\u201cGovernor Abbott appreciates Kristin Tips\u2019 service,\u201d Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott\u2019s press secretary, said in an email Tuesday. \u201cAn announcement on a replacement will be made at a later date.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not respond to questions immediately about whether she was terminated or resigned, nor did he say when she left the board.<\/p>\n
Tips, who has run San Antonio\u2019s prestigious Mission Park Funeral Chapels, Cemeteries & Crematories<\/a> with her husband, Dick Tips, was appointed to the board by the governor in 2017 and made the presiding officer in May 2024. Tips did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The funeral commission is a small agency tasked with regulating the business of death care, mandated to protect consumers against abuses like price gouging and unlicensed funeral directors and to license and inspect funeral providers and crematories. The agency also oversees the donation of body parts for research or educational purposes. The governor appoints the commissioners, who in turn can hire and fire an executive director to run day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n The agency publicly imploded in the summer of 2025, when the commissioners unanimously voted to fire their executive director of less than a year, Scott\u00a0Bingaman.<\/p>\n Before he was fired, Bingaman accused Tips of using agency resources to further her own interests<\/a>. Shortly after his termination, he sued the commissioners. Tips, he claimed in the filings, had \u201ccrossed ethical and legal lines\u201d and \u201cstate resources for her own personal interests and lobbying efforts\u201d; he also claimed he\u2019d raised concerns about her to Abbott\u2019s office. The commissioners denied the allegations he made and, in their own filings, alleged \u201cBingaman misappropriated funds, undermined the statutory functions of the Commission, and violated public trust.\u201d The lawsuit is ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Bingaman, numerous other staffers were fired, including the former deputy director, two attorneys and a licensing staffer.<\/p>\n Previous audits, both before and during Tips\u2019 tenure, have found the funeral commission suffers from high staff turnover, missing and incomplete paperwork and poorly secured files, among other issues. The agency has long struggled to resolve consumer complaints<\/a> quickly.<\/p>\n The new presiding officer of TFSC, Eric Opiela, did not respond to a request for comment. The interim head of the agency also did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n This is a breaking news story and may be updated with further comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGovernor Abbott appreciates Kristin Tips\u2019 service,\u201d Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott\u2019s press secretary, said in an email Tuesday. \u201cAn announcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-249619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}