Audit claims she didn’t comply with university travel policies and expenses weren’t properly documented
The Arizona Republic reported in its Sunday, January 5, 2020 edition in a story by Rachel Leingang that Northern Arizona University had improperly paid more than $40,000 in travel expenses for President Rita Cheng and her husband. It is alleged that the expenses didn’t comply with university travel policies and weren’t properly documented.
According to the story in the Arizona Republic, the spending included more than $30,000 for airplane tickets to Russia, which represented nearly 62% of the total Cheng and her husband Tom Cheng, who also works at NAU, spent on travel in the 2019 fiscal year.
The audit was released Friday, January 3 by the Arizona Auditor General.
The audit report stated that NAU didn’t follow university and Arizona Board of Regents’ travel policies properly, which “put public monies at potential risk of misuse” and “set an unfavorable tone that policies do not need to be followed.”