reasonable." After the Post report, the regents met again on Feb. 28 and decided to establish an independent three-person committee to review the issues raised, citing the interest of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. Grassley and other members of Congress requested the inspector general's review last year.

The regents also created a governance committee to review the board's practices. "We're taking these criticisms seriously," Sant said. "If we've been wrong, we'll be the first to admit it."

Senate investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said a review of Small's expenses by an independent accountant working for the Smithsonian inspector general did not include hundreds of transactions. The investigators have since requested documents on those transactions.

"Mr. Small's champagne lifestyle turns out to be Dom Perignon," Grassley said. "The authorized expenses are over-the-top by any measure. The manipulation of the audit might be even worse."

Small's financial staff had coded each line item with a "Y," for yes, and "N," for no, to determine which expenditures the independent accountant should review. Inspector General A. Sprightley Ryan said she approved the categorization of the expenses and said she determined that the excluded items were unrelated to personal expenditures by Small.

"I believe the senator got that one wrong," Sant said. "There was such a column of yes and no, but it was only a way of determining expenses in the secretary's office versus his personal expenditures."

Among the Small housing invoices sent to the Smithsonian is a $5,700 bill from a contractor to patch a roof, repair a skylight and redo walls in Small's house in January 2005, records show.

Those repairs came three months before the Government Accountability Office reported that roof leaks were plaguing Smithsonian art museums, archives and the National Air and Space Museum. One leak left a stain on the canvas wing of the Lilienthal Hang-Glider, a pioneering piece of early flight design that influenced the Wright Brothers.

Small, in a speech at the National Press Club shortly after taking over as secretary, promised to find either public or private money to repair "shabby" Smithsonian buildings, including the Arts and Industries Building, the institution's second-oldest building.

"All of the physical facilities, the physical premises of the Smithsonian, should shine," Small said in April 2000.

Sant said that Small has been unable to get funding to fix the facilities. Sant blamed Congress and the administration -- as well as his own Board of Regents. "We just can't get the money to refurbish the buildings," Sant said in an interview last month, adding that Small has "done everything he knows how. It is the one place we're not doing the public a service."

Last year, the Smithsonian archives and other tenants were forced to abandon the Arts and Industries Building. Signs on the door say the building is "closed for renovations," but there currently are no plans to reopen the building.