Recent votes in the Arizona Legislature targeting the power of faculty governance at public universities have been strongly partisan.

Republican lawmakers have proposed several bills fortifying the authority of the Arizona Board of Regents and university presidents while attempting to weaken the longstanding shared governance role of faculty at the three state universities — the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University.

In the most recent hearing on Feb. 14, Republican State Rep. Travis Grantham (District 14, Gilbert) presented House Bill 2735 before the House Appropriations committee. The bill’s vote fell along party lines, passing with all 10 Republican committee members voting yes, five Democrats voting no and two Democrats voting present.

Now, the bill will need approval by the Rules Committee to ensure it’s constitutional before it can be heard by the full House chamber.

“If this bill passes, it will impact faculty, staff and students, regardless of political affiliation,” said Carol Brochin, one of two UA faculty senate representatives for the College of Education and an associate professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies. 

The proposed bill swaps the faculty, administration and regents’ current shared participation in governance for a vague “consult” role by faculty. Specifically, revisions strike language from Arizona laws that empower faculty members of each university through their “elected faculty representatives” to “participate in” the governance of their respective universities.

Gov. Katie Hobbs did not respond to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the bill and representatives’ remarks.

In his presentation to the appropriations committee Feb. 14, Grantham said he believed the bill “is pretty much a nonpartisan issue.” Brochin agrees with Grantham’s sentiments about partisanship and thinks the divide had to do with its presentation.

“The votes on HB 2735 were split across party lines during yesterday’s vote because the way the bill was introduced and explained was misrepresented, and frankly not transparent about the far reaching implications,” Brochin said. 

Leila Hudson, the UA faculty senate chair and associate professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, echoed Brochin’s opinion. 

Hudson said the divide may have come from misinformation about what shared governance means — such as mistakenly believing that faculty representatives have control over budgets and resource allocation at universities, she said.

The UA’s principles of shared governance, signed by President Robert Robbins, define shared governance as “meaningful participation in institutional governance, emphasizing the importance of faculty involvement in selecting, hiring, and reviewing faculty and academic administrators, informing budgetary policy and strategy, and establishing academic and curricular policies.”

“What I gleaned is that the legislators have been badly misled about the nature of shared governance. So they need more exposure to actual participants of shared governance,” Hudson said.

In 1992, Senate Bill 1202 created the framework for shared governance among Arizona’s public universities. Three Democrats and one Republican sponsored the bill that was signed into law. 

“When shared governance was implemented decades ago formally, it was a bill sponsored by Republicans which had bipartisan support,” Hudson said. Now, she’s not sure what to make of the split.

“The only thing that’s clear is that [the bill’s] advocates are woefully underinformed and could benefit from more information and an opportunity to correct these deep misperceptions. It appears, and I’m speculating here, that people without adequate information are resorting to voting along party lines,” Hudson said.

At the legislative committee hearing, Grantham argued that the change is a mere formality and said that current law is partially to blame for the UA’s current financial situation. He said it’s crucial that faculty and universities understand the president is the ultimate decision maker at the university.

“We really need to make sure it’s clearer, apparently, in the law that this is the function of the president,” he said at the hearing. “Part of the reason the UA is in the position they’re in is because this wasn’t clear enough.”

Democratic State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, representing District 18 in Tucson, was one of the few legislators who challenged Grantham.

“Yes, clearly, there needs to be a central governance because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t do that,” Gutierrez said. “But I don’t think that that’s necessarily the issue and the faculty of UA is coming to me saying they’re not the ones that created that problem and they don’t want to be cut out of the process.”

HBl 2735 is one of three proposals passed through their respective committees that could further empower the board of regents. Senate Bill 1303 “requires the Arizona Board of Regent’s (ABOR’s) program for awarding honors endorsements affixed to high school diplomas to be made available for school district, charter school and private school students,” and Senate Bill 1306 “stipulates that any delegation of authority from the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) does not limit or otherwise affect ABOR’s responsibility to faithfully execute all of ABOR’s duties,” according to the bill summaries.

