Austin News

The Roy F. and JoAnn Cole Mitte Foundation, which has faced various legal troubles over the last two decades, submitted its annual Internal Revenue Service filing for 2018 nearly a full year late.

The IRS Form 990 is, essentially, an income tax return filed by tax-exempt organizations, nonexempt charitable trusts, and Section 527 political organizations, according to the IRS website. Though it was due by the normal April 15 filing deadline in 2019, the Mitte Foundation’s 2018 Form 990 was marked as received by the IRS on Feb. 12 of this year.

The Mitte Foundation has faced a variety of legal and financial battles over the past two decades, beginning with allegations in 2003 against founder Roy Mitte by Financial Industries Corp. – a company he founded – that he had donated $1 million from the company to the foundation without the board’s permission, according to coverage by the Austin Business Journal. Roy Mitte had been fired as chairman of the company in October 2002, and those and other allegations were ultimately settled out of court.

Allegations also emerged that same year from within the foundation involving Scott Mitte – son of the founders and a foundation board member who had been executive director, according to coverage by the Boston Globe. Those allegations included improper use of foundation funds for personal expenses and a legal settlement alleged to be related to harassment allegations against Mitte.

The Austin News reported that ongoing financial problems within the foundation have led to several scholarship programs being canceled. Though the Mitte Foundation began with an estimated $43 million in assets in 2003, by 2006 those had already been depleted to approximately $26 million. Scott Mitte resigned as executive director in 2002 after the sexual harassment allegation became public, but remained on as a board member.

The latest problems for the foundation came in July of this year, after two real estate partnerships the foundation is involved with filed a lawsuit in Travis County District Court against the foundation and other defendants in regard to allegations the foundation breached its obligations to the partnerships, according to reporting by the Austin News.