AUGUSTA – The University of Maine System’s controversial strategic plan took center stage Tuesday during lengthy public hearings on two bills calling for more public and legislative participation in major policy and restructuring decisions affecting UMS.

Speaking before the Legislature’s Education Committee, faculty, students and administrators from a number of UMS campuses packed the room, offering testimony both for and against the bills which, if passed, would restrict trustees’ authority to make decisions about the university system’s structure and operation. The public hearing lasted five hours with approximately 80 people requesting to speak.

Sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, LD 1241 requires the University of Maine System board of trustees to submit any restructuring plan to the Legislature’s Education Committee prior to final adoption or implementation. As emergency legislation, the bill would apply to the strategic plan adopted by trustees last September.

LD 1005, sponsored by Sen. Scott Cowger, D-Hallowell, requires UMS to seek comment from parties including community members, administrators and professors, and Maine Community College System representatives who would be affected by a major policy decision.

Both bills would go beyond a provision added at the last minute to the budget bill passed last month that essentially would prevent the renaming or merging of any of the seven campuses without legislative approval.

The strategic plan had called for renaming six of the campuses and merging the University of Maine at Augusta with the University of Southern Maine.

On Tuesday, many supporters of the bills were students and professors from UMA and from University College of Bangor, which the strategic plan called for converting into a higher-education park occupied by Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor and the University of Maine.

Supporters said the Legislature has a duty and responsibility to oversee higher education in the state and denied that the bills would result in micromanaging of the university system. They said many faculty members and students had never endorsed the plan and that a review process would give people time to weigh in. Having lawmakers and the public look over the plan would provide a system of “checks and balances,” and ensure that the system administration’s collective feet were being held to the fire, they said.

“UMS belongs to the people of Maine, not the administration or the board of trustees,” said Don Ansbach, a professor at the University of Southern Maine.

But opponents of the bills said the university system would suffer if the nonpartisan, citizen board of trustees were politicized. UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal said the legislation would be “very costly, overly bureaucratic and damaging to the university system’s ability to recruit and retain students, faculty and staff.” The bills don’t specify the amount of time the Legislature would have to examine issues and are vague and open-ended about how much power the Legislature has to make decisions, according to the chancellor.

“The legislation being considered today gives unlimited authority to the Legislature to decide academic, programmatic, and administrative issues,” said board Chairman Charles Johnson. The board of trustees was created to “minimize the tug of war involving political and parochial interests,” he said. “The Legislature created a system and a citizen board to plan and act effectively and responsibly on behalf of the public interest.”

Trustee L. Joseph Wishcamper of South Portland said he couldn’t serve on the board of trustees if “I felt I couldn’t act independent of the political process.” The whole purpose of creating a citizen board would be compromised by LD 1241, he said.

Trustees’ “only interest is in the public interest, and we have no ax to grind,” said Wishcamper, who admitted the plan wasn’t perfect.

Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez disputed that the university system hadn’t obtained public comment, and said she had spent months traveling across the state speaking to faculty, staff and students about the plan. Trustees made changes to the draft plan based on people’s comments. “The board of trustees isn’t playing a shell game with the public,” she said, noting that the planning process had been described and that “not one person in seven months called me or told me they protested the process until after it was unveiled.”

But Rep. Arthur Lerman, D-Augusta, who supported both bills, said the proposed merger of UMA and USM is “a matter of public interest and shouldn’t be resolved exclusively within the system.” He said the idea was not to get in the way of implementing the strategic plan because “there’s much about it we’ve embraced.”

Casey Harris, a University College of Bangor student, said, “I don’t believe that this bill will take power from the system, but will allow Maine citizens’ power to be a part of solutions that address issues facing public higher education in Maine.”

Opponents also said the implementation process was moving along smoothly and that the bills would derail some of the progress made to enhance distance education and the system’s libraries, among other things.

But Ron Mosley, University of Maine at Machias professor and president of the system’s faculty union, said people are simply “implementing someone else’s plan. This is not a plan we would have written. We’d like to rewrite it and do it right from the beginning.”

Work sessions on the bill have yet to be scheduled.