9 of 14 Texas Colleges Skipped a Required Pay-Supplement Disclosure
Summary
Fourteen of Texas's 112 public colleges and universities accepted outside money in 2023-2025 that a donor designated to boost a specific employee's, position's, or endowment's pay. State law requires posting the dollar amount of each one online; nine of the fourteen did not, according to the Texas State Auditor's Office.
Who took the money
The 14 institutions ranged from small community colleges to a health-science center. University of North Texas reported the most in a single year -- 33 supplements in fiscal 2025 alone, funded by endowments for department chairs and professorships, after reporting none in the two years before. Lone Star College System's count climbed steadily -- 6 in 2023, 10 in 2024, 15 in 2025, funded by a mix of nonprofits, federal agencies, and state entities. At the other end, five institutions reported a single supplement across all three years.
View data as table
| University of North Texas | 33 | 0 (FY23) + 0 (FY24) + 33 (FY25) -- all from endowments for department chairs and professorships |
|---|---|---|
| Lone Star College System | 31 | 6 (FY23) + 10 (FY24) + 15 (FY25) |
| Lamar State College Port Arthur | 18 | 3 (FY23) + 7 (FY24) + 8 (FY25) |
| Weatherford College | 13 | 4 (FY23) + 5 (FY24) + 4 (FY25) -- athletic booster-club auto allowances for coaches |
| Midland College | 10 | 0 (FY23) + 0 (FY24) + 10 (FY25) |
| Hill College | 8 | 1 (FY23) + 1 (FY24) + 6 (FY25) |
| Texas A&M University - Texarkana | 8 | 2 (FY23) + 3 (FY24) + 3 (FY25) |
| Victoria College | 7 | 2 (FY23) + 2 (FY24) + 3 (FY25) |
| Alvin Community College | 3 | 1 (FY23) + 1 (FY24) + 1 (FY25) |
| Tyler Junior College | 3 | 1 (FY23) + 1 (FY24) + 1 (FY25) -- the single reported supplement was terminated Dec. 31, 2025 |
| Texas A&M University - Kingsville | 3 | 1 (FY23) + 1 (FY24) + 1 (FY25) |
| Texas A&M University - San Antonio | 2 | 0 (FY23) + 0 (FY24) + 2 (FY25) |
| Del Mar College District | 1 | 1 (FY23) + 0 (FY24) + 0 (FY25) |
| UNT Health Fort Worth | 1 | 1 (FY23) + 0 (FY24) + 0 (FY25) |
The law says post the amount. Most didn't.
Texas Government Code Section 659.0201 doesn't just require agencies to report supplements to the auditor -- it requires each institution to post the dollar amount of every salary-supplement gift on its own website (without naming the donor), and to adopt and post conflict-of-interest rules governing when it will accept one. Of the 14 institutions that took supplements, only 5 reported posting the required dollar amount; 9 reported not posting it or, in the University of North Texas's case, said they could not determine their own compliance. Three institutions -- Hill College, Tyler Junior College, and Texas A&M University-San Antonio -- also reported not posting the required conflict-of-interest provisions.
Several of the non-disclosing institutions told the auditor their donors were organizations rather than individuals, and treated that as a reason the posting requirement didn't apply -- the statute's text does not carve out that exception, and the auditor's report does not resolve the question either way.
View data as table
| Posted required dollar amount | 5 of 14 | Sec. 659.0201(b) |
|---|---|---|
| Posted conflict-of-interest policy | 11 of 14 | Sec. 659.0201(c) |
Two examples of what a supplement actually pays for
The survey's use-of-funds answers show how differently a "salary supplement" can function. At Weatherford College, the supplements come from athletic booster clubs, which send the Business Office letters instructing it to move money from booster-club accounts to cover coaches' monthly auto allowances -- Weatherford reported posting both the amount and its conflict-of-interest policy. At Tyler Junior College, the sole reported instance was a single gift accepted through the college's foundation, which the college terminated effective December 31, 2025 -- Tyler Junior College reported posting neither the amount nor a conflict-of-interest policy.
The takeaway
- 14 of Texas's 112 public colleges and universities reported taking donor-funded salary supplements for named employees, positions, or endowments in fiscal years 2023-2025 -- from booster clubs paying coaches' auto allowances to endowments funding department-chair pay -- while none of the 78 state agencies surveyed reported any.
- State law requires posting the dollar amount of every such supplement online; 9 of the 14 institutions that took one reported not doing so, and 3 also reported not posting the required conflict-of-interest policy.
- University of North Texas reported the single largest count -- 33 supplements in fiscal 2025 alone -- and told the auditor it could not determine whether it complied with the disclosure requirement.
Figures are from the Texas State Auditor's Office's Report No. 26-016⧉, published February 2026 and fetched directly from sao.texas.gov; a Wayback Machine capture of the same PDF from March 15, 2026 is linked in Sources as the archived copy. The underlying statute bars posting a donor's name, and the auditor's report does not name any individual donor or allege wrongdoing by any named person; neither does this piece. Compliance figures are institutions' self-reported survey answers to the State Auditor's Office, which did not independently verify them.
The 141-supplement three-year total, the 64% non-disclosure rate, and the 21% conflict-of-interest-policy gap are this outlet's own arithmetic on counts the report states separately by institution and year (methods and caveats in analysis.json); the auditor's report does not state any of these totals or rates itself. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary document alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(1) ▾
- Texas State Auditor's Office, A Report on Salary Supplements at Public Higher Education Institutions and State Agencies (Report No. 26-016) (2026-02-01) — Source for the survey scope (190 entities), the 14-of-112 institutions reporting salary supplements, the per-institution/per-year supplement counts (Figure 1), the donor-entity and use-of-funds detail (Figures 2-3), and the website-disclosure compliance findings (Figure 5), plus the underlying statutory text (Appendix 2). sao.texas.gov · original document
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Texas law lets a donor pay to top up a specific public employee's salary -- and requires the receiving college to post the dollar amount online so the public can see it. When the Texas State Auditor's Office⧉ surveyed all 190 of the state's public higher-education institutions and executive-branch agencies, 14 of the 112 colleges and universities -- 13 percent -- reported taking gifts, grants, or donations a donor had designated as a salary supplement for a named person, position, or endowment during fiscal years 2023 through 2025. None of the 78 state agencies surveyed reported taking any.