This financial autonomy of the Regents, once an appropriation is made by the Legislature, has not gone unquestioned, however, particularly by the Auditor-General. The University fund from early years has been borrowed by the State which until 1896 paid the original interest rate of seven percent. The Auditor-General then decided that the legal rate of six percent should be enforced. The matter was laid before the Supreme Court, however, and the old rate was restored. In 1900 it was definitely ruled by the Attorney-General that "the Auditor-General has no authority to refuse to audit and pay vouchers for real estate purchased by the Board of Regents," and subsequently in 1911, the Supreme Court maintained that the "judgment of the Regents as to the legality and expediency of expenditures for the use and maintenance of the institution" could not be considered "subordinate to that of the Auditor-General."
The powers of the Regents have also been strengthened by other rulings of the Attorney-Generals of the State. Thus in 1900 the power of the Regents to determine student fees was declared not subject to legislative control, while in 1911 the same freedom in the matter of the determination of entrance requirements was conceded. The Board was also declared in 1908 free from the application of an act of the previous year providing for the approval and regulation of salaries in the various state institutions.
The University has thus been as fortunate in the development of its relations with the State as it has been in its internal growth. Though there have been many critical times, the movement has always been forward. The Regents have been careful and conservative in their relations with the Legislature, but they have insisted upon the independence of the University and have been sustained in this position with increasing firmness by the Supreme Court. The Legislature has shown an ever-increasing friendliness toward the University and has never refused to come to the aid of the institution, whatever its views as to the constitutional questions involved in the establishment of the University. This was shown as never before by the 1919 Legislature, which not only granted to the University appropriations amounting to $2,200,000, but gave it by the unanimous vote of both houses, a thing which had never happened before. The Legislature even included one item for which the officers of the University had hardly dared hope to have favorable action at that session.