The University of Hawaii has been generous in handing out free tickets to sporting events — so generous, in fact, that the value of the complimentary tickets rivals the amount of the athletic department’s budget deficit.

So it’s a welcome sign that Athletic Director Ben Jay, heeding the admonitions of a Hawaii State Ethics Commission advisory and a UH system audit, intends to crack down on this practice.

Jay said he is considering restrictions on "who is going to be able to get those tickets this season and how many they can get."

Nearly $2.5 million in complimentary tickets have been distributed yearly by a department with a $1.8 million deficit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012.

The audit determined that UH gave away 3,387 football season tickets valued at $851,910 for the 2012 fiscal year (2011 football season), amounting to 16 percent of all football season tickets.

In the 2010 season opener against nationally ranked Southern California, UH issued as many as 4,476 complimentary tickets, which amounted to one in every 10 tickets issued for a game that produced a net revenue of more than $1 million, the highest in school history.

The commission’s May advisory rightly pointed out that the tickets and passes to UH-Manoa athletic events are state assets of considerable value, and that distribution of them for free "must serve a legitimate state interest."

Determining what is a "legitimate state interest" can be tricky, but the commission offered some common-sense guidelines on who should get tickets. Those might include UH "campus members" who work at the athletic events; senior UH administrators who host prospective university benefactors or otherwise need to attend as part of their official responsibilities; or alumni participating in an event.

There are other legitimate uses for complimentary tickets. Corporate sponsors, who contribute from $10,000 to more than $150,000 in goods and services yearly to the athletic department, have a legitimate claim to the 4,500 season tickets they now receive. Auto dealers are given as many as 630 season tickets for providing personal "courtesy" cars to 26 coaches under their UH contracts.

Complimentary tickets may also be given to participating athletes, so families can watch their members play.

Justifiably, the commission frowned upon a free-ticket policy for "friends" as being "vague and overly broad."

Giving blocks of tickets to UH employees to "boost employee morale" is similarly unwarranted.

So is the practice of giving tickets to politicians and other community leaders based on their official positions — a perk that can raise troubling ethical questions.

Several coaches and administrators have ticket provisions in the contracts: Jay gets "a minimum of 10 season tickets each year for all UH sports." Nonetheless, the review of UH-Manoa’s free-ticket policies should include the UH president, Manoa chancellor, the Board of Regents, and down through the faculty and staff.

Surely many of those who get free tickets can afford to buy them, and it would certainly be in the state’s legitimate interest — as well as the athletic department’s — if they did so. After all, even students pay fees to support the athletic department and to attend athletic events.

The commission asserted that the state’s ethics code prohibits UH from distributing free tickets "in a manner that creates unwarranted privileges or advantages or preferential treatment for the regents, system administrators, chancellor, other personnel or anyone else."

While following this advice would not erase all freebies to watch UH sporting events, it’s a good place to start.