The Tennessee Senate passed a bill Thursday that would vacate the board of Tennessee State University and leave it to Gov. Bill Lee to appoint new members.

The passage of the Republican-backed bill comes amid years of scrutiny over the historically Black university’s finances and leadership and as it searches for a new president. The results of a forensic audit, commissioned last year by lawmakers, are still pending and expected out at the end of the month.

The Senate passed the measure in a 25-6 vote after only five minutes of discussion. All six senators who voted against the bill were Democrats.

The bill has stirred intense controversy over $2.1 billion in historic underfunding of TSU by the state and disparities in how TSU has been treated by lawmakers. University leaders have pleaded with lawmakers to extend the current board and allow it to build upon the progress it has made in the last year.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, who filed the amendment to the bill that would vacate the board, has repeatedly pointed to financial issues at TSU over the years. As the bill advance through the Senate last month, he spoke about the incomplete forensic audit, saying the firm did not yet have the documents and other items it needed from TSU.

University leaders, including President Glenda Glover, maintained that they have gone to great lengths to cooperate with auditors. In what may have been the board’s final meeting last week, Board Chair Deborah Cole said she’s proud of the work they’ve done and praised her colleagues for helping improve the university’s finances, increase its endowment and build up its reserves, all while navigating multiple audits.

More: Tennessee State University board holds what could be last meeting as Republicans push to vacate it

Sen. Oliver presses underfunding issue, urges colleagues to vote no

The House version of the bill is at odds with the newly passed Senate version, instead moving to keep three of the board’s 10 members, along with its student and faculty trustees.

Sen. Charlane Oliver, R-Nashville, whose district includes TSU, urged her fellow lawmakers to vote against the measure Thursday and consider the House’s proposal. While she recognized that there have been issues with university leadership over the years and that the debate over it often got heated and personal, she also pointed to the issue of the underfunding.

“We all want (TSU) to thrive, but we also need to recognize that we cannot underfund an institution for decades on decades and starve our system and then accuse it of not working,” Oliver said.

Push for compromise: Tennessee House committee advances bill that would only vacate part of TSU board

She also argued that vacating the board would remove valuable institutional knowledge, be detrimental to the presidential search process and leave the next president to “pick up the pieces.”

In a Senate Education Committee last week, Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, who first introduced the bill, said it’s important to act quickly to vacate the board and appoint new members to minimize disruption. While he expressed his appreciation and love for many of the TSU leaders, he also said it was time for a change.

When the measure was first proposed to vacate the TSU board, Rep. Harold Love, D-Nashville, said he worried that talks would not move quickly enough to reach a compromise. He backed the amendment to retain three board members, along with the student and faculty trustees. TSU has also expressed its support for the amendment as a compromise, while maintaining that it does not believe any board members should vacated.

“The truth of the matter is … I don’t think that the board members actually thought that this would happen,” Love, who is a TSU graduate, said in a news conference last week. “None of us really did.”

What’s next for the TSU bill

The House version of the bill is set for a full House vote on March 28.

Want to follow along? Visit capitol.tn.gov and search for HB1739 for more information. HB1739, the House version of the bill, is set for a vote during the House floor session on March 28. The session is set to begin at 9 a.m. A livestream of the session can be found at wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/LiveVideo.

If the House version passes, the bill will go to a conference committee to negotiate the differences between the two chambers.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee senators vote to vacate TSU board, at odds with House bill