In just two months, the Texas Funeral Service Commission fired its executive director, fired three people who supported him, sued the ex-employees who publicly discussed their firings, then dismissed that lawsuit.
Before and after their firings, the former staffers maintained that Kristin Tips, TFSC's head commissioner, improperly advocated for bills in the Texas Legislature that could benefit her own funeral business and used state resources to do it — actions they say constitute illegal lobbying. Ex-staffers have also alleged a broader pattern of mismanagement and dysfunction related to the commission’s licensing, complaint processing and staffing.
But political scientists and legal scholars told KERA News the law surrounding what constitutes illegal lobbying is complicated, and it’s possible Tips could be acting well within her authority.
Whatever the case, Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson and others are wondering why Gov. Greg Abbott’s office has seemingly remained quiet throughout the controversy.
“If you've got a board that is in turmoil for month after month, people writing to the governor's office, other people complaining to the governor's office, something should have been done,” Jillson said. “Some action should have been taken to sort it out.”
The governor's office did not respond to KERA News' request for comment. Bingaman declined to comment on the record, and his lawyers did not respond to KERA's requests for comment.
Who is Kristin Tips?
Tips is president and funeral director of Mission Park Funeral Chapels, Cemeteries and Crematories. The company owns more than a dozen funeral homes and cemeteries across San Antonio.
She’s one of three funeral industry members required by statute to serve on TFSC’s board. After seven years as a commissioner, Abbott appointed Tips as chair last year.
Tips and her husband and business partner, Robert “Dick” Tips, have been longtime donors to Abbott for years. Robert Tips donated $187,796 to Abbott’s PAC Texans for Greg Abbott between 2002 and 2024, mostly for plane expenses, according to campaign finance records. Abbott also appointed Robert Tips to the Texas Historical Commission in June.
Kristin Tips has donated more than $11,000 to Texans for Greg Abbott since 2020, records show, and she’s donated as recently as this year. In June, she donated $5,000 for an unspecified purpose.
The governor routinely appoints industry members who are also donors to state agency positions, Jillson said. Former TFSC staff have alleged the agency is being wrongly subjected to regulatory capture — when a regulatory agency is dominated by the industry it regulates — but that dynamic is somewhat built into Texas government, he said.
“The governor and the citizens of the state depend on these board members from the industry to take seriously their public responsibility to serve the people of the state of Texas while they are providing oversight and a watchful eye protective eye for their industry,” Jillson said.
The Tips family business has faced a number of high-profile lawsuits over bodies in its care. A jury ordered Mission Park to pay $8 million in 2018 to Julie Mott’s family after her body disappeared before it was set to be transferred to a crematorium.
And in January, a jury ordered Mission Park to pay more than $1 million to three siblings after their mother’s urn and ashes were destroyed.
According to his lawsuit against the commission over his firing, former TFSC executive director Scott Bingaman said Tips failed to mention her business’ previous legal issues when she testified in favor of bills that would cap the amount of money people can get in jury verdicts when suing funeral homes. He and a former staff attorney, Sarah Sanders, also claim Tips used Sanders to research caps on damages awarded against funeral homes in lawsuits.
“On multiple occasions,” the suit states, “(Bingaman) raised his concerns of Commissioner Tips’ use of her official position at the TFSC, as well as TFSC resources, to lobby for or against legislation— a practice that every public servant knows the legislature has outlawed—and requested that she stop that activity in private conversations.”
What Tips said
Tips testified either in favor of or neutrally on at least four measures in this year’s regular legislative session. None of the bills passed. For all but one measure, Tips testified in favor of the bill on behalf of herself but always identified herself as chair of TFSC.
It’s not uncommon for agency heads to testify on bills in which they have a personal financial stake, said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. They’re given a lot of flexibility when it comes to testifying. But that can blur the lines, he said.
“They're subject matter experts, and so they can testify on their own behalf because they may be affiliated with those industries, but they're also part of the regulatory structure of government,” Rottinghaus said. “Those things, of course, sometimes are in conflict. Texas government is replete with these kinds of conflicts.”
