North Dakota State University ignored the Legislature's explicit directions when it bought two downtown Fargo buildings last year for its business college and architecture department, senators say.

Sen. Randy Christmann, R-Hazen, described the action as "repulsive," while Sen. Joel Heitkamp, D-Hankinson, said it went "to the heart and soul" of legislators' misgivings about the budget authority that lawmakers have ceded to the state university system.

"The university system has been doing what it wants to do, when it wants to do it, and I imagine they will continue. But it is not their fault," Christmann said. "It is our fault, because we are the enablers."

The sparks flew Tuesday as the North Dakota Senate was debating amendments to the university system's budget bill. Senators approved the amendments on a voice vote, and the bill itself could be debated again as early as today.

If legislative directives are going to be disregarded, "it would beg the question of whether any of these amendments really mean anything," Heitkamp said.

Keith Bjerke, NDSU's vice president for university relations, said he was baffled by the remarks. The school's purchase of two former insurance buildings was carried out with privately raised money and provided a better location and more space for NDSU's needs at a cheaper price, he said.

"We thought it was a win-win," Bjerke said.

Two years ago, the Legislature's budget bill for North Dakota's university system included a section giving NDSU permission to raise money to build a new building for its business college on the university's campus.

Last October, NDSU announced it had bought the former Pioneer Mutual Life and Lincoln National Life buildings in downtown Fargo for $3.54 million. They will be used for the school's business college and its architecture and landscape architecture departments.

Joseph Chapman, the university's president, said at the time that buying the buildings rather that building a new one on campus would save about $3.5 million and give the university about 11,000 square feet in additional floor space.

Bjerke said university officials believed they only needed permission from the Board of Higher Education to change the plans. The board approved the purchase of the buildings.

"The simple fact is, no state money goes into it," Bjerke said. "As we started raising money, we kind of hit a plateau, and we couldn't build the building that we needed. And other opportunity presented itself to allow us to have a better facility for the dollars that we had."

One of the amendments to the university system's new budget bill gives NDSU permission to go off campus for a building for its business school. The section prompted senators on Tuesday to recall what the bill had said two years earlier.

Sen. Raymon Holmberg, R-Grand Forks, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the section an acknowledgment of the university's "change of plans" when explaining the amendments on the Senate floor Tuesday.

"What we're doing is, we're approving something that they've already done," Heitkamp said to Holmberg. "That is correct," Holmberg replied.

Last month, Christmann, who is the assistant Senate Republican majority leader, referred to the university system as a "monster" and an "education cartel" in a Senate floor speech.

He took up the cudgel again Tuesday, saying the NDSU building issue was a "perfect example" of "repulsive" behavior.

"If we were talking about a person here instead of a cartel, we would make a choice. When we see behavior that is unacceptable, we'd make a choice, whether we impose consequences, or whether we go and pick up the pieces and enable them to continue the kind of behavior … that we did not approve of," Christmann said. "I think we all know what we would do if we were talking about an individual."

The bill is HB1003. The section in question is Section 21.