A preliminary report from the Florida Auditor General found UF failed to prevent former President Ben Sasse from leveraging his executive privileges to inappropriately spend university funds.
The Florida Auditor General’s report, obtained by The Alligator, revealed new details about Sasse’s spending practices, including that he used more than $300,000 in university funds to charter flights on the University Athletic Association’s private jets for trips with no clear business purposes.
The report spelled out the extent to which Sasse, a former Republican U.S. Senator from Nebraska, swerved the university’s existing regulations and guidelines.
Auditors found UF allowed Sasse to award a large chunk of his inner circle — including members of his former Capitol Hill staff — salaries far exceeding the university’s market-rate averages and without soliciting competing applications from other candidates.
The audit also raised concerns over the university’s decision to let Sasse keep his $1 million salary for a continued role as a professor and adviser to the UF Board of Trustees chairman. Sasse’s current roles “appear to be significantly less in scope” than his duties as president, the auditors’ report read. As such, “the public purpose of such a salary is not readily apparent.”
Sasse, who is back on campus this semester co-teaching a class at UF’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education,said “it’s not true” there was any inappropriate spending out of his office. In a statement posted to X in August, Sasse argued significant spending was a necessary measure to carry out his “go bigger” approach for the university.
“We also cut spending and consulting expenses in some areas,” Sasse wrote. “But countervailing accounting realities aren’t sexy amid breathless social media.”
Auditors flagged other line items from Sasse’s expenses as unreasonably priced, including a $169,755 holiday party costing $285 per guest, excessive employment perks for some hires and a $6.4 million consulting contract yielding no apparent benefits to the university’s operations.
Neither Sasse nor his assistant, Raven Shirley, responded to The Alligator’s two calls and an email requesting comment on the audit’s findings.
Citing concerns over his wife’s worsening health issues, Sasse abruptly resigned in July amid an increasingly tense relationship with Mori Hosseini, UF’s long-serving board of trustees chair. The following month, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration called for an audit into the UF president’s office just days after The Alligator first reported on Sasse’s outsized spending habits.
In its preliminary report, the Florida Auditor General recommended a slew of changes to university policies meant to tamp down on improper spending out of the president’s office, including greater oversight of the president’s hiring decisions.
“Absent appropriate controls, there is an increased risk of wasteful, fraudulent and abusive travel expenses,” one recommendation read.
UF trustees passed new measures in December addressing some of the state’s concerns, including a rule requiring the president to get Hosseini’s sign-off before booking non-commercial flights. The rule explicitly bans university-paid flights for personal or political activities.
According to the audit, Sasse spent $335,366 on 21 flights aboard UAA-chartered jets, averaging $16,820 per trip. These included a $51,468 flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, a canceled trip costing $23,405 and eight flights to Miami totaling $89,340. Flight records show Sasse often traveled alone, with an unspecified number of university employees or with family members.
State auditors noted UF didn't provide documentation justifying the business necessity of the trips or explain why Sasse flew on chartered jets instead of commercial flights. Additionally, administrators hadn’t approved $219,481 of UAA-chartered flights charged to the president’s office before takeoff.
Sasse’s expenditures on UAA-chartered flights alone was more than double the total travel expenses for 15 members of his presidential staff who worked remotely — 13 of who worked out of state. Those staffers racked up $159,795 in travel expenses for trips to UF’s main campus in Gainesville.
Sasse permitted those senior staffers to work remotely without formal agreements, violating UF policy. Per the auditors’ report, university records didn’t show “how the work was necessary and more beneficial to be performed remotely than having staff perform services at a central workplace.”
The university also reimbursed some of Sasse’s staffers with $7,017 in state sales tax costs related to travel expenses, even though UF is exempt from paying Florida sales taxes.
State auditors also found Sasse didn’t recruit a majority of his hires through competitive recruitment processes and awarded 21 salaries not supported by the university’s average market rates. The report singled out three employees with salaries exceeding the market-rate schedule by $28,700 to $268,700.
Sasse and another unidentified university leader set the salaries, according to the audit, and in some instances offered excessive employment perks to certain hires.
The president’s office paid one of Sasse’s direct hires $100,000 for a housing loan under a newly established program. The hire received an additional $80,000 recruitment bonus and a $25,000 relocation stipend — raising auditors' concerns over the “reasonableness” of the loan.
In another case, the university awarded one of Sasse’s hires with a $115,000 relocation stipend on top of their annual base salary of $570,000. That employee resigned after only eight months at UF, and university officials told auditors the employee's contract didn’t require repayment.
Once the preliminary findings are delivered to UF, the university has 30 days to respond, according to a statement from the Florida Auditor General. A final report including UF’s response is expected to be released this month.
UF spokesperson Steve Orlando said in a statement Feb. 2 that UF had received a draft version of the audit and is “cooperating with the audit process and diligently compiling our response.”
Contact Garrett Shanley at gshanley@alligator.org and follow him on X @garrettshanley.
Garrett Shanley is a fourth-year journalism major and the Summer 2024 university editor for The Alligator. Outside of the newsroom, you can find him watching Wong Kar-Wai movies and talking to his house plants.