Denton Republican Rep. Richard Hayes’ House Bill 4101 would require more proof that a funeral service provider should be held liable for mental anguish damages in a lawsuit. It would cap mental anguish damages at $250,000 or three times the cost of the funeral services — whichever is less. The Senate version of the bill by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, would have initially made that cap even lower at $50,000 but was amended.
In her testimony for the bill, Tips called mom-and-pop funeral homes and other death care professionals the state’s “last responders.”
They perform essential work caring for the dead and ushering family members through the process, Tips told senators, but aren’t legally protected from suits like first responders.
“We are the only group standing there with no immunity, the one next to the family,” Tips said. “Trial lawyers know this. They're exploiting that. We’re easy targets to them, easy money.”
The bill analysis specifically mentions the jury verdicts in two lawsuits against Mission Park. It states Texas’ lack of a specific statutory framework around mental anguish damages can lead to “unpredictable liability exposure for the industry and inconsistent compensation for affected families.”
The bill didn’t make it to a full vote in the House.
Hayes told KERA News he had two conversations with Tips about the bill, and he didn't feel her behavior was inappropriate. He wasn't aware of any specific litigation against her or Mission Park at the time, he said. His understanding was that Tips was interacting with him and his staff as a subject-matter expert in the funeral industry.
"When people come and do that, I see it's educational for us," Hayes said. "And sure, they have a point of view, and they're gonna present it from their point of view — and that's the good thing about legislation, we hear lots of points of view."
Senate Bill 2721 by Republican state senators Tan Parker and Lois Kolkhorst dealt mostly with state body donation programs and the anatomical industry in response to an NBC investigation into the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s sale of unclaimed bodies without family members’ consent. But the introduced version of the bill also squeezed in a proposed $250,000 cap per claimant on noneconomic damages against funeral service license holders.
Kolkhorst has received $4,000 in political contributions from Houston-based funeral business Service Corporation International over the past 20 years, including a contribution as recent as October 2024. But the senator said in a statement her interest in the issue came out of a desire to ensure “integrity, clarity and respect for the deceased.”
Kolkhorst’s staff met with Tips and Bingaman to get insight on the law around people donating their bodies to science for SB 2721 and an amendment to another related bill earlier this year, she said. But those interactions were limited.
“While I did not participate directly in meetings with Commissioner Tips,” the statement reads, “the few interactions Commissioner Tips had with my staff were made in her official capacity as the commissioner of the Funeral Commission and her input was reflected in the language of the amendment.”
Bingaman and Tips testified neutrally but leaned in favor of the bill in April. It passed in the Senate but did not make it to a full House vote.
Republican State Rep. John Lujan’s House Bill 2673 would have repealed a law passed in 2023 that allows a person, business or other entity to apply to establish or use a cemetery inside certain cities' limits. Robert Tips told legislators in April the current law will allow developers to avoid city taxes and city obligations on land that, once used as a cemetery, can no longer be used for other purposes.
At the same committee hearing, Kristin Tips said the law takes away the government’s authority to place cemeteries wherever they might like – not just in residents' backyards.
“It’s not understood the ramifications of what could happen with this loophole that allows a private cemetery to start within the city limits,” Tips said. “Since the conception of this entire chapter, cemeteries were always started outside the city limits for public health and safety.”
Robert Tips donated just over $1,000 to Lujan in December, according to campaign finance records. KERA News reached out Robert Tips and to Lujan for comment on his motivations for the bill.
Bingaman in his lawsuit alleged the 2023 law means increased competition for the Tipses and Mission Park, citing it as a reason for why Kristin Tips supported its potential repeal.
HB 2673 failed toward the end of this year’s session. Released text messages between Tips and Bingaman — obtained by KERA News — show Tips seemingly blaming the failure of the bill, in part, on Rep. Suleman Lalani, D-Sugar Land, one of the only Muslim state lawmakers.
