At the start of his first meeting as chair of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents Intercollegiate Athletic Committee, Jeff Portnoy slammed the opening gavel to the table with an exuberance that caused some people to recoil.

"There’s no doubt who’s in charge here," quipped one of them, UH President David Lassner.

From the shaping of the agenda to the pointed line of questioning that followed, there was also no mistaking the chair’s head-on approach to tackling the issues facing UH athletics. Especially its most pressing one, the enduring financial struggles.

Hardly spotlight shy, Portnoy’s main tie to UH athletics before being appointed to the board by Gov. Neil Abercrombie in November has been a 16-year association with basketball radio broadcasts. The 67-year-old Portnoy’s "day" job has been as a partner in the Cades Schutte law firm, where, as a leading specialist in First Amendment law, he has represented various media clients, including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

This summer, he was granted the chairmanship of the four-member athletics committee, a group created the same day in 2013 that then-Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple "forgave" the department’s $14.7 million net accumulated debt.

As the senior regent, Chuck Gee, Dean Emeritus of the School of Travel Industry Management, noted Thursday from seven years on the board, "this issue regarding the athletic deficit is not a new one. It is perennial."

And that’s been the problem. The broken financial model has been variously ignored, touched upon, shelved, reheated and often brushed off again by various regent boards since the string of 11 deficit years began 13 years ago.

Which is why Portnoy’s zeal for diving, not wading, in was notable. And hopeful.

"In my view, it is time to focus on the reality of what it is going to cost to have a competitive athletic program and then let people decide," Portnoy said. "We’re not going to pretend the emperor has new clothes."

Nor was he above putting athletic director Ben Jay on the spot about worst-case scenarios. It precipitated the now-infamous exchange about the future of the football program, since backed away from.

"I think there is a lot of good that can come from this and I appreciated Ben’s candor," Portnoy said. "The initial — and I have used the word ‘hysteria’ — reaction focused on just the statement about football, but the message is far more important and much greater than that. It is: Where do we go from here?"

Jay, who submitted a $32.7 million budget that projects a $1.48 million deficit for the current fiscal year, was told the regents want a plan for solvency with whatever the remedies might be.

"There needs to be a business plan of some kind that looks at the figures and how we’re going to (alleviate) this," regent Barry Mizuno said. "The plan has got to come with some kind of justification, especially for the Legislature. They are not going to give you $3 million just because you say, ‘I need it, I want it.’ You have to have a good story to tell."

And the man with the heavy gavel just might be the best shot of finally getting to the bottom of it.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.