Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office sent two former employees with the state’s funeral regulatory agency cease-and-desist letters days after they spoke with KERA News about their experiences, according to letters the attorneys shared.
The Texas Funeral Service Commission fired attorneys Christopher Burnett and Sarah Sanders along with deputy director Laura Rhinehart on July 21. Burnett and Sanders said none of them were given cause for their firings, but they believe it was due to their support for TFSC’s former Executive Director Scott Bingaman and his allegations of wrongdoing by commissioners.
The two letters shared with KERA News were addressed to Sanders and Burnett and dated July 30, two days after the news of their firings broke. It states the Office of the Attorney General and TFSC have been made aware of Burnett and Sanders’ communications with the press, which breaches their “legal and ethical obligations to TFSC regarding its confidential and privileged information.”
“As an attorney licensed by the State of Texas and an officer of its courts, you have continuing ethical and legal obligations to your former client, TFSC, which did not cease when your employment with TFSC did,” the letters read. “Your breaches of your ethical and legal obligations to TFSC, while employed with TFSC and after, have been thoroughly documented.”
The letters are signed by Steven Ogle and Canon Hill, assistant attorneys general with the administrative law division of the OAG. The attorney general’s office is currently representing TFSC in a lawsuit Bingaman filed against the agency over his firing. The OAG did not respond to questions from KERA News about the letters.
Burnett said he’s not aware of any continuing obligations to the commission. While he could be bound by attorney-client privilege, he said none of the limited conversations he’s had with commissioners were protected attorney-client communications because he wasn’t TFSC’s general counsel.
“It's a scare tactic,” Burnett said. “And they don't seem to like whistleblowers much.”
Early tensions
Bingaman hired Sanders, who joined TFSC in October, and Burnett, who joined in May. The commission has a small, overworked staff, Sanders said. For months, she was the only attorney on staff, chipping away at the commission’s case backlog.
“They need at least one designated enforcement attorney,” Sanders said. "I don't think it was fair to licensing, or enforcement, or the executive director to all be fighting over who got to use me on a daily basis.”
Burnett said Bingaman told him he’d be TFSC’s head attorney, but that title was ultimately given to Assistant Attorney General Helen Kelley.
State law requires the attorney general’s office to designate one of its employees to represent the commission in legal matters, but Burnett said that’s just limited to litigation — meaning lawsuits. The law doesn’t prevent TFSC from hiring its own general counsel, Burnett said, but commissioners were opposed to that idea.
Sanders alleges Tips and Kelley wanted to limit the agency’s legal team to OAG employees, and that played a role in Bingaman’s firing in June.
“It became clear to me at that point that Miss Kelley was planning to perhaps take over my work,” Sanders said. “I kind of saw the writing on the wall there, because they knew I had supported Scott.”
A spokesperson for the law firm representing Bingaman did not respond to questions sent by KERA News.
Going public
While he was with the agency, Burnett publicly supported Bingaman when the latter alleged Tips was unlawfully using state resources to lobby for bills in the Texas Legislature that would directly benefit her and her husband’s funeral business, Mission Park Funeral Chapels, Cemeteries, and Crematories in San Antonio.
The Tipses have faced a series of lawsuits over allegations that Mission Park switched the body of a San Antonio mother, destroyed another woman’s urn and ashes and lost another woman’s body altogether.
Tips testified on — not for or against — Senate Bill 2721 in the House and Senate. The bill would have limited noneconomic damages in lawsuits against funeral service providers to $250,000.
The bill passed in the Senate and was heard in the House Public Health Committee but did not make it to a full House vote. Bingaman also testified in the Senate.
Sanders, too, said she raised concerns to Tips about using TFSC resources to lobby.
"I had told her a while back that we don't advocate, we regulate, that we can't support tort reform as an agency,” Sanders said. “And I started sensing some hostility from her, especially after that.”
Bingaman's lawsuit, filed July 2, alleges Tips violated lobbying rules in the Texas Occupations Code and the Texas Government Code. He said Tips misled him, and he made multiple reports about her conduct to the governor's office toward the end of the legislative session.
KERA News reached out to Tips and the commission for comment. In an answer to the suit filed last week, the attorney general's office said Bingaman needs to complete TFSC's employee grievance process before suing.
Both Sanders and Burnett said Texas Department of Public Safety troopers walked them and deputy director Rhinehart out of the building the day they were handed their termination letters. They said representatives with the attorney general's office were also present.
Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on X @tosibamowo.
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