Koch-sponsored members of the Arizona legislature have been drastically cutting state funding for the University of Arizona for years. Market fundamentalists in the UA Freedom Center encouraged those legislators because they believe in privatizing higher education.

To make ends meet after the cuts, the University administration began running UA like a business. Academics, not entrepreneurs, they made some poor investments (such as buying scandal-ridden Ashford University and lending the UA Athletics Department $90 million). When the hoped-for returns on these investments did not materialize, a $200 million budget crisis reared its ugly head.

To dig itself out of the fiscal crisis, the UA administration turned to austerity – which is another right-wing, market fundamentalist approach. The administration decided to freeze hiring and salary increases for faculty, lay off many non-tenured faculty, and eliminate tuition guarantees and research assistant positions for students. On April 18th, 2023, the administration told the Arizona Board of Regents that their plan would reduce the deficit to $52 million.

Since the Freedom Center’s propaganda is at least partially responsible for the current budget crisis, the Center should help balance the University’s budget. According to an October 19, 2023 document released by UA in response to a public records request, the Freedom Center was now sitting on more than $7 million of taxpayer money! The Freedom Center also has additional funds from private donors, including $250,000 from the Koch Foundation in 2023 alone. With almost TWO YEARS of tax funding in reserve, the Freedom Center is far more solvent than the UA as a whole.

A $7 million surplus was not enough. The “Freedom” Caucus in the Arizona State Legislature put a $4.3 million line item for the Freedom Center into the 2024 budget. After pressure from Kochs Off Campus! and concerned citizens, Governor Hobbs deleted the line item and transferred the $4.3 million to the University of Arizona’s general operating budget. The UA – craven as always – gave that $4.3 million to the Freedom Center anyway.

The UA Administration should have clawed back the $4.3 million it gave to the Freedom Center in 2023 and ceased funding the Freedom Center altogether. Unfortunately, it did not.

The “Freedom” Caucus’s latest dodge inserts language into the final FY 2027 state budget explicitly prohibiting the University of Arizona from cutting the Freedom Center's budget by more than 2.5% per year -- thus shielding it from the deeper higher education budget cuts impacting other parts of the university system. The 2027 budget bill gives the same funding protection to the Freedom Center’s sister institutions—the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and the Economic Policy Institute at Northern Arizona University.