Part 4: Case Closed: or Just Another Chapter?
The Texas Funeral Service Commission will not rebuild trust overnight. It can’t. The damage isn’t a surface scratch; it’s a deep structural fracture that’s been years in the making.
For an agency whose sole mission is to protect the public and uphold the profession’s standards, the collapse we’ve witnessed is more than embarrassing. It’s dangerous. And the worst part? None of it happened by accident.
The Leadership Failure That Set the Stage
What we’ve seen over the past months is a masterclass in how not to lead. You don’t put someone at the helm who comes with a court docket worth of lawsuits and then act shocked when the agency veers off a cliff. You don’t strip away the people willing to tell you the truth, replace them with loyalists, and then expect results.
And yet that’s exactly what happened. The TFSC’s board sat by while leadership drove the bus into the ditch, engine smoking, tires gone, and passengers wondering if anyone up front even knew where the brakes were.
From an industrial/organizational psychology perspective, this is a classic “toxic leadership loop.” You get a leader more focused on protecting themselves than serving the mission. They surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear. And when dissent or hard truths show up? Out they go. Over time, the organization becomes allergic to accountability, and the very people who could fix it are the first ones shown the door.
The Board’s Cowardice
Let’s call it what it is: cowardice. Not caution. Not politics. Cowardice.
Board members had every opportunity to ask hard questions, demand answers, and defend the agency’s integrity. Instead, they looked the other way. They protected the wrong people. They prioritized avoiding controversy over doing their jobs.
When the $8 million verdict landed against a funeral home for losing a body, and a bill quietly surfaced to make the next disaster cheaper, the board didn’t push back. Who would support a bill like that? The same kind of people who see public trust as an inconvenience.
An Agency That Lost Its Compass
This wasn’t just bad luck or bad optics. This was a system-wide failure where the compass wasn’t broken; it was ignored. Files went missing. Lawsuits piled up. A director who wouldn’t “play along” was pushed out. Whistleblowers were sidelined.
And when it came time to “steady the ship,” the board didn’t bring in fresh leadership; they handed the wheel to Maria Haynes, their own Licensing Division Supervisor who had been inside the same culture since August 2023 and later signed an affidavit backing the board’s lawsuit against two former staff attorneys who defended Bingaman’s account. That’s not neutrality, that’s alignment. She’s Exhibit A in how the TFSC operates under crisis: don't fix it, the scandal will blow over; just bury the mess and move on.
The Pattern Is the Point
From my seat as both an I/O Psychologist and a funeral service veteran, this is a textbook case of organizational self-preservation over accountability:
- Neutralize dissent: Remove the leader who exposes dysfunction.
- Reward loyalty: Elevate someone already inside the system who knows “how things are done.”
- Target the truth-tellers: Use legal muscle to intimidate those who corroborate the allegations.
- Control the optics: Drop the case before it blows up in the public, but never admit fault.
The Psychology of Collapse
In my field, we talk about “organizational drift,” the slow erosion of values and standards over time. At TFSC, that drift turned into a freefall.
- Moral disengagement: Leaders convinced themselves the rules didn’t apply to them.
- Groupthink: Dissenting voices were seen as threats, not assets.
- Erosion of trust: Stakeholders stopped believing the agency could or would do its job.
The funeral profession is built on trust. People come to us on the worst days of their lives, and they trust that we will be competent, ethical, and accountable. When the regulator charged with ensuring those standards abandons them, it’s not just a bureaucratic failure; it’s a betrayal.
My Professional Take
I’ve spent decades in funeral service, and I’ve studied leadership and organizational dysfunction at the graduate level. I’ve seen the inside of good organizations and bad ones. I know what happens when accountability disappears: performance drops, ethical corners get cut, and public trust evaporates.
TFSC’s collapse isn’t just about one leader or one bad decision. It’s about a culture that rewarded silence and punished honesty. And that culture will survive long after this chapter unless Texas leaders make deliberate, uncomfortable changes.
Where We Go From Here
If TFSC wants to claw back credibility, it’s going to take more than press releases and window dressing. It’s going to take:
- Housecleaning at the top, no more foxes in the henhouse.
- Transparent investigations into the missing files, lawsuits, and decision-making processes.
- A board that understands its role is oversight, not cover-up.
- Leadership trained in ethics, accountability, and stakeholder trust — not just in politics.
Anything less, and we’ll be right back here in a few years, writing Part 5.
The profession is watching. The public is watching. And now they know the truth.
The question is whether Texas leaders have the courage to fix it or if they’ll keep pretending nothing happened until the next scandal makes it impossible to ignore.
Case closed? Or just the next chapter waiting to be written.
Travis Newman, MS, I/O Psychology, FD/EMB Funeral Service Professional & Founder, HCHO Resources
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