Utah State University Never Competed Its $12M Vendor Contract
Summary
A Utah legislative audit found Utah State University paid one vendor $12.07 million across a relationship that ran from 2013 with no competitive bid ever conducted, then signed the same vendor to a new five-year deal in 2024 -- even after the university's own purchasing office flagged the contract and was ignored. The same audit found USU leadership pulled its internal audit office off the university's anonymous misconduct hotline for three-plus months in 2024, a stretch when internal audit could not see 45% of that year's complaints.
A department that answered to no one
Utah law and USU's own purchasing policy require competitive bidding for purchases over $5,000 -- a threshold the university raised to $10,000 only in November 2025, after the pattern below was already underway. The same chapter of the audit describes the president's office hiring an individual with 'prior professional connections to the university' as a sole-source contractor after the work had already begun⧉: the initial cost estimate of $30,000 grew to more than $100,000 in four months, and the office claimed it had done market research justifying the no-bid award but produced no documentation of it.
In a separate case, the president's office spent more than $200,000 with an external consulting firm that had prior ties to university leadership, over the explicit objection of Purchasing, which had warned the firm hadn't been financially vetted⧉. The audit even documents an attempt to rig a competitive bid after the fact -- asking a favored vendor who had lost the competition to lower its price so the office could flip the outcome⧉.
View data as table
| Vendor A (contracted since 2013, never competed) | 12,073,016 | 43% of purchases were after-the-fact; the same relationship Chapter 1 says exceeded $12 million and was extended into a new five-year contract in 2024 despite Purchasing's objections |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor C (prior ties to USU leadership) | 233,294 | In some cases the university ignored Purchasing and Contract Services' own instructions |
| Vendor D | 171,537 | 19% of purchases were after-the-fact |
| Vendor B | 102,539 | No required procurement process; costs exceeded the original estimate |
Nearly $300,000 for a bidet, mirrors, and new furniture
The same appendix that priced the vendor contracts also priced the smaller, more visible spending. A renovation of leadership office space in USU's Champ's Hall was originally planned at $10,000 for 'basic upgrades, such as new paint and carpet'⧉ -- administrators knew the 2025 Legislature's reinvestment plan (HB 265) would mean incoming budget cuts and moved forward with the renovation anyway⧉. The audit's own appendix puts the verified total at $288,550, including $184,433 in furniture, a $430 mirror, and a $751 bidet toilet -- roughly 29 times the original plan, and a bill the university still had not found funding for ten months after the work was finished⧉.
Add three leadership vehicles ($146,334, including a $74,165 Chevy Suburban), $110,025 in travel -- one hotel bill ran higher for some USU leaders than for colleagues who stayed elsewhere on the same trip⧉ -- and $104,785 in upgrades to the president's residence, and the audit's appendix verifies $13,230,080 in flagged leadership spending in total: about 1.1% of USU's own $1.2 billion annual budget, moved through a process the audit says had almost no accountability attached to it.
View data as table
| Office remodel (planned at $10,000) | 288,550 | Champ's Hall renovation for leadership office space; ran nearly 29 times its original plan and included $184,433 in furniture and a $751 bidet toilet -- still unfunded 10 months after completion |
|---|---|---|
| Travel | 110,025 | Includes a Harvard trip, Washington D.C. trips, an Ireland trip, and a hotel bill that ran higher for some leaders than for colleagues who stayed elsewhere on the same trip |
| Vehicles | 146,334 | A Toyota Highlander, a Chevy Suburban, and a golf cart, under USU's presidential vehicle-allowance policy |
| President's residence upgrades | 104,785 |
The office that was supposed to catch this got cut out
Utah Code requires every public higher-education institution to run an internal audit program with 'full access to records and information necessary to carry out their assigned duties'⧉ -- the office whose job is to catch exactly this kind of spending before an outside auditor has to. The report found USU leadership did close to the opposite: it moved Internal Audit's reporting line from the president to a vice president, which the audit says violated the office's own chartered authority, and reportedly dropped it from the president's leadership council⧉.
For more than three months in 2024, leadership removed Internal Audit from USU's own anonymous EthicsPoint misconduct hotline -- a stretch when the hotline was fielding complaints about financial misconduct, policy violations, and hostile work conditions -- leaving Internal Audit without initial access to 45% of that year's allegations⧉. When Internal Audit did flag a problem -- recommending in spring 2024 that leadership cap staff lodging costs after finding high recent expenses -- the university didn't pass a policy on it until November 2025⧉, a year and a half later. An auditor-run culture survey found an accountability perception gap of 20 percentage points between staff (84%) and senior leadership (64%)⧉ -- a gap the audit calls out directly, concluding there 'has been a pattern of severe noncompliance within the institution for many years.'
