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One of the three top finance officials who departed abruptly in the wake of last year’s accounting scandal at University of North Texas walked out the door and into a job — with a pay raise — as acting vice president for finance and operations at Sam Houston State University. Carlos Hernandez resigned February 13, 2014, and was hired at Sam Houston a month later. By August 2014, he was named the permanent vice president of finance at Sam Houston at an annual salary of $225,000. His pay at UNT was $210,000 plus an annual cell phone allowance of $1,080, with $3,120 in longevity pay. He had been at UNT since 2011. Hernandez cited “personal reasons” for leaving, the school said. His hire still puzzles state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, an accountant and member of the Senate Finance Committee. “I have no idea why you would hire someone under circumstances like that,” Bettencourt said. He is the latest to question the hiring of Hernandez. Buried in hours of testimony during budget hearings earlier this year, Sam Houston State University President Dana Hoyt acknowledged that Hernandez knew of the errant bookkeeping. But, she said, Hernandez received high marks from Terry Pankratz, a former UNT finance official who had been gone from UNT for almost 15 months when Hernandez was hired at Sam Houston. “We do a background check on all hires and also visited with his direct supervisor at that point, which was Terry Pankratz,” Hoyt told state Sen, Royce West, who questioned the hire of Hernandez during a Feb. 12 hearing. Pankratz was the vice chancellor for finance at UNT in 2011, a year in which the university received $15 million in excess funds for employee benefits. He left before the UNT scandal was made public to take a job at University of Texas-Dallas. He had been at UNT for a little over two years. “And you felt comfortable given what had transpired at UNT and that person’s potential involvement in that, that that person would be suitable for employment at Sam Houston State?” West asked. Hoyt said the primary timespan of the malfeasance was before Hernandez arrived. “It was something he actually helped, in fact a quote from Pankratz was that he was probably…smart enough and savvy enough on the accounting and technology side to kind of figure out what had been an issue,” Hoyt said. view full article