The new UMass president is pushing for more funding from the Legislature while floating a proposal to relieve the university system’s debt load.

Appointed by the UMass board of trustees earlier this year, Robert Caret said his “primary plan” is to convince state lawmakers that public higher education should be a “higher priority.” That sector in state government has suffered during the economic downturn as Beacon Hill lawmakers have sliced more and more out of the state budget.

Lawmakers say they are pro-education, “but they always come back to ‘we don’t have enough money and we’re doing as best we can.’ And I understand that,” Caret said. “But if something is a high priority, you fund it in that way.”

Caret added that he is working with the Legislature in a “constructive” rather than “confrontational” fashion.

The former president of Towson University in Maryland, Caret replaced Jack Wilson, who stepped down in June. A Maine native, he holds a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of New Hampshire and a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and mathematics from Suffolk University.

In a sitdown with local reporters at UMass Boston, Caret said he has also spoken with lawmakers about the Legislature forgiving some of the university system’s debt load. The university wouldn’t be the first to pitch such an idea: The MBTA, the debt-saddled transit agency, has long lobbied Beacon Hill to absorb its debt service costs, with little success.

Caret says the UMass system has undertaken $2.5 billion in construction costs over the last ten years, with the state picking up only 13-14 percent of the tab. At UMass Boston, construction is underway for a $152 million integrated science complex, with a $100 million academic building expected to follow.

“That means the chancellors, out of their operating budgets, are paying for those bonds and that’s tens of millions of dollars on each campus that could be going to faculty, student support, student life,” he said. “So I’ve said to the legislators, who live by definition in a political world, you know, why not go back to a level where you float the bonds, which are 30- or 40-year bonds, and pay for it, and allow us to use our debt money” for operating costs instead of covering the debt.

Asked about what he hopes to see at the former Bayside Exposition Center, which UMass Boston bought last year for $18.7 million, Caret joked about putting a casino there, with the university receiving a 5 percent cut. “We don’t have any pre-conceived notions in stone,” he said, deferring to Chancellor Keith Motley, who joined Caret for the session. The chancellor is meeting with the community to find out what community and campus wants, Caret said.

Caret’s appointment as president was announced with fanfare, but then marred by a finding by the state attorney general’s office that the search committee that tapped him had committed “wide-ranging and serious” violations of the state’s open meeting law.

Caret said UMass attorneys disagreed with the assessment, and called some of the violations “technicalities.” For example, he said, the search committee voted to go into executive session and didn’t formally come out of executive session. “But it wasn’t worth a battle with the attorney general to fight her,” he said.

A separate and new search committee, recently formed to find a replacement for UMass Amherst Chancellor Robert Holub, who is stepping down next year, has received an hour of training in the open meeting law.