UF staffers racked up travel costs while working remotely – Jacksonville Today

The University of Florida spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on travel for highly paid Republican hires of then-President Ben Sasse, who permitted them to work from home in other states while commuting periodically to the school’s campus, according to newly released records.

The new figures add to mounting questions about unusually high expenditures of public money by the university president’s office until Sasse’s unexpected resignation last month. More than half the $211,824 itemized expenses attributed to six of his senior UF hires working remotely over 17 months was for airfare or train tickets, plus nearly $50,000 more for hotels.

The costs included all their work-related travel, not just back and forth to UF from their home states — including Nebraska, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The university finally turned over more than 1,500 itemized expense entries for these employees in response to requests filed July 30 under Florida’s public records law. 

More than half the travel expenses specified that they covered campus visits. Others did not always indicate any destination, citing costs for “trip” with no other detail about locations.

In the records UF turned over, lodging costs did not specify whether the employees stayed in budget-style hotels run by popular chains or luxury suites. Most of the rooms appeared to run $150 or $300 per night. Meal costs did not indicate the name or type of restaurant or whether the appointees dined alone.

The itemized expenses include a nearly $3,300 plane ticket to San Francisco for a three-day trip in January, $450.26 for dinner during a three-day campus visit in April, $90.90 for lunch in April, $266 for a one-day car rental in October and $1.78 for a four-mile drive in a personal car in September. It wasn’t immediately clear who at UF approved each expense item.

Professors and administrative staff at the university are limited to spending no more than $19 for dinner or $11 for lunch and car reimbursement of 44.5 cents per mile when traveling. They can spend more on meals when they entertain donors or prospective donors, but the university urges them to “still adhere as closely to the allowable limits as practical.”

Sasse, the former GOP senator from Nebraska, said “it’s not true” in a statement earlier this month on social media that there was any inappropriate spending by the president’s office. 

“Fiscal stewardship is a fundamental obligation of public institutions — and also because our alumni, donors and hardworking taxpayers should be confident that such stewardship and oversight have been and are being exercised,” Sasse wrote. “They are.”

Early in his tenure as UF president, Sasse told professors in closed-door meetings that he recognized it would be difficult to recruit top performers to move to Gainesville, a college town of about 200,000 in an area of Florida known as “the swamp” because of its humid, rainy weather. He proposed more remote teaching, adding new campuses outside Gainesville and using technology to overcome what he described as “traditional notions of place-and-time teaching.”

Gainesville has limited entertainment options, a municipal airport with few direct connections, a surprisingly high violent crime rate and among the most expensive utility rates in Florida. It’s 90 minutes from Florida’s nice beaches.

A spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis, Bryan Griffin, said the governor’s office had been in touch earlier this month with the State University System and its Board of Governors, which oversees Florida’s public universities, to look into Sasse’s expenditure of state funds. The state’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, separately urged the same agency to investigate Sasse’s spending, saying his office would provide audit support.

In a possible signal over concerns about the spending, UF has announced that, going forward, all expenses paid out of the university president’s office will be reviewed twice each year and will be the subject of a formal report to the school’s Board of Trustees. 

UF also disclosed this week that — since Sasse’s resignation — it has terminated the jobs of four of six of the employees whose travel records it provided, and a fifth resigned. 

It also fired at least one other senior Republican appointee by Sasse, Penny Schwinn, who had been allowed to work as vice president for K-12 education from her home in Tennessee for a salary of $367,500. It agreed to pay her three months’ salary, or about $92,000, when it fired her, effective July 31. Schwinn was the former Republican commissioner of education for Tennessee.

It also fired Taylor Sliva, assistant vice president of presidential communications and public affairs, who was making $255,000 and had been paid $15,000 to move to Gainesville. Sliva was Sasse’s former press secretary in the Senate. Most professors hired at UF are reimbursed up to $5,000 in moving costs. UF agreed to pay him three months’ salary, or about $64,000, when it fired him, effective Aug. 5. Sliva had been renting a three-bedroom home in Gainesville and still owns a home in Nebraska, according to property records.

