The House Higher Education Committee gave initial approval this week to measures that would impose legislative control over tuition hikes and new construction at the University of Hawaii.

HB 2193 would allow lawmakers to veto tuition increases approved by the UH Board of Regents, starting with the 2017-18 school year.

“The Legislature finds that the tuition schedule established by the Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii has created an unreasonable increase in the cost of attendance,” the bill’s introduction reads, noting annual increases the past four years. “The Legislature finds that the cost of tuition at the University of Hawaii is a matter of statewide concern and that it is in the best interest of the state to ensure that all students have affordable access to higher education.”

Under the measure, tuition increases would be subject to disapproval by two-thirds vote of the House or Senate or by majority vote of both chambers. UH would need to submit a “detailed justification for the increase” for lawmakers to consider.

UH is in the fourth year of a five-year tuition schedule that was to ultimately raise tuition by more than 30 percent. The plan was approved in 2011, when UH faced drastic cuts in state funding. But under UH President David Lassner, the university last summer scaled back the increases built into the final two years of the schedule in an effort to keep tuition affordable.

Full-time undergraduate tuition is $10,344 a year at the flagship Manoa campus and $6,912 a year at UH West Oahu and UH Hilo. The regents are expected to begin vetting a new tuition schedule this month.

Kalbert Young, the university’s chief financial officer, testified against the bill, noting that tuition increases already go through a “rigorous public notification and communication process,” which includes public meetings on the neighbor islands.

“We recognize that tuition increases in recent history have been substantial,” Young said. “However, it may be important to note that tuition (rates) at UH as recently as 2011 were very cheap, and even today remain relatively low. Also, general fund appropriations for UH have declined significantly since 2009.”

The 10-campus UH system, which had $1.53 billion in operating expenses last fiscal year, got roughly one-third of its budget from tuition and fees ($392.5 million), one-third from the state ($413 million) and one-third from other university-sourced revenues such as grants ($386 million), according to the university’s latest audited financial report.

UH’s general fund support from the Legislature was about $460.5 million in fiscal 2009 and $422.5 million the following year.

Rep. Roy Takumi, who chairs the House Education Committee, voted for the bill with reservations, noting the drop in state support.

“Frankly, the reason the university has to raise tuition is because we’ve refused to general-fund it. If we had funded the university to the degree that we should, they probably wouldn’t raise tuition,” Takumi (D, Pearl City-Waipio-Pearl Harbor) said. “If we wanted to say higher education should be free, we could do that — as long as we appropriate the money to make that happen. So I find it odd that we’re the proximate cause for some of the tuition raises, and yet they’d have to come back to us.”

Former House Speaker Calvin Say (D, Palolo-St. Louis Heights-Kaimuki) cast the lone dissenting vote.

Higher Education Chairman Isaac Choy (D, Manoa-Punahou-Moiliili), who introduced the bill, cited concerns about student loan debt. “All I know is, right at this second there’s a crisis. The crisis is student loans,” he said. “The more that the kids have to borrow, the more they have to pay back.”

Seven in 10 college seniors who graduated from public and private institutions nationwide in 2014 had student loan debt, unchanged from 2013, according to the nonprofit Institute for College Access &Success, which recently published its 10th annual report on student debt.

Nationally, borrowers owed an average $28,950 at graduation, up 2 percent from the previous year, the report found. State averages ranged from a high of $33,800 in Delaware to $18,921 in Utah.

The report ranked Hawaii as a low-debt state. College graduates here had $24,554 in student loan debt, on average, placing Hawaii in the No. 41 spot for average debt. The state ranked 47th for the percentage of students who gradated with loan debt that year (47 percent).

Meanwhile, the committee also passed out HB 1609, which would prohibit the regents from approving new construction “until a public hearing is held to discuss facility utilization and cost.” It also would require UH to come up with procedures to make better use of its existing facilities.

“The Legislature finds that the University of Hawaii system includes a vast number of buildings, some of which contain classrooms and laboratory facilities that often go unused,” the bill states. “However, the Board of Regents has approved the construction of new buildings while existing buildings are not being utilized to their full potential.”

Jan Gouveia, UH’s vice president for administration, testified that the bill is unnecessary as UH already “engages in active space management and utilization efforts.” She also pointed out that regents had imposed a moratorium on new construction projects in 2013.