Part 2: Characters of Chaos
If Part 1 cracked the door, Part 2 kicks it wide open. We’re not peeking in anymore, we’re walking straight inside and calling things what they are. This is the cast of characters who took the Texas Funeral Service Commission off course, and why that wasn’t an accident.
The Conductor and the Train Wreck
Kristin Tips isn’t just the Board Chair. She’s the conductor and the train wreck.
Bingaman says she steered TFSC like a “listless ship,” except the compass wasn’t broken it was locked on old grudges, backroom handshakes, and policy changes that seemed to always make life easier and more profitable for herself and the other funeral directors on the board.
And this wasn’t her first run-in with controversy. Lawsuits tied to her funeral business were already public record, and the policies she pushed as Chair looked a whole lot like they were designed to shield her from getting sued again or to lessen the damage if she lost.
Quick to overstep, fond of micromanaging, and allergic to being questioned, if the Chair didn’t like it, it didn’t happen. Period. Under her leadership, protecting insiders wasn’t the exception, it was the plan.
The Director Who Wouldn’t Play Along
Bingaman didn’t get shown the door for messing up. He got shown the door for doing the job, and he saw it coming.
The letter he wrote before his removal wasn’t a polite farewell it read like an autopsy report: cause of death, a “listless ship” steered full speed into the rocks; manner of death, intentional and avoidable.
He could’ve gone along to get along. Signed whatever landed on his desk. Let bad calls slide. Kept his head down and collected the paycheck. That’s the safe play at TFSC. But he didn’t. He questioned the overreach. He refused to approve moves that weakened enforcement or gave insiders an edge. He wouldn’t pretend the rot wasn’t there.
He wrote that letter knowing it would cost him his job. And for that, not for misconduct, not for incompetence, he was pushed out. At TFSC, telling the truth doesn’t just make you unpopular. It ends your career.
The Cowards in Suits
The corruption didn’t just thrive because of those at the top. It thrived because too many others stayed quiet.
Some board members didn’t need to break the rules they just had to keep their heads down, eyes on the gavel, and mouths shut. This wasn’t loyalty to the mission. It was loyalty to self-preservation. And while they stayed quiet, Texas families paid the price.
The Attorneys Who Were Fired
On July 21, TFSC fired two of its own attorneys, Christopher Burnett and Sarah Sanders, along with Deputy Director Laura Rhinehart. Their “offense”? Publicly backing Bingaman’s account of the agency’s corruption.
These were the people best positioned to hold leadership accountable. Instead, they were escorted out and then hit with cease-and-desist letters from the Attorney General’s office, accusing them of violating confidentiality rules and breaching “ethical and legal obligations” by speaking out. This wasn’t just about removing them. It was a warning to every other staffer: open your mouth and you’ll be next.
From Watchdogs to Lapdogs
Between 2022 and 2025, TFSC bled out both its experience and its credibility.
The entire enforcement team walked out in 2022, leaving 39 complaints to gather dust, a fact later confirmed by a 2023 state audit. Licensing and compliance staff either quit or were forced out after clashing with leadership. By the time the dust settled, the watchdogs were gone, and in their place were lapdogs more interested in pleasing the people in charge than protecting the people of Texas.
The Paxton Problem
If you were counting on the Attorney General’s office to ride in and fix this, you don’t know Ken Paxton. When Paxton’s sitting in the saddle, he’s not there to save the day, he’s figuring out how to sell the horse before it ever leaves the barn.
His office didn’t come to investigate. They came to smother the mess before it spread. They sent cease-and-desist letters to the fired staffers who spoke out, using confidentiality requirements as a gag order. They accused them of breaching “ethical and legal obligations” for telling the truth about what they’d seen inside TFSC.
In the end, Paxton’s office wasn’t protecting the public. They were protecting a Board Chair with a lawsuit history and a proven habit of turning public power into private benefit and in doing so, they kept the entire rotten system right where it was.
This wasn’t a rough patch. It was the business model.
Part 3: The Collapse Files: where we follow the money, the favors, and the cover-ups all the way down