The other employees who spent $211,824 in travel were: 

• Raymond Sass, hired as UF’s first-ever vice president for innovation and partnerships with a salary of $396,000 and working from his home in Maryland. Sass was the former chief of staff for Sasse when he served as a U.S. senator from Nebraska. He resigned Aug. 2, according to records obtained by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. “While it is difficult to step away, I believe the time is right for me to explore new challenges and opportunities,” he wrote. Sass spent at least $63,917 in travel expenses, including nearly $1,800 on flights, hotel, car rental, parking, mileage and meals during a three-day campus visit last month.

• James Wegmann, who previously served as Sasse’s communications director during his time in the Senate, still works remotely from Washington as a vice president for communications. Wegmann spent at least $41,594 on travel, including at least $20,573 on plane tickets, and is paid $432,000.

• Alice James Burns, director of presidential relations and major events, and who previously worked for Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. Burns was paid $206,000 and worked from Washington. UF agreed to pay her three months’ salary, or about $52,000, when it fired her, effective Aug. 1. She spent at least $34,179 on travel, including $14,640 on airfare and nearly $13,000 on hotels..

• Kari Ridder, hired as an adviser to Sasse and who previously worked as state policy director for Sasse in the Senate, was paid $122,400 while living in Nebraska. UF fired Ridder on July 31, the same day Sasse resigned, and told her she would continue to be paid until Nov. 1 and work remotely the whole time. She spent at least $17,151 on travel, including $8,637 on airfare.

• Kelicia Rice, hired at UF as an adviser to Sasse, and made $138,000 while working from her home in Virginia. She was previously a scheduler for Sasse when he was a senator. UF fired her on Aug. 1, effective Nov. 1, and told her she will continue to be paid to work remotely during her final three months. She spent at least $10,652 on travel, including $5,441 on plane tickets.

• Raven Shirley, who lives in Washington, was hired at UF as executive assistant to Sasse and paid $126,000. She was previously director of operations for Sasse in the Senate. UF fired her effective Aug. 1 and agreed to pay her three months’ salary, or about $31,500. Shirley spent at least $22,230 on travel and booked $22,102 more in travel costs on behalf of others, including Sasse, Rice, Ridder, Sliva and Wegmann.

Sasse, 52, attributed his decision to resign to a recent epilepsy diagnosis and new memory issues facing his wife, Melissa, who suffered an aneurysm and series of strokes in 2007. He said he also wanted to spend more time with his children, including his college-age daughters and 13-year-old son.

Hired 17 months earlier, Sasse was paid a base salary of $1 million plus a performance bonus of up to $150,000 each year — guaranteed him the job through at least February 2028. The same contract required six months’ notice for Sasse to resign unless the chairman of the board of trustees, Mori Hosseini, waived that provision.

Sasse has said his family would remain in Gainesville and he will serve as president emeritus and teach classes as a professor at the university. As president, Sasse and his family have been living in a gated, multimillion-dollar mansion on campus next to the law school.

Sasse will be required to leave the mansion by Sept. 30. UF agreed to continue to pay Sasse a base salary of just over $1 million through February 2028 and provide medical, dental, life and disability insurance benefits, according to a contract addendum dated July 18, the same day Sasse publicly announced his resignation.

The salary for Sasse through 2028 was similar to how much UF has been paying its previous president, Kent Fuchs, since he resigned in 2023 after eight years. Fuchs, who has taught engineering students, has agreed to serve as interim president until July 31 next year. UF said it will pay him $1 million base salary as interim president plus a bonus of up to 15% and will create a $5 million endowed professorship in his name in the engineering college.

After Sasse resigned, UF also announced it was rehiring Joseph Glover as its provost, the school’s top academic official. Glover had resigned to become provost at the University of Arizona in April. His new contract with UF pays him $672,000 plus a $50,000 recruitment bonus.

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at vivienneserret@ufl.edu.