Dems tout bill that would prevent general fund from taking tuition money

With BC-CNS-Tuition-Budget-Box

Photo Available (thumbnail, caption below)

By JAMES KING
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX (Monday, Feb. 16) _ With the Legislature searching for ways to close a gaping budget deficit for the coming fiscal year, Arizona needs to guarantee in law that tuition paid to public universities goes to those universities, a Democratic lawmaker said Monday.

Rep. Rae Waters, D-Ahwatukee, said she introduced HB 2521 because 40 percent of tuition money paid to public universities ends with the Legislature, which she said has the flexibility under current law to allocate it based on budget needs. The money traditionally has gone back to universities through the Board of Regents, but not necessarily to the school it came from, she said.

“We want to make sure that the money a parent or student gives to a university as tuition is used for education and not building a road or a bridge somewhere,” Waters said at the House Democrats’ weekly media briefing.

Waters’ bill would add this language to state law governing how the Board of Regents handles tuition: “Tuition revenues shall not revert to or be transferred to the state general fund.”

A message left with the Arizona Board of Regents’ media relations office wasn’t returned Monday, which was Presidents Day.

Sue Knudson, a Tempe mother with two children at Arizona State University, attended the briefing to object to the possibility that 40 percent of the money she and her husband saved for their children’s tuition could fund something other than education.

“Like most parents, I thought that when I wrote my tuition check to ASU that my money stayed at ASU,” Knudson said in an interview.

“The bill makes perfect sense, particularly since the Legislature is raiding everything that it can raid,” she said. “The legislation seeks to prevent that from happening.”

Waters’ bill, which has yet to be heard in committee, has 13 other Democrats as primary sponsors and two Republicans among its co-sponsors, including Rep. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, chairman of the House Education Committee.

Crandall said he signed on because the Legislature isn’t the best place to allocate tuition money.

“Wouldn’t we be better off letting university presidents decide what to do with the money?” he said. “Why do we want to be the armchair quarterbacks for all the universities?”

^___=

PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download; caption information is in the file under File>File Info.

Rep. Rae Waters, D-Ahwatukee