While the issues may not be partisan, votes on all three bills fell across party lines. Here’s a breakdown of the votes:

House Appropriations Committee vote on House Bill 2735 

• Rep. Michael Carbone (R, District 25) – Aye
• Rep. Selina Bliss (R, District 1) – Aye
• Rep. Joseph Chaplik, Vice-Chair (R, District 3) – Aye
• Rep. Julie Willoughby (R, District 13) – Aye
• Rep. Lupe Diaz (R, District 19) – Aye
• Rep. Timothy Dunn (R, District 25) – Aye
• Rep. Matt Gress (R, District 4) – Aye
• Rep. Quang Nguyen (R District 1) – Aye
• Rep. Barbara Parker (R, District 10) – Aye
• Rep. David Livingston, Chairman/bill co-sponsor (R, District 28) – Aye
• Rep. Nancy Gutierrez (D, District 18) – Nay
• Rep. Lorena Austin (D, District 9) – Nay
• Rep. Oscar De Los Santos (D, District 11) – Nay
• Rep. Judy Schwiebert (D, District 2) – Nay
• Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton (D, District 21) – Nay
• Rep. Seth Blattman (D, District 9) – Present 
• Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez (D, District 11) – Present 

Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Senate Bill 1303

• Sen. Shawnna Bolick (R, District 2) – Aye
• Sen. Wendy Rogers (R, District 7) – Aye
• Sen. Justine Wadsack (R, District 17) – Aye
• Sen. Anthony Kern (R, District 27) – Aye
• Sen. Flavio Bravo (D, District 26) – Nay
• Sen. Denise Epstein (D, District 12) – Nay
• Sen. Anna Hernandez (D, District 24) – Nay

Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Senate Bill 1306

• Sen. Shawnna Bolick (R, District 2) – Aye
• Sen. Wendy Rogers (R, District 7) – Aye
• Sen. Justine Wadsack (R, District 17) – Aye
• Sen. Anthony Kern (R, District 27) – Aye
• Sen. Flavio Bravo (D, District 26) – Nay
• Sen. Denise Epstein (D, District 12) – Nay
• Sen. Anna Hernandez (D, District 24) – Nay

Close window X

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Unless otherwise noted, you can republish Arizona Luminaria articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know: • Only republish articles with an Arizona Luminaria byline. • Credit us. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Arizona Luminaria” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Arizona Luminaria.” You must link the word “Arizona Luminaria” to the original URL of the story. • If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on azluminaria.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our Republish tag. • If you use canonical metadata, please use the Arizona Luminaria URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here. • Do not edit our text, cutlines or headlines, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “July 22” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”) • Contact us for permission to republish our photographs or illustrations. • It’s OK to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support AZ Luminaria's work. • Republishing does not give you the rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. AZ Luminaria understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites. • Do not republish our material wholesale, or automatically; please select stories to be republished individually. • Do not use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements. • Please contact us at info@azluminaria.org if you'd like to translate one of our stories into another language. • If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. • If you have any other questions, please contact us at info@azluminaria.org.

The vote breakdown on proposed bill to weaken Arizona university shared governance 

