State legislators signalled a willingness to consider more aid for financially struggling University of Hawaii athletics by changing the way supplemental funding will be handled.

The legislature had previously appropriated $3 million in recurring funding for UH athletics — $2.7 million for Manoa and $300,000 for Hilo.

While legislature appropriated $3 million for UH in the budget passed last week, it did not lock in the figure on a recurring basis and will look at the possibility of more in the future, if necessary, House finance committee chair Sylvia Luke said Monday.

Despite the $2.7 million from the legislature and an additional $700,000 from the UH system, Manoa athletics still ran a $1.7 million shortfall in fiscal 2017, according to an independent auditor’s report. Hilo showed a $193,041 surplus.

Manoa is also projected to have a deficit for the current fiscal year that concludes June 30.

“It seems like the (Manoa) shortfall might be close to $5 million, but we don’t know if it will be on an annual basis,” said Luke (D-Makiki, Punchbowl, Nuuanu and Pauoa). “We’re hopeful that, with the direction that athletics and the athletics director is taking, they will be more aggressive in having sponsors and things that will also raise money.”

The initial $3 million “was not something that the university (system) came in with as a request, it didn’t come through the (Board of) Regents,” Luke said. “But, because legislators, myself included, believe that athletics play an important part in the college experience, we made it a priority to put the funding in the budget.”

However, Luke said, “what we should have done was to make it non-recurring as opposed to recurring. We thought $3 million was sufficient at that point in time but, actually, it was not and, in speaking to individuals involved in athletics, it could be an additional subsidy.”

A UH spokesman said the university “was appreciative of the legislature’s efforts for the university as a whole as well as athletics.”

NCAA reports say “only about two dozen” of the more than 120 schools that compete on the Football Bowl Subdivision level with UH “generate revenues over expenses in a given year.”