In these same texts, Tips shared an anti-Muslim graphic and links with Bingaman. The messages came during TFSC's investigation into the East Plano Islamic Center over allegations that the mosque was illegally operating as a funeral home.
Bingaman and Tips' texts also provide insight to discussions the two had with legislators and their staff behind closed doors.
In March, Bingaman was keeping tabs on a bill dealing with non-transplant anatomical donation organizations, or "body brokers," which TFSC is attempting to regulate and minimize their alleged unethical uses of human bodies within the state.
"All we need is someone to just put the bill into ledge council and we can have any number of our heavyweights at the governor’s office Lieutenant governor’s office help us get the bill into committee," Bingaman wrote March 3.
In April, Tips discussed with Bingaman potential talking points in the lead up to her meeting with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. KERA reached out to Patrick's office about the nature of his staff's interactions with Tips and Bingaman.
The messages also mention continuing conversations with Nick Eastwood, who is on North Texas Sen. Tan Parker’s staff, about SB 2721 and other legislation. Eastwood declined to comment on the record about his conversations with TFSC staff.
Tips and Bingaman were aware of questions about the commission's advocacy for caps on lawsuits against funeral homes. San Antonio Express-News writer Patrick Danner asked TFSC why it was “advocating for caps on liability for funeral home blunders and how that squares with its mission of protecting the public,” according to a copy of the email attached to Bingaman’s lawsuit.
Bingaman texted Tips for a response.
Is this illegal?
The Texas Government Code lays out requirements for registering as a lobbyist, which include getting paid and actually lobbying by having meetings or giving presentations. Simply testifying for or against bills does not make someone a lobbyist, and Tips is not registered as a lobbyist for 2025, according to the Texas Ethics Commission’s lobby registration lists.
Plus, Jillson said, that type of advocacy is normal for state agency board members like Tips. They argue for or against legal or regulatory results that would improve their industry.
"While the head of the board, who is a funeral home and crematorium owner and director, might benefit by that kind of advice, if the entire industry would benefit by the advice, it would be very difficult to prove that the board chair was self-dealing,” Jillson said.
But the Government Code also says a state agency cannot use appropriated money to try to influence the passage or defeat of a legislative measure, which Bingaman accuses Tips of doing in his lawsuit.
Tips testifying as leader of a state agency like the funeral commission during work time — even on one’s own behalf — and using TFSC staff to help could still violate the law, said Andrew Cates, a political attorney and lobbyist. But that’s hard to prove under the state’s lobbying laws, especially when it comes to conversations behind closed doors like those mentioned in Bingaman and Tips' texts.
"Solely the research internally about the bills is not gonna get you there on clear cut, 'this is illegal, you shouldn't be doing this, it's an abuse,' whatever," Cates said. "If there are specific details about this person trying to strong arm or anything about their own business, side business, then that gets you way closer, I think, to something being pretty clearly wrong."
The governor has the power to remove commissioners for “neglect of duty, incompetence, or fraudulent or dishonest conduct,” according to the Texas Occupations Code, and for violating membership and employee restrictions. Former staff attorneys Christopher Burnett and Sarah Sanders backed up Bingaman’s claims that he reported Tips’ alleged violations of the law to the governor’s office, but staff didn’t take action.
Bingaman is still in the early stage of his suit against the commission. The suit includes allegations that commissioners violated the Texas Open Meetings Act and Whistleblower Act when they fired him.
But because state agency heads are given such flexibility when it comes to the regulatory process and public testimony, Rottinghaus said it’s uncommon to see this kind of dispute, so the path this case will take is unclear.
“There have been agency heads that have been fired, who have been demoted, so it does happen on occasion,” Rottinghaus said, “but it's a rare occurrence for an agency head to be in the spotlight like this.”
Toluwani Osibamowo is KERA’s law and justice reporter. Got a tip? Email Toluwani at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on X @tosibamowo.
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