The spending of every Utah public university and college president will now be audited. Here’s why.

How exactly each president of a public college or university in Utah personally spent taxpayer dollars over the past year will now be the subject of a formal audit.

The change comes after concerns over some of former Utah State University President Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell’s particularly lavish purchases during her short time in office, including a $750 bidet and a $28,300 climate-controlled golf cart.

The overarching Utah System of Higher Education, or USHE, which oversees the state’s eight traditional public institutions, will lead the reviews. It is the first significant audit of presidential spending here for at least the last decade, as school leaders have increasingly been awarded higher salaries.

Geoff Landward, the commissioner over the system, told state lawmakers last week that the point of the audit is to see “if there’s a gap in statewide policy” for what a president’s office can purchase and for how much.

Currently, most of that is up to each school to set a policy. But the system could institute new rules or regular checks for all institutions, Landward said, if needed.

“This is an opportunity for the system to institute better practices,” Landward added.

The USHE audit will run concurrently with a full audit approved by lawmakers specifically at Utah State University. Staff with the Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General did an initial “assessment” of executive spending at the Logan school following reporting by The Salt Lake Tribune and concerns raised by whistleblowers about Cantwell’s expenditures during her brief 18-month tenure.

Through public records requests, The Tribune tracked $661,800 that Cantwell spent on two new cars, the golf cart, an apartment in Salt Lake City, extensive national travel and new furnishings for her office, including the bidet.

Cantwell stepped down in March to serve as president of Washington State University. The Tribune’s reporting, published shortly after, noted there appeared to be little oversight of her spending by the university’s board of trustees, which is responsible for checking the school’s finances and auditing all spending.

The state’s assessment reinforced that. In their preliminary review, auditors found a “culture of policy noncompliance” with largely unchecked spending at USU that they said merited further investigation.

Unnamed executive staff members, according to the report released last week, have unilaterally approved contracts up to $430,000 without completing a set purchasing process. And the president’s office, auditors said, “significantly increased” purchases over the past two years, including spending three times as much on new cars.

That spending also came as Utah leaders have scrutinized the state’s public colleges and universities for “administrative bloat.” This year, the Legislature mandated multimillion-dollar budget cuts to higher education. Utah State’s share of that is $12.6 million.

Landward previously said Cantwell’s spending was frustrating. School presidents, he noted, are instructed to focus on “mission-critical items” in their purchases. “We always ask our presidents to be judicious about all expenditures, especially when we’re dealing with budget cuts and reallocations,” Landward added.

The audit of every president’s spending is meant to provide additional accountability and transparency, said USHE spokesperson Trisha Dugovic.

The primary focus will be what policies each school has — and if presidents have been following them. Staff will mostly look at fiscal 2025 purchases to “assess alignment with institution and systemwide policies, standards and best practices.”

Dugovic said she doesn’t currently have a timeline for when the audits will be done. At this point, the system has met with each president or their designee to discuss the reviews and obtain initial information.

In addition to the state’s examinations, USU has also said it plans to assess its own spending. Tessa White, the recently appointed chair of the university’s board of trustees, told lawmakers the school is already working on improvements.

“There are areas that we are aware of and taking aggressive steps to remedy,” she said.

Currently, there are few existing policies for a president’s spending; at the Utah System of Higher Education, those only exist for cars, presidential travel and housing allowances. Other spending is not regulated or capped. And there are no state laws on the subject.

It makes for a hodgepodge system without substantial checks for the highest office at a public university or college in Utah.

Under USU rules, for example, there is no cap set for how much a president can spend on a new car, how many cars they can purchase or what kind of cars qualify.

Just a few months into her term, the school bought Cantwell a new 2023 Toyota Highlander SUV, for instance. It cost $42,969, according to the receipt. No trustees flagged concerns.

The school also bought Cantwell a new Chevy Suburban, which she rode in as a USU police officer — acting as both chauffeur and security — drove her to events around the state. Utah State did not provide a receipt for that, but a new Suburban typically runs about $60,000.

Separately, she used the specialty golf cart to ride around campus, a spokesperson for the school previously said.

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 do not 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.

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. 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 also received $283,800 in benefits. That salary amount was set by the overarching Utah System of Higher Education.

She was the second-highest paid university president in Utah, following University of Utah President Taylor Randall, who makes nearly $1 million in wages, according to the state’s public salary transparency site, not counting benefits.

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