USU says the fix is due by June
Every example above predates the university's current leadership. Elizabeth 'Betsy' Cantwell resigned as USU president in February 2025 to take a position at Washington State University⧉; after an interim presidency, Brad L. Mortensen -- USU's own alumnus, selected October 30, 2025 and in the role since November 10, 2025⧉ -- inherited the audit. Mortensen and Board of Trustees Chair Tessa White signed a January 23, 2026 response agreeing with every recommendation in the report⧉. The most direct fix -- a formal accountability system requiring the president and board of trustees to review reports on policy violations -- carries a USU-committed deadline of June 30, 2026, owned by USU's Vice President for Finance and Administrative Services⧉. The five-year contract with the uncompeted vendor, signed in 2024, runs well past that date.
- A USU department paid one vendor $12,073,016 across a relationship that began in 2013 and was never put out to competitive bid; USU signed the same vendor to a new five-year contract in 2024 after ignoring its own purchasing office's instructions to fix the process first.
- The audit's appendix verifies $13,230,080 in total flagged leadership spending -- vehicles, travel, a $288,550 office remodel planned at $10,000, residence upgrades, and four vendor relationships flagged for skipped or incomplete procurement steps -- of which the single uncompeted $12.07 million vendor (Vendor A) makes up 91%.
- USU leadership weakened its own Internal Audit office -- changing its reporting line, dropping it from the president's leadership council, and removing it from the university's misconduct hotline for three-plus months in 2024, during which Internal Audit could not initially see 45% of that year's complaints.
- USU's current president, Brad Mortensen, agreed with every audit recommendation on January 23, 2026; the first concrete deliverable -- a formal purchase-accountability system -- is due June 30, 2026.
All figures come from the Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General's A Performance Audit of Utah State University's Governance, Leadership, and Culture (Report No. 2026-02), transmitted to the Utah Legislature January 31, 2026, including its Appendix A summary of verified USU leadership expenditures and its Agency Response Plan. This piece independently recomputed the $13,230,080 total flagged-expenditure figure from the report's own line items, the 91.3% share of that total represented by the single uncompeted vendor, the roughly 28.9x growth of the office-remodel project over its original $10,000 plan, the $935,619 combined after-the-fact departmental purchase total, and the 1.1% the flagged spending represents of USU's own stated $1.2 billion annual budget; all are reproducible from figures stated directly in the report. Biographical details about President Cantwell's departure and President Mortensen's start date are drawn from contemporaneous news and official reporting, not from the audit itself, and are not load-bearing for any dollar figure in this piece.
Sources(4) ▾
- Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General, A Performance Audit of Utah State University's Governance, Leadership, and Culture (Report No. 2026-02) (2026-01-31) — The primary document -- a performance audit by the Utah Legislature's nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor General of Utah State University's governance, procurement, and leadership spending, including USU's own signed Agency Response Plan. Source for every dollar figure, every named finding, the internal-audit and ethics-hotline findings, the culture survey, and USU's recommendation responses and deadlines. le.utah.gov · original document
- The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah State President Elizabeth 'Betsy' Cantwell quits, takes job at Washington State (2025-02-06) — Secondary confirmation, not a source of any figure in this piece: identifies Elizabeth 'Betsy' Cantwell as the USU president who resigned in February 2025 to become president of Washington State University, and whose tenure the audit's leadership-spending examples largely cover. sltrib.com · original document
- Utah System of Higher Education, Utah Board of Higher Education Names Brad L. Mortensen President of Utah State University (2025-10-30) — Secondary confirmation, not a source of any figure in this piece: identifies Brad L. Mortensen as the USU president who signed the audit's Agency Response Plan and dates his selection and start. ushe.edu · original document
- Wikipedia, Brad L. Mortensen (2026-07-19) — Tertiary confirmation, not a source of any figure in this piece: corroborates Mortensen's '18th president' ordinal and names Alan L. Smith as the interim president between Cantwell's departure and Mortensen's start. en.wikipedia.org · original document
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The Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General⧉ -- the Utah Legislature's own nonpartisan watchdog, whose findings the audited agency is required by law to formally answer -- found that a Utah State University department paid a single vendor $12,073,016 across a contract relationship that began in 2013 and was never once put out to competitive bid. When that contract came up for renewal in 2023, USU's own Office of Purchasing and Contract Services agreed to a one-year extension on the understanding the following year's contract would finally go through the required process⧉ -- instead, the department ignored the instruction and signed the same vendor to a new five-year deal in 2024, with USU's legal department approving it by citing 'desired administration relationships.'