Comptroller Sending Half of 600 Auditors
on Agencies Waste Hunt in Major Gamble
Capitol Inside
August 3, 2026
Republican Don Huffines hit the ground running on Monday as the new Texas comptroller when he announced that he would unleash 300 auditors on a fat-slashing mission at state agencies that he vowed to launch as a candidate with the goal of reducing waste in a bureaucracy that he sees as bloated.
Huffines - a wealthy Dallas developer who was sworn into the statewide post on Saturday - revealed the dramatic shift of resources from the auditors' traditional role of examining private companies to ensure they're paying all the money that they owe the state in taxes and fees.
"The Comptroller's office has over 600 auditors - and they're mainly focused on auditing businesses and squeezing out all the money they can from the businesses," Huffines said in a video that he post on X. "Well, I'm going to flip that script."
Huffines will have little time for advance planning with no assurances that he'll keep the job past December as the GOP nominee in a general election fight with Democratic State Senator Sarah Eckhardt of Austin. But Huffines is a significant favorite on paper after ousting predecessor Kelly Hancock in the March primary election with 57 percent of the vote in a four-person field that included Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick. Governor Greg Abbott appointed Huffines to the post after Hancock stepped down months before his term as a gubernatorial appointee expired.
The fate of Huffines and the GOP's other statewide contenders could be adversely affected if James Talarico defeats Republican Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race at the top of the Texas ballot that the four most recent polls have found the Democrat leading in a race that's way too close to call.
Huffines is wasting no time with the reshuffling of auditors from taxpaying businesses to a hunt for ways to scale back spending at state agencies. But he also runs the risk of rushing into something the agency he's running now is not currently equipped to handle with the attempt to replicate the DOGE review that Elon Mush led for President Donald Trump in the early stages of his second term last year.
Huffines - for starters - could find that the auditors he's redirecting from the private sector to the bureaucracy haven't been trained to weed out government outlays that arguably are excessive. The auditors that the comptroller wants refocus have been specialists who have the task of examining the records of individual business entities to maximize the amount of revenue they will be required to submit to the state in the form of taxes and fees they must collect and forward to Austin.
By cutting the number of auditors at businesses in half, Huffines could put the state in jeopardy of losing more in revenues that businesses will get away without having to pay than the amount of public money the comptroller ends up saving with the state-level DOGE effort.
Huffines appears to be trying to replicate the performance reviews that Democrat John Sharp directed as the comptroller in the 1990s. Democrat Bob Bullock envisioned the streamlining push when he was the comptroller before making it happen in his subsequent role as the lieutenant governor.
The new comptroller could be forced to have the 300 employees who will be auditing agencies of the state retrained from the ground up on what they will be expected to do in the new roles. Huffines also could face questions on whether he has the constitutional authority to scour agencies outside the executive branch for spending cutbacks and-or Governor Greg Abbott's blessings to do so inside the departments of state government he controls as the leader of the executive branch. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and state Senate Republicans might not want Huffines auditors in their offices and GOP leaders and lawmakers across the rotunda in the state House could have a problem with that as well.
more to come ...
| 
