Perry orders state universities to review benefits spending

Gov. Rick Perry is ordering all of the state’s public universities to review how they pay employee benefits after an audit found the University of North Texas misspent $83.5 million in state funds over a decade.

“The inappropriate and inaccurate accounting of taxpayer funds by the University of North Texas is inexcusable,” Rich Parsons, a Perry spokesman, said Wednesday. “Our office is taking steps to determine if other institutions of higher education are using similar methods that could result in the misuse of taxpayer money.”

Perry, citing “recent audit findings” at UNT, told state university leaders in a May 29 letter to make sure they’re paying their fair share of employee benefits.

The letter came one day after UNT disclosed that it received an excess of $83.5 million in state funds from 2004 through early this year. Most of the money that was improperly drawn from state coffers — $80.6 million — was used to pay for employee benefits. The rest went to ineligible salaries.

The discovery has raised questions about how UNT was able to obtain millions of excess taxpayer dollars over a decade — while nobody at the state, the campus or the UNT System seems to have noticed.

More at http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20140604-perry-orders-state-universities-to-review-benefits-spending.ece .