Two veteran legislators, who typically are political opposites on the Legislature’s powerful Appropriations Committee, agreed in a debate last week the public should have more say about how the University System spends its money.

Sen. Richard Nass, R-York, got things going with what appeared to be a zinger aimed at Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook, who also is a part-time university professor.

“University professors, in general, are only teaching 10 to 12 hours a week,” Nass said. “I think it’s idiotic.” Nass also said the University of Maine System is offering programs that attract low enrollment or offer little hope for future employment. “Why are we offering women studies?” he asked, as an example, saying the program was well intended but a luxury in a state that is running low on cash.

Sen. Martin told the crowd gathered at the Maine Merchant’s Association’s annual awards lunch Friday he agreed, in part, with Nass.

“There’s not enough public discussion about what we’re doing at the University level,” Martin said. “We ought not to be duplicating (programs)…We can allocate them to the various campuses.”

Martin used as an example the engineering program. “We don’t need two programs,” he said, adding if a student wants an engineering degree, “they ought to be going to Orono.”

“We need to find someone that has the guts,” to take on the unions, he said. The University board of trustees “legally can’t because of union contracts.”

The debate was billed as a “State of the State Finances: A Mess or Misconception.”

Laurie Lachance, the former state economist and now head of the Maine Development Foundation, set the framework, saying state leaders need to “talk more in terms of investment instead of just spending.”

Two areas where the state has to invest, she said, are higher education and research and development.

“We need to be careful of this term ‘investing,'” Nass said, explaining that to him an investment was something “where you can measure the return.”

He said the state needs to look at tax and business policies that would create jobs, rather than simply push to educate more young people.

“What is the use if we don’t have jobs for them?” he asked.

Martin also called for creating programs where jobs are growing, notably in the healthcare field.

He praised the private University of New England for doing what he said the University System had failed to do – creating a medical school. UNE has a school of osteopathic medicine. And, as he repeated his call for the system to set up a school for pharmacists, who are in short supply here and elsewhere.

Prior to the debate, the Maine Merchants Association honored the Indian Hill Trading Post of Greenville as its “Retailer of the Year.”

Senators Lynn Bromley, D-South Portland, and Christine Savage, R-Union, were given government service awards for their pro-business legislation.

Senate President Beth Edmonds praised them at the lunch, saying, “they are two fine women who have served this state well.”