Surprise! The Arizona Legislature made a mistake! They underestimated the budget when they passed it early this year. As it turns out, they missed about $300 million, which put our rainy day fund at a robust $750 million.

In their effort to get their budget passed, the legislature slashed $100 million from the state universities. This put a huge strain on all three universities and many articles were written through the spring and the summer about the contortions each university was undergoing to try to salvage some of their programs without increased tuitions.

There is an effort under way to restore some of the lost funding for the K-12 budgets and hopefully we’ll see some improvement there, but we should not forget to include the three state universities.

While the funds are available, the legislators should make every effort to restore as much as they can to the universities’ budgets.