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IOWA CITY, Iowa – Iowa State University had no clear need to spend $498,000 in donations to buy an airplane that former President Steven Leath used largely to improve his piloting skills, state auditors reported Tuesday.
Iowa State should also consider seeking reimbursement from Leath, now president of Auburn University, for a 2016 spring break trip in which a university pilot dropped him off at his North Carolina home, the report from State Auditor Mary Mosiman said.
Mosiman’s report comes one year after The Associated Press revealed that Leath used two university planes for trips that mixed personal and official business and damaged one in a hard landing. It came one day after the Board of Regents voted to hire longtime Iowa State dean Wendy Wintersteen to replace Leath, who accepted the Auburn job last spring.
Leath reimbursed the university $40,000 to cover damage from the hard landing and dozens of trips that lacked business justification. Those included 55 hours of personal flight training to obtain his instrument rating, multiple trips to appointments at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, to take relatives to an NCAA tournament basketball game, and to visit his home in Jefferson, North Carolina.
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