(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) The doors to the president's offices are seen at Utah State University in Logan on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.
A “culture of policy noncompliance” at Utah State University has led to largely unchecked spending by executive staff — with a finger pointed, in particular, at the expenses of former President Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell — according to a critical new state assessment released Tuesday.
Auditors found that unnamed executive staff members at the northern Utah school were unilaterally approving contracts up to $430,000 without completing any part of a set purchasing process. And the president’s office, they said, “significantly increased” purchases over the past two years, including spending three times as much on new cars.
Utah lawmakers requested the review by the Office of the Legislative Auditor General after reporting by The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this year raised concerns about Cantwell’s spending during her brief 18 months at the helm of USU.
Through public records requests, The Tribune tracked $661,800 that Cantwell spent on new cars, an apartment in Salt Lake City, extensive national travel and lavish furnishings for her office — including a $750 bidet.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Then-Utah State University President Elizabeth Cantwell speaks during her investiture ceremony at Utah State University in Logan on Friday, April 12, 2024.
Cantwell stepped down in March to serve as president of Washington State University. When The Tribune published its reporting shortly after, it noted there appeared to be little oversight of her spending by the university’s board of trustees, which is responsible for overseeing the school’s finances and auditing all spending.
The state’s four-page assessment buttresses that reporting. Auditors say they have “governance concerns” with the board of trustees.
The board, the report states, “may not be providing sufficient oversight on key procurement and administrative matters.”
The state office has, at this point, done just a “limited review” to “understand the level of risk in how the president spends money and whether any spending could be considered excessive.”
That review, the auditors noted, “found several risks that suggest a full audit is needed.”
After interviewing staff and reviewing policies, auditors found:
• Staff not complying with purchasing policies, including executive employees approving university contracts that ranged from $52,000 to $430,000 without oversight. Those contracts were related to legal and consulting services.
• Concerns about spending in the president’s office through a purchasing card, or P-card. “These purchases may be concerning due to the nature of the purchases, the dollar amounts involved and the level of oversight,” the report said.
• And issues with how much Cantwell spent on new cars.
The spending also came at the same time Utah leaders have scrutinized the state’s eight public colleges and universities for “administrative bloat.” This year, the Legislature mandated multimillion-dollar budget cuts for higher education in the state. Utah State’s share of that is $12.6 million.
Utah State University "assessment" by Courtney
In its reporting, The Tribune detailed that Cantwell had three university vehicles, all bought specifically for her to use.
University presidents in Utah are allowed to have their schools purchase a car for them, according to state higher education system policy, as long as any personal trips are separately logged and taxed.
Under USU rules, there is no cap set for how much a president can spend on a new car, what cars qualify or how many cars they can get.
Just a few months into her term, the school bought Cantwell a new 2023 Toyota Highlander SUV. It cost $42,969, according to the receipt. She used it both as a personal and a work car.
With 30 statewide locations under the land-grant institution’s umbrella, the school’s spokesperson Amanda DeRito said at the time: “Cantwell needed a reliable car for all weather for traveling to meetings in SLC and around the state.”
The school also bought a new Chevy Suburban for Cantwell to use specifically for when a USU police officer, acting as both chauffeur and security, drove her to events around the state. Utah State didn’t provide a receipt for that, but a new Suburban typically runs about $60,000.
The third car Cantwell had access to was a specialty $28,300 golf cart, which she used to ride around the Logan campus. That was purchased new, one month into her term.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
There were only a handful of transactions that Cantwell made on her P-card, a credit card provided by the university for business expenses.
Those were largely travel-related and amounted to $3,585, according to a Tribune review of her receipts.
A restriction on P-cards issued by USU is that no single transaction can exceed $4,999.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah State University, on Friday, July 19, 2024.
Overall, the school declined to provide numbers to compare between Cantwell’s spending and that of the school’s previous leader, Noelle Cockett.
The Tribune looked at USU’s annual budgets, which don’t have an itemized spending breakdown but do show how much the president’s office spends each fiscal year. There was a large bump under Cantwell.
For Cantwell’s first year in the position, which largely lines up with fiscal 2024, the office’s operating budget was $547,330; that doesn’t count salaries.
For the fiscal year before that, under Cockett, the total was $287,330 — about half the spending.
But the school’s spokesperson noted that Cantwell’s budget included $300,000 for the Institute of Land, Water and Air.
Cantwell’s salary was also significantly higher than Cockett’s, who started in January 2017 with a salary of $397,000 (not counting benefits), according to her contract. Cockett ended her term in July 2023 with a salary just below $512,000.
Cantwell started in the position with an annual salary of $581,585. She was also getting $283,800 in benefits. That salary amount is set by the overarching Utah System of Higher Education.
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