Tucson business leaders, boosters rally behind U of A President 'Bobby' Robbins

It had been a rough week for supporters of University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins, but you wouldn’t know it from the group of “Bobby” boosters circling the shiny oval table in businessman Jim Click’s office.

Those gathered at the 4 p.m. meeting Friday included local business leaders, wealthy donors, prominent Wildcat alumni and an elected official. And, despite Gov. Katie Hobbs’ letter the day before blasting UA leadership, the sudden departure of Robbins’ athletic director, the emergency-imposed university-wide hiring freeze, the unrest among UA faculty and staff and Interim CFO John Arnold saying Thursday that UA's spending trajectory is “alarming,” those at the table had nothing but praise for Robbins.

“We just want to talk about how much we admire and respect him,” said Click. “I really appreciate this man for what he’s done for this community.”

Click, the auto dealer, community/political leader and donor to charitable causes, had organized the meeting and filled the roundtable with major players including philanthropist Sarah Smallhouse, president of the Thomas R. Brown Foundations; Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher; Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott; and businessmen Humberto Lopez, Ryan Harper, Mike Myers and Matt Russell. Lopez, of HSL Properties Inc., said he has donated “probably $20 million” to the UA just since Robbins became president in 2017.

The purpose, Click said, was for these community leaders to share their impassioned support of Robbins. Participants repeatedly commented that only negative voices and “the squeaky wheel” make headlines so they want to raise their voices to say the UA, and Tucson, need Robbins to stay and to provide continuity in university leadership. Lesher said she has been encouraging Tucsonans to call Hobbs’ chief of staff to voice their opinions.

The group said Robbins has achieved much at the helm, including what several said was essentially preventing Tucson from losing Banner-University Medical Center; spearheading successful fundraising campaigns; caring about students’ success and supporting initiatives such as the UA’s Osiris-Rex space mission. But in the face of the current UA financial troubles, Smallhouse warned that there will be more and more calls for Robbins to resign and Click said he worries Robbins might quit.

Since Robbins revealed what he has called a UA financial crisis in mid-November, he has appeared before the Faculty Senate multiple times to receive intense criticism of the way his leadership team has handled university finances. Faculty and the governor have called for an external audit, and the union representing faculty, staff and student workers recently called for Robbins’ resignation.

But his admirers at Friday’s gathering said the UA’s financial situation must be seen in more complete context. Citing interim CFO Arnold’s report Thursday that the UA’s budget deficit last fiscal year was $140 million, “that’s probably roughly 3, 4, 5ish percent of the university’s total spend” of a few billion dollars, said Harper, who is an adjunct professor at the UA Eller College of Management. “I think most universities have deficit spent over the last five years.”

Several said Robbins is doing the right thing by “pausing” hiring, pay increases and certain other spending while a corrective plan is worked out, and that this is what any business sometimes must do.

“We’re real prejudiced,” Click said of the attendees’ feelings toward Robbins. “We don’t know the ins and outs of the financials. I know they’re going to fix it. I’ve got confidence they will fix it.”

Responding to Hobbs

After Hobbs released a letter Thursday night questioning UA leadership and the process in which the financial crisis is being handled, many university community members, including faculty and staff, pushed for a vote of “no confidence” in Robbins.

Hobbs also said the appointment of Arnold as interim UA CFO could be a conflict of interest, as he is also the executive director of the Arizona Board of Regents, the oversight panel for the state’s public universities.

“I don’t understand where the conflict of interest is,” Myers, a businessman and former chair of the UA’s Alumni Association, said in Click’s office. “It’s not like he’s reporting to Bobby and it’s not like he gets to make all the decisions for ABOR. He’s just one person.”

Others noted that Arnold has extensive experience in finances and administration, having worked in the past for several Arizona governors from both political parties.

Hobbs wrote she is concerned about UA’s purchase under Robbins of an online school, the controversial former Ashford University, which is now UA Global Campus.

“The UAGC acquisition is a great example that he’s playing the long game,” countered Scott, the Pima County supervisor.

Harper, who said his career involves acquisitions and mergers, said UA was essentially buying an internet platform from Ashford and that made sense in order to build an institution from that starting point to serve online students.

CEO of university

Several at the meeting said the role of a university president is less academic and more businesslike. They often called Robbins the CEO rather than the president.

The UA Faculty Senate voted “no confidence” in Robbins in spring 2023, after a consultants’ report conducted for the university cited UA security and safety lapses before the fatal shooting in October 2022 of Professor Thomas Meixner, allegedly by a former grad student who had lodged numerous threats known to university officials. The UA recently paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to Meixner’s family.

“I think it’s really inflammatory whenever you bring (up) the fact about the killing on campus,” Myers said. “Frankly, I think it’s impossible to completely police that unless we put walls all the way around the university or any other building. So personally, I would set that aside.”

