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From its mounting, multi-million-dollar money woes to the fractious departure of its director, the slow-moving train wreck that has been the University of Hawaii Cancer Center has been difficult to watch over the past year.

And it’s not over yet.

The bad news: A $10.5 million budget hole must be filled for the 2017 fiscal year, which begins in July of next year, or the center risks losing its coveted National Cancer Institute designation — a highly valuable credential held by 68 cancer centers nationwide.

The good news: An honest, clear-eyed draft plan to fix things is now on the table, and it’s one that lawmakers and taxpayers can believe in.

Dr. Jerris Hedges, dean of the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine, released the draft last Friday. Dean since 2008, Hedges took on the additional duties of interim Cancer Center director last fall and wasted no time in beginning to address the organizational and financial difficulties facing the center, as well as related money troubles at the medical school. Though the latter aren’t as deep, the school faces a $3.6 million shortfall for staff salaries that likewise must be resolved by the start of FY17.

Both institutions, as the plan makes clear, have been forced to rely too heavily on tobacco money for both operating and debt service funding. Those funds are drying up.

Cigarette tax revenue for both institutions has declined from a high of $19.5 million in 2010 to an expected $14.7 million this year and is projected to shrink to $13.6 million by FY19. The center and the school are using that funding in part to repay the tax-exempt revenue bonds that paid for the construction of their Kakaako buildings.

Funds from the 1998 master settlement agreement with big tobacco have been another major revenue source, but their share of those monies will decline from $12.6 million this year to $9.8 million next year. The medical school had been allowed to use any excess settlement appropriations for operating cash, but that ability goes away this summer, as well.

Both institutions have been forced to rely too heavily on tobacco money. Those funds are drying up.

State appropriations that have steadily declined over the past five years significantly complicate the picture, as well as the requirement that the school and center must apply those appropriations to infrastructure costs before any other budget priority. The potential end result of this deteriorating scenario is summarized starkly on p. 3 of Hedges’ draft plan:

“Without additional mission-based support for faculty salary coverage equal to $3.6 million for the School and $10.5 million for the Center, in fiscal year 2017, the School will lose its medical school accreditation and the Center will lose its National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation.”

Accreditation is not optional: Without it, the school would lose eligibility for key federal funding, and its graduating physicians would not be eligible to enter residencies or obtain U.S. licensure. And the problems for Hawaii would not end there, as the campus graduates or employs about half of the state’s doctors.

While not as critical as accreditation, the center’s NCI designation is a necessary component for $4.5 million in annual funding from sources only available to NCI centers. Losing the designation, Hedges’ plan says, would further “result in the loss of key research faculty, indirect cost recovery, new federal dollars that stimulate the local economy and biotech business development and, most importantly, expansion of cancer clinical treatment trials presently available for those who live in Hawaii.” Once the designation is forfeited, it’s nearly impossible to get back.

The dean’s business plan would combine the center and school into a unified health sciences operation and reap the benefits of a consolidated venture. He’s already begun by merging administrative functions to eliminate redundancies, requiring new clinical faculty hires to fund half their salaries by their third year on the job and requiring that temporary faculty and staff be paid exclusively with grant funding. We particularly appreciate the elimination of “imaginary ownership lines” separating the school and center.

Realizing the full potential of the merger will take time. But Hedges’ plan-in-development shows an understanding of how to run the overall enterprise more efficiently, as well as an entrepreneurial vision.

Of immediate concern, the combined Kakaako Campus’s budget shortfalls — which may be exacerbated if school and center appropriations are pared in the state budget currently taking shape in the Legislature — must be addressed.

Legislators and university leaders, in collaboration with leaders from Hawaii teaching hospitals and the local health care industry, must not only find the funds to address the gap arising in FY17, but replace a funding model leaning too heavily on diminishing tobacco funds with a more reliable formula.

Once the legislative session has concluded, we urge them to tend to this responsibility and not let the matter wait until next year.