by Carolina Cuellar, AZ Luminaria
February 16, 2024

<h1>The vote breakdown on proposed bill to weaken Arizona university shared governance </h1> <p class="byline">by Carolina Cuellar, AZ Luminaria <br />February 16, 2024</p> <p>Recent votes in the Arizona Legislature targeting the power of faculty governance at public universities have been strongly partisan.</p> <p>Republican lawmakers have proposed several bills fortifying the authority of the Arizona Board of Regents and university presidents while attempting <a href="https://azluminaria.org/2024/02/14/proposed-arizona-bill-would-stifle-faculty-governance-at-ua-asu-and-nau/">to weaken the longstanding shared governance role of faculty at the three state universities</a> — the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University.</p> <p>In the most recent hearing on Feb. 14, Republican State Rep. Travis Grantham (District 14, Gilbert) presented House Bill 2735 before the House Appropriations committee. The bill’s vote fell along party lines, passing with all 10 Republican committee members voting yes, five Democrats voting no and two Democrats voting present.</p> <p>Now, the bill will need approval by the Rules Committee to ensure it’s constitutional before it can be heard by the full House chamber.</p> <div class="wp-block-group alignleft has-background" style="background-color:#ffb6470f"> <h4 class="wp-block-heading">How to get involved</h4> <ul> <li>To find your legislative district and contact your elected officials at the Arizona Legislature, click “Find My Legislator” at the top right on this <a href="https://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster/?body=H">House roster</a> and this <a href="https://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster/?body=S">Senate roster</a>.&nbsp;</li> <li>To register your opinion on a bill, use the <a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/RequestToSpeak/UpcomingAgendas">Request To Speak tool</a>. A manual is included on the left side of the page.</li> </ul></div> <p>“If this bill passes, it will impact faculty, staff and students, regardless of political affiliation,” said Carol Brochin, one of two UA faculty senate representatives for the College of Education and an associate professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies.&nbsp;</p> <p>The proposed bill swaps the faculty, administration and regents' current shared participation in governance for a vague “consult” role by faculty. <a href="https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/bills/HB2735P.pdf">Specifically, revisions strike language</a> from Arizona laws that empower faculty members of each university through their “elected faculty representatives” to “participate in” the governance of their respective universities.</p> <p>Gov. Katie Hobbs did not respond to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the bill and representatives’ remarks.</p> <p>In his presentation to the appropriations committee Feb. 14, Grantham said he believed the bill “is pretty much a nonpartisan issue.” Brochin agrees with Grantham’s sentiments about partisanship and thinks the divide had to do with its presentation.</p> <p>“The votes on HB 2735 were split across party lines during yesterday’s vote because the way the bill was introduced and explained was misrepresented, and frankly not transparent about the far reaching implications,” Brochin said.&nbsp;</p> <p>Leila Hudson, the UA faculty senate chair and associate professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, echoed Brochin’s opinion.&nbsp;</p> <p>Hudson said the divide may have come from misinformation about what shared governance means —&nbsp;such as mistakenly believing that faculty representatives have control over&nbsp;budgets and resource allocation at universities, she said.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://azluminaria.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DSCF1430-1024x754.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-17162" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">University of Arizona Faculty Senate chair Leila Hudson attends the Arizona Board of Regents meeting at the University of Arizona on, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023.</figcaption></figure> <p>The UA’s <a href="https://facultygovernance.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/Shared%20Governance%20Faculty%20Letter%20and%20MOU.pdf">principles of shared governance</a>, signed by President Robert Robbins, define shared governance as “meaningful participation in institutional governance, emphasizing the importance of faculty involvement in selecting, hiring, and reviewing faculty and academic administrators, informing budgetary policy and strategy, and establishing academic and curricular policies.”</p> <p>“What I gleaned is that the legislators have been badly misled about the nature of shared governance. So they need more exposure to actual participants of shared governance,” Hudson said.</p> <p>In 1992, <a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/4477">Senate Bill 1202</a> created the framework for shared governance among Arizona’s public universities. Three Democrats and one Republican sponsored the bill that was signed into law.&nbsp;</p> <p>“When shared governance was implemented decades ago formally, it was a bill sponsored by Republicans which had bipartisan support,” Hudson said. Now, she’s not sure what to make of the split.</p> <p>“The only thing that’s clear is that [the bill’s] advocates are woefully underinformed and could benefit from more information and an opportunity to correct these deep misperceptions. It appears, and I’m speculating here, that people without adequate information are resorting to voting along party lines,” Hudson said.