“I think the thing I hear when the faculty is like ‘well this and this and this and there’s a murder and this and this and this,’ I think, frankly, a lot of that you can’t expect to be solved like that,” Myers added, snapping his fingers. “You got to let things be fixed, and you can’t be beating the people up on the sidelines that are trying to fix it.”

UA donor Lopez said he couldn’t run his company with tenured employees whose jobs are guaranteed.

“If I could not fire or get rid of my employees, like you have the tenured professors, I don’t know how the heck I could run my company,” Lopez said. “I wouldn’t have the success that I have today.”

Ten percent of new hires at the university are tenure-track positions, which faculty have complained is too low a percentage.

Spending issues

Athletics has been a contentious issue after Robbins, in a December Faculty Senate meeting, revealed the university loaned the department about $86 million in recent years. Arnold, in updating the regents Thursday about UA’s finances, said athletics is operating at a $30 million deficit.

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Smallhouse said she thinks athletics may be “folded into” the university.

“Big donors are going to come unglued,” she said. “My understanding is, I think on Monday, they’re going to be presenting a sketch of where they’re going.”

Smallhouse added that perhaps there had been too much funding of different athletics and academic programming and acknowledged Robbins was “ultimately responsible” for the deficit.

Myers said the issue of overfunding was something Robbins “inherited” because of the lack of centralization within the university.

“This has been going on for 50 years,” he said. “It’s not Bobby that started to spend. It’s been going on for literally 50-60 years,” adding that “the faculty goes crazy” when presidents in the past have tried to rein in the spending.

Accessibility 

Robbins is incredibly accessible, said these prominent Tucsonans, who say he is often available at all hours of the day, by phone or on the golf course, and readily gives out his cell phone number to students and others.

Contrary to their experience, the Arizona Daily Star has been rebuffed in multiple requests for sit-down interviews with Robbins. Public records requests to the university often take months or much longer to be fulfilled.

“He’s accessible,” said Myers, who texted Robbins during the meeting to say “I’ve got the newspaper here” and ask if he was willing to be interviewed by the Star. Robbins immediately answered yes, Myers said.

“There are certain things that you can’t talk about,” Click said, defending some of the lack of transparency from the university. “You got to remember that if some people are not with you anymore, (sometimes) you can’t tell people why.”

Earlier this month, it was reported by the Star and Tucson Agenda that former CFO Lisa Rulney, who oversaw the budgeting office that led to a $240 million miscalculation of UA cash reserves divulged in November, has stayed at the university in an advising role and retained her over $500,000 salary despite Robbins telling the regents in December that she had resigned.

Robbins announced Monday that athletic director Dave Heeke is suddenly leaving but has not publicly explained why. Under questioning by the Star, UA later said Heeke will be paid for the rest of his contract through March 2025.

Harper said “leadership is a learning experience” and added that he is confident the UA will be more open in the coming months.

Health care, med school

The boosters emphasized the connection between the university, one of the largest local employers, and Tucson’s economy and cultural, intellectual and economic opportunities for residents.

“If Tucson is going to be successful, it’s going to help the university and vice versa,” said Smallhouse. “We have enough problems. We don’t want to create unnecessary ones. It’s easy to destroy things; it’s really hard to build them.”

She said Arizona State University has benefitted from Michael Crow’s long-term presidency there and she and others said they think UA has suffered from too much presidential turnover through the years.

Smallhouse pointed to the work Robbins has done with the UA medical schools and health sciences programs, saying that “he’s really transformed (the university) for the better.”

UA partners with Banner Health at Banner-University Medical Center and at Banner-University Medical Center South.

According to Lesher, the Pima County administrator, “we were dangerously close to losing that hospital and that facility,” but because of Robbins’ relationships with executives at the company, Banner stayed.

Must make unpopular decisions

Myers said there is a “silent majority” of Robbins supporters. He added he is so excited about Robbins’ leadership that he recently gave well over $100,000 to the university.

“I think he makes good decisions and they’re just not always popular,” Myers said. “And then you read, well, the faculty is angry. Well, guess what, if (Robbins) hadn’t done that, we might have laid off 40% of you and closed three departments six months later.”

There isn’t one reason for the financial crisis, said Smallhouse.

“Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler,” she said, quoting Albert Einstein. “You’re going in that direction. It’s complex. There’s not one thing.”

Amid the mounting public pressure on Robbins, Click said he would “walk the plank” for the university president.

“I really, truly believe he’s the right leader at the right time. He’s got issues, and I have confidence. He’s got to stand up and fix it. And if he doesn’t,” Click paused and looked down at his folded hands, shaking his head slightly. “He’s just got to fix them.”