Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has called on the Texas Rangers to investigate Texas Southern University – and on the governor to freeze the historically Black institution’s state appropriations – after the state auditor allegedly uncovered financial mismanagement worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including asset oversight, contracting and financial reporting.
“I don’t want one more taxpayer dollar spent until this issue is resolved,” Patrick said on X. “The losers are not only Texas taxpayers, but the students of TSU, having no idea that funding meant for their quality education was either fraudulently spent or thrown away by sloppy, unprofessional accounting processes.”
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Patrick said the results of an interim update on the audit were “disturbing,” and he added it to a list of problems he said Texas Southern has faced in recent years, including other financial scandals, administrative turnover and low graduation rates. Texas Southern University is the only independent public university in the state, meaning it is not governed by a broader university system like the University of Texas System or Texas A&M University System.
TSU officials said Monday that they had already remedied some of issues. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to further questions, including what a freeze on state funding would mean for the school’s 1,400 faculty and staff and 9,200 students.
The university is slated to receive almost $123 million from the state in the 2026 fiscal year, used toward a $248 million operating budget.
“Texas Southern University has cooperated with the state auditor in evaluating our processes,” officials said in a statement. “The University enacted corrective measures prior to the release of the interim report, including a new procurement system. We look forward to gaining clarity and continuing to work with the state auditor to ensure transparency for all taxpayers of Texas.”
State auditor Lisa Collier shared an overview of the allegations against Texas Southern in a letter to Patrick and other top officials in the Legislature on Monday, which Patrick also posted on X. Collier said her office began the audit in May and found “significant financial and operational weaknesses related to asset management, procurement and contracting, and financial reporting.” She provided the overview as an “interim update” before drafting the final audit report, which has not been released.
Among the problems: a lack of annual physical inventories and a system for tracking assets that was incomplete, outdated and inconsistently maintained, Collier said.
Her office also found issues in the contract procurement process, with 743 invoices totaling about $282.2 million for vendors whose contracts were listed as expired, and 8,144 invoices worth $158 million with incorrect invoice dates, she said. It’s unclear what time period the allegations cover.
Other transactions didn’t have valid contracts, which were either expired, unsigned or not clearly able to cover the services or goods purchased, Collier said in the letter. And audited financial statements for the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years were completed 10 months and 4 months, respectively, past the state’s deadlines.
Collier said her office is meeting with Texas Southern officials on Thursday to discuss the results of the audit.
This story will be updated with more information.
This article originally published at Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls for Texas Rangers investigation, funding freeze at Texas Southern after audit.