Nick Gier at his best. 
I would like to respond to Bob Lokken’s defense of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s proposal to consolidate “back-office” functions at University of Idaho, Idaho State University and Boise State University in Boise.
Lokken was co-chairman of Otter’s Higher Education Task Force, and its report referenced consolidation of university services in Maine.
Re-organizing six relatively small campuses and the University of Maine at Orono, the state went to a chancellor system in 2012.
In Idaho that would only have been possible decades ago when ISU was the UI at Pocatello and BSU was still a junior college.
Consolidating IT, human resources and finances, the Maine system was able to freeze tuition for five years.
Apparently, Lokken does not know tuition has now gone up 2.5 percent this year.
Lokken claims the Maine system saved “more than $80 million,” a suspiciously large figure that I could not verify.
Notice how he phrases it. It’s not that he could falsify what Lokken said. He is unable to verify it.
By phrasing it this way, Gier leads his readers to believe that it is false.