Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

Looks like ASU’s Koch-funded Center for the Study of Economic Liberty’s enthusiastic thumbs up for Gov. Doug Ducey’s Prop. 123 has paid off.

As in a multi-million-dollar payoff.

Mysteriously, someone over at the Capitol has inserted $5 million into next year’s proposed state budget for universities. The money, which if approved would be automatically appropriated every year, is earmarked for “economic freedom schools.”

While our leaders refuse to properly fund Arizona’s universities, it seems there’s a nice honeypot being set aside for schools that don't even offer a degree, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.

Arizona’s universities have endured the deepest cuts in the nation since the Great Recession, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Last year alone, the Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey cut $99 million from universities – a 13 percent cut in state funding. This, on top of $400 million in previous recession-era cuts.

State support for universities has dropped from $1.1 billion in 2008 to $550 million this year -- from $9,439 per student in 2008 to $4,196 per student this year.

Universities are asking for $32 million more in next year’s budget.

So naturally, some mysterious person has suggested $5 million – money earmarked only for "economic freedom schools."

Nobody knows who put it there. One theory has it that the $5 million was inserted by Senate President Andy Biggs and House Speaker David Gowan -- two congressional candidates seeking favor with big donors to conservative causes. People like Diamondbacks' owners Ken and Randy Kendrick,who are major donors to one of those “economic freedom schools”, the University of Arizona’s Center for the Philosophy of Freedom.

Me? I’m thinking this has Ducey’s fingerprints all over it.

Nobody knows who put it there, but it seems fairly clear to me. (Though there is an alternate theory being bandied about. Read on.)

ASU’s Center for the Study of Economic Liberty was created in November 2014 – just after Ducey's election. The center was funded with $3.5 million from the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation.

You know, the people who helped raise Ducey’s profile in 2012 by pouring dark money into his campaign to defeat a sales tax for K-12 schools?

The people who lined Ducey's 2014 path to the governor's office by pumping millions of dollars in dark money into the campaign?

The ones to whom Ducey pays homage a couple of times a year, at secret summits where the Kochs and their deep-pocketed pals screen candidates and extol the virtues of private prisons, publicly funded private schools and tax cuts and such?

In October, ASU’s new Koch-funded Center for the Study of Economic Liberty endorsed Ducey’s Prop. 123 plan to temporarily boost school funding by siphoning more money from the state land trust.

Now, suddenly, someone has plugged $5 million into next year's proposed budget for universities for “economic freedom schools.”

The money, the Cap Times reports, would go to three centers, all of which have received seed funding from the Koch Foundation:

UofA's Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. ASU’s Center for Political Thought and Leadership.

And yes, ASU’s Center for the Study of Economic Liberty.

Turns out payback’s a …. blessing.