Despite its vital role as the primary higher education choice for this state’s college students and its longstanding success as a research institution, the University of Hawaii remains the Hawaii Legislature’s perennial political football, kicked around Beretania Street with enthusiasm, if not imagination, every year from early January to sine die.

The abiding impression is that our state lawmakers don’t think much of the university’s leadership, and they seem to take turns offering critical, sometimes withering, observations.

Just one week into this year’s session, it’s the university’s Board of Regents that isn’t up to snuff, according to two leading lawmakers.

House Higher Education Chair Isaac Choy and Senate Higher Education and Arts Committee Chair Brian Taniguchi have put forward bills that would exempt regents from making public their annual financial disclosures — a requirement for members of other significant state boards and commissions — because, somehow, that is supposed to help the university get better regents.

“A certain amount of openness is needed, but to get some of the really talented people, they’re not going to want to do that,” Taniguchi said of the disclosure requirements. “I don’t think (this bill is) the cure-all. But it might get one or two people in there that might help turn the university around. I couldn’t tell you who those people are, though.”

That kind of talk might well leave current regents asking, “What are we, chopped liver?”

The 15 current board members include graduates of the universities of Chicago, Washington and Wisconsin, Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, the U.S. Naval Academy and Northwestern, as well as the Georgetown, Duke and Hastings law schools. Between the regents, there are literally hundreds of years of experience in corporate leadership, senior military service, significant nonprofit organization work and more.

One regent is a retired state Supreme Court justice. Another is chief operating officer of a Honolulu engineering company. Another led the Maui High Performance Computing Center after an illustrious career as a Navy officer.

These are, in fact, some of Hawaii’s “really talented people,” each of whom has managed to live with the state’s financial disclosure requirements since the law was passed in 2014.

To be sure, after the Legislature passed that measure, two of the university’s regents resigned — Central Pacific Financial Corp. CEO John C. Dean and Saedene Ota, owner/creative director of Maui-based Sae Design — saying the level of public disclosure was more than they bargained for.

But Gov. David Ige seemed to have little trouble last year in identifying six regent appointees, a group that included two who were serving on an interim basis to fill the positions vacated by Dean and Ota.

A Critical Public Enterprise

Those asking what aspect of the university needs to be “turned around” are asking a legitimate question.

This year, UH and its community college campuses are educating more than 51,000 students, preparing and graduating the essential “replacement parts” for Hawaii’s traditional economy, as well as bright new grads for newer business concerns and start-ups.

Meanwhile, university faculty were awarded research grants totalling $425 million in the fiscal year that ended last June. That included major funding for studies in areas critical to Hawaii’s success, ranging from renewable energy to community health. The total represented a $33 million leap over the previous year, even though the university had roughly the same number of faculty.

Are there areas where the university could do better? Sure.

One in particular might be in getting more financial support from the Legislature.

As with public universities across the country, students, the federal government and private donors are paying ever larger shares of higher education’s costs, while state support slowly declines, as it has done since 1980.

UH gets about $60 million less in general revenue for operations and programs than it did seven years ago, university sources say; about half of the shortfall has been made up through tuition increases. (Even so, UH student costs remain a bargain compared to most other public universities, particularly for low-income students who look to public land grant universities such as UH for access to a high-quality education.)

The public ought to have solid assurance that the individuals in those roles are serving the public’s interest and don’t have conflicts of interest that ethically compromise them.

The point of all of the above is simply this: The University of Hawaii is a critical public enterprise for our state, essential to its success in ways and dimensions too numerous to list here. It deserves smart leadership and oversight, which members of its Board of Regents are well prepared to supply.

But the public ought to have solid assurance that the individuals in those roles are in fact serving the public’s interest and don’t have conflicts of interest that ethically compromise them in their official duties.

Is such disclosure a lot to ask of leaders who volunteer their time and expertise to serve in these capacities? Undoubtedly.

But time and again, leaders interested in giving back to the Aloha State and its people have stepped up to do so and complied with disclosure requirements that not only protect the public’s interests, but safeguard the reputation of each appointee from suspicion or appearance of conflict.

Legislators, who disclose their own finances under the same law from which Choy and Taniguchi would exempt regents, should understand this better than anyone and reject HB 1532.