Pa. Investigating Stalled Industrial Museum’s Finances

Pennsylvania’s attorney general has launched a probe into how leaders of the proposed National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pa., used $17-million in gifts and grants to the long-planned but still unbuilt facility, writes the Allentown Morning Call.

L. Charles Marcon, the museum’s interim chief executive, confirmed on Monday that Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office has assigned an investigator to look into allegations of financial mismanagement leveled in January by a Northampton County, Pa., grand jury.

The jury’s report questioned the compensation and spending decisions of Stephen Donches, the longtime CEO of the project to build a museum of American industrial history in the former Bethlehem Steel plant. Mr. Marcon said the nonprofit museum, which has been in the works since the 1990s, has about $700,000 on hand and will need a loan of $2-million to $3-million to start construction as scheduled this year.