Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a statement Monday she is demanding an in-person meeting with the Arizona Board of Regents and University of Arizona leadership to “discuss next steps,” saying the board “failed in their oversight role.”
The governor’s statement came after Regent Lyndel Manson and Regent Chair Fred DuVal publicly berated the UA Faculty Senate during a recent board of regents meeting.
Update: Gov. Hobbs’ office has scheduled the meeting for next week, according to interim CFO John Arnold at a UA staff council meeting Tuesday. He said Hobbs originally wanted to meet Tuesday but rescheduled after learning Arnold and UA President Robbins were already set to be on a panel to answer UA staff questions about the financial plan.
“In the February 22nd meeting, an ABOR member openly called for President Robbins to overthrow the faculty’s governing body,” Hobbs said in the statement. “This behavior is appalling and unacceptable.”
The board’s top official, Regent Chair Fred DuVal, singled out and condemned UA faculty senate Chair Leila Hudson after she alluded to a possible conflict of interest within the board during a Feb. 19 Faculty Senate meeting. Manson followed up on DuVal’s comments calling members of the Faculty Senate embarrassingly dysfunctional and encouraging UA President Robert Robbins to establish new faculty leadership at the university.
Hudson said her concern stemmed from DuVal’s former position as a managing director of investment firm Amicus Investors, which invests “in universities, partnering with them to help realize their master plans,” according to the website.
“Before I joined this board, I had a client called Amicus that was in the business of public-private financing partnerships for universities. Frankly, it failed to land business, it generated no income, and went out of business on August 20, 2017. I returned to this Board a year after that,” DuVal said at the regents meeting on Feb. 22.
DuVal served Hudson a cease-and-desist letter on the same day as the regents’ meeting. The letter said “Dr. Hudson caused injury to Mr. DuVal’s reputation.”
Hudson is one of 56 elected faculty on the Faculty Senate and recently won re-election with 750 votes — almost two-thirds of the 1,201 cast for the position, according to a press release from the UA’s Committee on Elections.
Hobbs addressed DuVal’s actions in her statement.
“Chair DuVal and members of the Board of Regents appear more concerned with saving face than fixing the problems they created,” Hobbs wrote. “Instead of taking any accountability and guiding with a steady hand, ABOR is circling the wagons and announcing they are litigating personal grudges during Board meetings.”
DuVal responded to Hobbs’ words with a statement to Arizona Luminaria Monday in which he side-stepped questions about Hobbs’ comments denouncing his decision to pursue legal action against Hudson.
“The Arizona Board of Regents appreciates the Governor’s engagement with financial issues related to the University of Arizona, and we look forward to this opportunity to answer questions and allay any miscommunication,” he said in the emailed statement.
DuVal added that the board “strived at all times to be transparent, detailed and specific in the information provided to the Governor’s office and the general public” and that it “takes seriously its constitutional duty to oversee each of our state’s public universities.”
Hobb’s statement echoes the sentiments of many UA faculty, staff and students now facing cuts and layoffs due to the school’s financial shortfall.
“I cannot be more clear: because of Chair Duval and the Board’s actions, university employees are going to lose their jobs. Attacking faculty is not, and never will be, the answer,” she said.
The board of regents, the governing body which oversees Arizona’s public universities including finances, only recently publicly acknowledged its role in the UA financial crisis. At the Feb. 22 meeting, John Arnold, the board’s executive director and UA’s interim chief financial officer, admitted that the board missed signs in the university’s financial statements that indicated a problem.
“In retrospect, we probably should have understood a little bit better what was going on with Fiscal Year 22,” Arnold said at the meeting.
This is Hobbs’ second letter to the board in which she expressed dissatisfaction with the transparency and leadership of the board and UA officials. Under state law Hobbs, as governor, is an ex-officio member of the board of regents, serving while she holds office. She had opportunities to attend all meetings and access any board documents, which would include an early review of actions or inactions by UA leaders revealing the financial crisis.
Gov. Hobbs did not respond to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the statement.
In a Jan. 25 letter to DuVal and Arnold, Hobbs called for independent oversight “to restore faith and trust in the university” after a news investigation that exposed university officials’ knowledge of the risk and faults of the school’s Ashford University acquisition, now known as the University of Arizona Global Campus.
Hobbs and university stakeholders have asked for John Arnold to step down from his role as interim UA CFO, citing his position with the board of regents while working at the UA as a conflict of interest. Faculty, staff and students have also repeatedly asked for President Robert Robbins’ resignation.
Robbins and Arnold will attend a UA Staff Council forum Feb. 27 to answer discuss the financial action plan and answer questions from the UA staff who have been calling for greater transparency.
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