> it had already been decommissioned prior to the collapse

The telescope was decommissioned one month before the collapse. The funding issues, lack of sufficient maintenance, and the inevitable decay that led to the collapse took a few decades more than that.

> Yes, decommissioning does indicate funding is being cut, but it was unrelated to the collapse.

The collapse was a direct consequence of the funding being cut. Maintenance was not performed on issues that were observed many years before exactly on the sockets that failed.

That's... kind of the point. Catastrophic failures usually have non-technical contributory causes as well, and we ignore that at our peril.