Knaperek slams Superintendent Horne and Republican Leadership in Legislature for Tuition Raises!

Well, not in so many words, really. In fact, not at all. While that's the inescapable implication of her comments in a recent letter, Knaperek somehow manages instead only to isolate Governor Napolitano for explicit criticism.

See, State Representative Laura Knaperek (R, LD-17) just sent a letter to ASU Student Body President Cori Widmer, according to a story broken on "Lofty Donkey", criticizing the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) for raising tuition.

What's funny is that Knaperek slyly conflates ABOR's tuition raises with Governor Napolitano because of the Governor's ex officio membership on ABOR.

However, as Tedski notes, Knaperek neglects to say that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is ALSO an ex officio member of ABOR. Now, surely the Superintendent of Public Instruction is a fairly relevant role in all of this, wouldn't you think? At least as relevant to ABOR as the Governor.

Tedski also points out that, as stated in Knaperek's own letter, the Legislature is responsible for a full third of funding for state colleges and, if they were to approve more funding, the tuition wouldn't need to be raised to begin with.

So instead of actually addressing the source of the funding crunch, Knaperek blames the people who have to deal with the crunch by raising tuition, and then selectively blames only one of those people, while giving her partisan comrade a pass.

Well, perhaps Knaperek was well intentioned. If so, I'm sure we'll all soon see her letter lamenting Superintendent Horne's failure to serve our state well on ABOR, and ditto the Republican leadership in the Legislature for it's failure to adequately fund the state's universities.

Meanwhile, I figure the heading of this post is at least as accurate as her criticism of Napolitano.