Talking about hubris.

Members of the University of Maine System board of trustees are rightly upset with a portion of the state budget.

Lawmakers, upset over plans to reorganize the system, put language in that forbids the trustees from making any structural changes to the system, including merging campuses or changing names.

Some trustees, according to The Associated Press, have threatened to quit in response. Two ended their terms early in a largely symbolic move.

State Sen. John Martin, who wrote the language about the university, had this to say to the AP: “I hope they (the trustees) have learned from their mistakes. In the future, the strategic plan of a public institution should be conducted in public and not in a private room somewhere.”

We couldn’t agree more. But we might start our critique with the state budget, which was written mostly out of sight by members of the Appropriations Committee on which Martin sits. Then, because the budget had to be passed before April 1, the budget was steamrolled through the House and Senate.

The Sun Journal reluctantly supported the budget and recognized the hard work involved in creating it, but it was not a model for open governance, and deliberations were often conducted in private, late at night and away from the media and the public.

The University of Maine trustees and Chancellor Joseph Westphal could have been more inclusive. But so could members of the Legislature. Lawmakers, led by Martin, overreached.

That, now, has been compounded by hubris.