Onondaga County lawmakers are taking a closer look at a $5.7 million transfer tied to the aquarium building project, after a county comptroller report said the money moved from the Greater Syracuse Soundstage Development Corporation to the nonprofit Friends of the Aquarium as a private donation.
Nicole Watts said the county wants a closer look because the paperwork and the public explanation did not line up cleanly. Speaking at a virtual news conference, she said, “We are doing our due diligence to review these transactions and to do the county business in a way that is above board, that is legal, that is ethical, and that is ultimately what is right and good and best for the people of Onondaga County,” Watts also said the county is weighing internal and outside reviews. “Some of the options could include the county's board of ethics. It could include outside council that we just voted on earlier this year,” she said.
The scrutiny lands at a sensitive moment for a project that costs nearly $104 million and still needs Friends of the Aquarium to raise the final $19 million. The group’s board members are all appointed by the county executive, and the county has already been uneasy about how much of the group’s work has been explained publicly. That concern sharpened last month, when chair William Gilberti did not disclose the transfer or identify any other donors during a lengthy legislature committee meeting.
The money in question came from a public entity, the Greater Syracuse Soundstage Development Corporation, but was listed in the comptroller report as a private donation. That mismatch is now at the center of the county’s review, and it is widening into a broader look at other development corporations the county works with, including the Civic Development Corporation and the group that runs the O-CHIP housing incentive program.
For the county, the issue is no longer only about one transfer and one aquarium. It is about whether the public can trace where the money came from, who knew about it, and whether the same questions are waiting inside other county-backed development deals.
