No smoking gun. No eye-popping scandal. Instead, it appears the former president of the University of North Texas was locked in a power struggle with the chancellor of the UNT system over the details of running the university.

Thousands of documents released Thursday afternoon show former President Gretchen Bataille and Chancellor Lee Jackson disagreed on how much to raise tuition, whether to consolidate some campus technology and human resource departments, and the future of downtown Dallas classroom facilities.

The mystery of what drove off Bataille, who was popular with faculty and students, has remained as neither Bataille nor Jackson would say what finally ended their working relationship when she abruptly resigned last month.

The documents, obtained through an open-records request, show ongoing strife over several issues, but do not reveal a thunderbolt moment that explains the sudden departure.

In an interview Thursday, Bataille said the reasons behind the split are just as vague to her.

She said she’s still unclear just what led to her resignation — which she says was forced.

“I resigned, but I don’t know what issues there were that caused the actions that happened,” Bataille said. “It really is the chancellor that needs to answer that.”

Jackson was unavailable for an interview Thursday, but he said in a statement the documents “make clear that there were serious business conflicts and operating disagreements.”

“These issues escalated throughout 2009, and they were not minor issues of courtesy, communications, or personality. Instead, they affected the most important operating aspects of our organization: our budgets, efforts to save money through technology, planning and review of proposed new facilities, and the tuition paid by our students.”

Bataille challenged Jackson to cite specific examples of when she was defiant or did not provide him information.

“Communication is a two-way street and it takes two people to communicate,” she said.

Bataille has said she was not aware her job was at stake until a meeting Feb. 7 with Jackson to discuss an upcoming Board of Regents meeting. In an e-mail two days earlier, Bataille offered to bring a budget officer with her to adjust a tuition proposal.

Jackson replied that Bataille should not bring anyone else to that meeting, saying the two of them needed to talk about several other issues.

Shortly after announcing her resignation, she wrote the following in an e-mail to a colleague:

“I am sure that by now you have done all the Googling that everyone else is doing, so you know what is in the news. The irony is that there really isn’t much else! No smoking guns, no actions that warrant termination, and mostly no good sense exhibited in any of this. It is just a major debacle for a university that is moving ahead quickly and effectively.”

Tuition

E-mails, memos and other documents show Bataille clashed frequently with Jackson, who as chancellor oversees the entire UNT system, with campuses in Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth, plus a future law school in downtown Dallas.

In the days before Bataille announced her resignation, she and Jackson disagreed over how much to raise tuition at UNT over the next two years.

Jackson had asked Bataille and other presidents in the UNT system to plan for tuition increases of no more than 3.5 percent a year. He also said they could show what they’d do with larger tuition increases, should the state provide less funding for higher education.

On Feb. 3 — exactly a week before she announced her resignation — Bataille publicly proposed a 5 percent increase each year. On Feb. 5, Jackson e-mailed her, clearly surprised and unhappy with her proposal. He said he thought she had agreed to no more than a 3.95 percent annual increase.

Jackson wrote that when Texas public university leaders recently met, the group’s chairman asked if anyone planned tuition increases of 5 percent or more. “I’m told that no one raised their hand, including you,” Jackson e-mailed Bataille. “I was not there and I will be interested in your version of that meeting.”

He added, “This is a much less collaborative budget process than we should have.”

Bataille replied that she must have left the meeting when the tuition question arose, because she “surely would have responded.” She said students gave positive feedback on her proposal. She said a UNT financial official had briefed Jackson on the tuition proposal and he didn’t “push back,” so Bataille didn’t follow up with him.

The board later approved a 3.95 percent annual increase.

Downtown classes           

Jackson and Bataille also butted heads over what was essentially a landlord-tenant dispute.

The UNT system owns a building in downtown Dallas called the Universities Center at Dallas. Through a consortium, UNT and Texas A&M University-Commerce offer several classes there.

Last fall, the UNT system officially moved its headquarters to the building, located at 1901 Main St. A future UNT law school plans to have classes at the building in two years.

In December, Bataille and A&M Commerce president Dan Jones wrote to Jackson that they needed more space and would leave when their lease expired in August 2010.

Jackson wrote back, concerned: Many civic and business leaders helped renovate that building and need to be consulted. He also said the building had two empty floors that could be renovated.

In late January, Jackson told Bataille she could not relocate any UNT classes in Dallas without giving more information and getting his approval.

On Feb. 5 Jackson wrote to regents, “She would not acknowledge that she owed me any particular information.” He said Bataille treated the UNT system with less courtesy “than UNT would offer to a private landlord.”

Adding to the breakdown: The university consortium had hired a commercial real estate agent to study their relocation options.

Jackson wrote to regents, “I regret the need to share this much detail with you, but I want to underscore the profound impact this, and other similar discussions about shared services, are having on the professional climate within the UNT system.”

Shared services

Jackson and Bataille battled over his push to consolidate all of the system’s information technology and human resources departments.

Bataille expressed frustration in e-mails that she was left out of the loop regarding the proposal.

In November, Bataille e-mailed the president of UNT Health Science Center, Scott Ransom, that she hadn’t received materials for the upcoming regents meeting. “I find this response very disheartening and regret the approach Lee has chosen to take.”

She and Ransom laid out their objections to the plan in a letter to Jackson. They said the consultants found no other university system to have successfully enacted such a model. They said consolidating the various departments would be “costly and disruptive.”

In November, regents approved a plan to seek consolidation in the coming years. Shortly after, Bataille wrote to three information technology consultants she knew: “The Chancellor hired a consulting firm, Alvarez and Marsal, with an outcome in mind. He wants all IT and HR functions at the system level.” She said she’d recommend the three of them work on the consolidation, “but I imagine that my recommendations wouldn’t be followed.”

Jackson wrote to regents that the new arrangement would make financial sense, and that the savings could support other efforts “that will benefit students, staff, and faculty.” And he said similar efforts are under way at campuses in Missouri and Tennessee.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.