Wichita ? The closing of the Mid-America All-Indian Center will affect more than the 11 people who work there and those who had hoped to view the center’s museum of artifacts.

American Indians who receive employment assistance and job training from the center will not be able to do so during the two-month shutdown prompted by the center’s financial crisis, city officials said.

On Thursday, the center’s board of trustees suspended its Workforce Investment Program. About 75 people could be affected by that decision, said John D’Angelo, the city’s director of arts and cultural services.

“We’re certainly not trying to harm people we’re serving,” he said. “But (board members) could be making themselves more liable on legal issues that right now they’re not able to handle.”

D’Angelo said the center, struggling under debt estimated at $150,000, does not meet the requirements for the Workforce Investment Program’s federal grant funding. It is behind on its taxes and has not performed an audit for two years.

The jobs program could have received about $150,000 this year, D’Angelo said, but the center’s records were so bad that he can’t determine just how much money came in. The FBI is investigating the center’s finances, after the board’s president reported in October that an undetermined amount of money was missing and might have been embezzled.

“Suspending the grant is the best thing until we know that there wasn’t misappropriation of dollars,” D’Angelo said.

It will be at least next week, he said, before he knows whether those displaced by the closing can transfer to other programs in Wichita. Those programs provide assistance regardless of race or national origin, but the center’s grant was designed to help only Indians.