Arizona Board of Regents Chairman Mark Killeen may be ready to lead an effort to sue the Arizona Legislature over its funding cuts to higher education. Killeen said cuts may violate the state constitution’s provision that university instruction be as nearly free as possible.
Killeen acknowledges the Arizona Supreme Court has called that a political question, not a legal one, but said a lot has changed since that 2007 ruling. The $99 million cut to university funding is not what the framers of the constitution had in mind, he added.
“Back then, the state made a majority of the contribution toward the tuition. That has been totally reversed now,”
He estimates per-student funding has gone from $8,000 or $9,000 to around $4,000 -- sending tuition skyrocketing.
Arizona House Speaker David Gowan, who helped push the budget and its deeps cuts for the universities through, doesn’t see it that way.
“We're in a deficit. We know that,” Gowan said. “We're restructuring our budget. We're trying to get structurally balanced.”
The state Supreme Court in 2007 ruled the constitutional funding argument a political issue, not legal issue.
The Board of Regents will discuss the issue at their meeting today in