</p> <p>At the legislative committee hearing, Grantham argued that the change is a mere formality and said that current law is partially to blame for the UA’s current financial situation. He said it’s crucial that faculty and universities understand the president is the ultimate decision maker at the university.</p> <p>“We really need to make sure it’s clearer, apparently, in the law that this is the function of the president,” he said at the hearing. “Part of the reason the UA is in the position they’re in is because this wasn’t clear enough.”</p> <p>Democratic State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, representing District 18 in Tucson, was one of the few legislators who challenged Grantham.</p> <p>“Yes, clearly, there needs to be a central governance because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t do that,” Gutierrez said. “But I don’t think that that’s necessarily the issue and the faculty of UA is coming to me saying they’re not the ones that created that problem and they don’t want to be cut out of the process.”</p> <p>HBl 2735 is one of three proposals passed through their respective committees that could further empower the board of regents. <a href="https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/summary/S.1303JUD.pdf">Senate Bill 1303</a> “requires the Arizona Board of Regent's (ABOR's) program for awarding honors endorsements affixed to high school diplomas to be made available for school district, charter school and private school students,” and <a href="https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/summary/S.1306JUD.pdf">Senate Bill 1306</a> “stipulates that any delegation of authority from the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) does not limit or otherwise affect ABOR's responsibility to faithfully execute all of ABOR's duties,” according to the bill summaries.</p> <p>While the issues may not be partisan, votes on all three bills fell across party lines. Here’s a breakdown of the votes:</p> <p><a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/81335">House Appropriations Committee vote on House Bill 2735</a> </p> <ul> <li>Rep. Michael Carbone (R, District 25) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Selina Bliss (R, District 1) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Joseph Chaplik, Vice-Chair (R, District 3) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Julie Willoughby (R, District 13) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Lupe Diaz (R, District 19) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Timothy Dunn (R, District 25) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Matt Gress (R, District 4) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Quang Nguyen (R District 1) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Barbara Parker (R, District 10) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. David Livingston, Chairman/bill co-sponsor (R, District 28) - Aye</li> <li>Rep. Nancy Gutierrez (D, District 18) - Nay</li> <li>Rep. Lorena Austin (D, District 9) - Nay</li> <li>Rep. Oscar De Los Santos (D, District 11) - Nay</li> <li>Rep. Judy Schwiebert (D, District 2) - Nay</li> <li>Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton (D, District 21) - Nay</li> <li>Rep. Seth Blattman (D, District 9) - Present&nbsp;</li> <li>Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez (D, District 11) - Present&nbsp;</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/80813">Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Senate Bill 1303</a></p> <ul> <li>Sen. Shawnna Bolick (R, District 2) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Wendy Rogers (R, District 7) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Justine Wadsack (R, District 17) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Anthony Kern (R, District 27) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Flavio Bravo (D, District 26) - Nay</li> <li>Sen. Denise Epstein (D, District 12) - Nay</li> <li>Sen. Anna Hernandez (D, District 24) - Nay</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/80816">Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Senate Bill 1306</a></p> <ul> <li>Sen. Shawnna Bolick (R, District 2) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Wendy Rogers (R, District 7) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Justine Wadsack (R, District 17) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Anthony Kern (R, District 27) - Aye</li> <li>Sen. Flavio Bravo (D, District 26) - Nay</li> <li>Sen. Denise Epstein (D, District 12) - Nay</li> <li>Sen. Anna Hernandez (D, District 24) - Nay</li> </ul> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://azluminaria.org/2024/02/16/the-vote-breakdown-on-proposed-bill-to-weaken-arizona-university-shared-governance/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://azluminaria.org&quot;&gt;AZ Luminaria&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/azluminaria.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/cropped-L-square-Primary.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://azluminaria.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=20659&amp;amp;ga4=291628854&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://azluminaria.org/2024/02/16/the-vote-breakdown-on-proposed-bill-to-weaken-arizona-university-shared-governance/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/azluminaria.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p> Copy to Clipboard

1