Former University of Florida president Ben Sasse’s office spent $17.3 million in his first year, more than triple that of what Sasse’s predecessor spent in his last year.
According to an investigation by The Independent Florida Alligator, Sasse — a former Nebraska senator — hired six former staffers and two former Republican officials at salaries into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The spending has prompted Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis to call on the state university's Board of Governors to investigate the spending. The State University System of Florida said the auditor general’s office is conducting a regularly scheduled audit at UF that will include the office of the president's spending.
Sasse stepped down after 17 months as UF's president, citing his wife's health.
In a post on X, Sasse has disputed that any of his spending was inappropriate.
In an interview with Tom Hudson on "The Florida Roundup," reporter Garrett Shanley discussed the findings and what's next for those involved.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tom Hudson: Your investigation found spending in three big categories: personnel, contract work and travel. I want to talk about personnel spending first. What was the spending on staffing under president Sasse?
Garrett Shanley: So the big numbers, I have the budget numbers right in front of me. So when former UF President Ken Fuchs left in his last year, the personnel expenses were just over $3 million. And in Sasse’s full fiscal year, they totaled $7.5 million. Several of those were for some of his former Senate staffers from the U.S. Senate, and some of them were for former Republican officials.
So were these positions that were left unfilled under the former president, Fuchs, or were these new hires, new positions under president Sasse?
We know that one of them was an existing position under former president Fuchs, the vice president for communications. Sasse put James Wegmann, his former Senate communications director, in that position, but the remaining positions were newly created for his staff.
And what did they do? What were these people hired for?
Well, Raymond Sass, who was his Senate chief of staff, was the vice president for innovation and partnerships. That position seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Then Penny Schwinn, she was the former Tennessee education commissioner. She was vice president for PK-12 and pre-bachelor's programs. So that was overseeing education throughout the state. And then several of his Senate staffers were presidential advisers. The university hasn't answered my questions about what the specific nature of their work was. And then his Senate press secretary was ─ I forget the name of his actual position here ─ but in practice, he remained as his press secretary here at UF.
"So when the former UF president, Ken Fuchs, left in his last year, the personnel expenses were just over $3 million. And in Sasse’s full fiscal year, they totaled $7.5 million."Garrett Shanley, The Independent Florida Alligator
So it sounds like president Sasse imported a number of staff members who he worked with on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Of course, I presume, Garrett, that the president's job of the University of Florida is based in Gainesville, and president Sasse moved to Gainesville. What about these other staff members that work for the president's office at the University of Florida?
So based on the employment contracts we had, only one of his staffers actually moved to Gainesville: Taylor Sliva, the press secretary. He got a $15,000 relocation stipend, and he currently rents out a house here in Gainesville, but the others remained in the states they lived in prior. Raymond Sass was in Maryland. James Wegmann was in D.C., Penny Schwinn was in Tennessee, and that was reflected in their travel expenses for the office.
That's the next piece that I wanted to ask you about, this travel spending that was well over a half a million dollars in, what, about a year and a half or so, just for the president's office. Again, give us a sense of how that compares with previous spending habits with previous presidents. And what do we know that spending was, what kind of travel was that spending spent on?
So on the macro numbers, so it was $633,000 in travel expenses during his first full fiscal year, and under former president Fuchs, the travel expenses for that office averaged $28,000. That's not including the year of the pandemic.
More than a tenfold increase, then.
Yes. So we are still waiting on full travel reports from the university, but a partial report we obtained showed that from April to July at least $20,000 was spent on flying the hires to campus, and then all the rest of the expenses were for other work-related incidents.
What are the statuses of the people who are hired by president Sasse now that he's resigned from the president's office, Garrett?
Well, the high-profile hires, two of them, Penny Schwinn and Raymond Sass, they are missing from the president's office website they were previously on, listed as members of his cabinet. James Wegmann, the vice president for communications, is still there. We've reached out to the university through both public records and their communications office to request clarification on what their status is at the university, and the university has said it doesn't comment on personnel matters, and we're still waiting on a records request, so I can't say anything as of yet.
"... It was $633,000 in travel expenses during his first full fiscal year, and under former president Fuchs, the travel expenses for that office averaged $28,000."Garrett Shanley, The Independent Florida Alligator
The other big spending category that you uncovered was the spending on outside contracts. More than half of this $17 million and change that was spent through the president's office during the 17 months of Ben Sasse's tenure came through outside contracts. What kinds of work were these contracts for, Garrett?
Basically, all of the spike in contractual expenses were from consulting contracts. The main one that we know about is McKinsey & Co., where Sasse once worked on an hourly contract, and he had took out a contract with them after one month in office, and they were helping with his strategic plan. We know that based off what the university’s told us, and he presented some of the data that they had found at the university last August in faculty-only presentations, but it has proved difficult in our reporting to find any more information on McKinsey. They redacted a scope of work attachment from the contract we got through a public records request that would potentially outline what kind of work they were doing here and the outlying $2.5 million in consulting expenses.
We have yet to receive our public records back on all the contracts that were taken out from his office, and the university didn't clarify what the contracts were.
Any sense of the process for approval of these contracts? Were there bids on it? Did it go through a normal procurement process for the university?
The McKinsey contract went through a no-bid process. They went through a third party that had a (request for proposal), so it was already contracted to the state, so that did go through normal contractual procedures. It goes through procurement services here, and then it's ultimately approved by the Board of Trustees.
There have been some growing calls for some kind of investigation from the Board of Governors. For instance, I should note that we invited Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida, for an interview in this program. He was not available. What is Sasse’s status with UF today, Garrett?
Well, we know that he is going to stay on as a professor here in Gainesville, likely as a political science or history teacher. He has taught classes at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education here.
