For Maine to know whether its new community college system and its reformed University of Maine System are going to work well, the Legislature needs to leave their basic structures alone long enough to see results. Instead, legislators have several bills that undo last year’s work or add new layers of oversight, which, while understandable, is premature.

The bills, including those by Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, chair of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, are a reasonable response to conditions 12 or 24 months ago, when cooperation between the two higher education systems wasn’t as good as it should have been and UMaine Chancellor Joe Westphal was receiving plenty of negative reviews of his reform and consolidation plans.

But things have changed since then. Systems representatives have made at least some progress on working together and the chancellor opened up his reform plan to amendments and made several significant ones. Why reward good behavior with time-consuming bills that halt progress?

One legislative concern makes particular sense: Sen. Mitchell would create a governing board to oversee all higher education, which many states have but Maine lacks. Officials of the community college system dislike the idea because they fear their new, much smaller system would be overwhelmed by the university system. They have a good point.

The purpose of a higher-ed authority is to coordinate the system and use the state’s resources to efficiently and effectively deliver services to students. If lawmakers want to help, they could pass a resolve inviting officials from the two systems to appear before the Education Committee and describe how they are meeting the missions of access, affordability and transfer of credits without the overseeing board. Then invite them back next year to provide an update.

Well before then, however, it will become clear to all of Maine whether the reformed UMaine System will work and how well the two systems are working together. Legislative reform then, if still needed, would not be speculative and would not damage the initiative shown by the systems.

Lawmakers are right to want to be involved in this process, but having joined the process after the systems began their own reform, they need to wait until those processes have had a chance to show results.