Regents should howl at Ducey, not Brnovich

The head of the Arizona Board of Regents is blasting away at Attorney General Mark Brnovich for having the audacity to sue the board for attaching tuition to a rocket and launching it skyward. Regents Chairman Bill Ridenour called Brnovich’s defense of the pocketbooks of college students a publicity stunt and “political pandering.”

“The AG’s lawsuit, while it makes for good headlines, does nothing to change the burden for students and their families,” he said in a statement. “The suit is full of attacks, but offers no constructive remedies.”

I was unaware that a lawsuit challenging whether the regents are providing a college education that is “as nearly free as possible,” as the Constitution requires, had to offer solutions.

One would think that would be up to the big thinkers who run the universities. And if they believe a 370 percent tuition increase over 15 years can be blamed on the Legislature, why, then, haven’t they raised a stink about it?

In 2015, when tuition went up by 13 percent, even then-Chairman Mark Killian questioned the legality. “I believe we are in clear violation of the Arizona Constitution, and that needs to be addressed,” he told me then. “You can’t change the Arizona Constitution and its clear meaning by continuing to just cut universities through the appropriations process.”

Killian told me he planned to ask the regents’ attorney whether the board could sue the state for stiffing the universities. Not long afterward, Gov. Doug Ducey gave him a job in his administration and Killian resigned his seat on the board. Two years later, the question still remains: Why is Brnovich, and not the regents, the one making a fuss?

Or do the regents think a tuition increase of 370 percent in 15 years is a trifling matter? That it’s constitutional?

Ridenour says the Legislature should be added to the lawsuit, given the massive cut in state funding. But the state Supreme Court has already ruled that the level of state funding is a political question, not a judicial one.

That’s why Brnovich isn’t challenging the level of state funding. Instead he’s challenging the factors used by the regents to set tuition, things like what “peer universities” charge and the availability of loans and financial aid — things that have no bearing on the actual cost of furnishing instruction.

Brnovich not only questions the breathtaking rise in the price of attending an Arizona university. He also questions why the regents have failed to provide at least some cheaper options.

It strikes me that community colleges could offer four-year degrees to meet the constitutional mandate.

But the regents haven’t gone there — or anywhere, except ever deeper into students’ pockets. Because they can. Because no one has pushed back.

Perhaps this lawsuit will give the regents the political courage to take on Ducey and the Legislature or allow community colleges to do what the universities can’t or won’t do. (Follow the Constitution, that is.)

If so, that’s one Brnovich stunt I could stand and applaud.