University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal is being punished by the Maine Legislature for following its direction to run the system more efficiently. His proposed reform last year actually contained reforms and that was unacceptable to lawmakers, who have put in the next state budget a measure that fixes the number of campuses at seven and requires their names and locations to remain unchanged.

Legislators made one fair point about the chancellor’s reform: when it was introduced, the chancellor had not consulted with or even informed nearly enough UMS faculty and staff. He paid for that over a long spring and summer of visiting the campuses and gathering suggestions, several of which were included in the delayed reform. But a major change – the merger of the University of Maine at Augusta and the University of Southern Maine – remained in the plan, irritating UMA faculty and their supporters, including those in the Legislature.

So lawmakers – perhaps to show the chancellor how to really cut the public out of any discussion – added an amendment to the majority budget late at night, without a single study or hearing, to keep the campuses and the names. University of Maine System trustees, who may have had the impression they were the ones with an oversight role, should be outraged.

The amendment to the budget gets worse, however, because the name and location restrictions directly precede $6.1 million in new funding for the system. Could the message be any clearer? If UMS wants money, it will do exactly as the Legislature says. The new money appeared in the budget proposal, not coincidentally, less than a day after Chancellor Westphal said the UMA-USM merger would be delayed.

Lawmakers have several choices with UMS. They can fund the current structure adequately by adding tens of millions to the system budget; they can encourage reform of the system to help it become more efficient and let the chancellor do his job; or they can reform the system themselves. But they can’t freeze the current system into place and then not fund it adequately. Certainly, reform is still technically possible under the amendment in the budget plan, but the message it sends is terrible. It is purse-string politics, last-minute meddling.

If lawmakers really wanted to help they would fund an outside review of the system to determine how efficiently the system ran now and they would ask why so many Maine tax dollars go to higher-education administrators, the number of which is way above the national average per full-time equivalent student.

They may well decide that seven campuses or eight or nine is what the state should have, but they should be honest about the cost of this and tell taxpayers that they’re going to pay a lot for the privilege.

That sort of candor would give the public a chance to understand its choices. It would base policy on the public’s hopes for higher education rather than punishment for offending a minority of lawmakers.