With COVID-19 receding, restrictions lifting and summer approaching, tourists are preparing to return to Hawaii in droves. This would be a good time — past time, really — to be implementing long-discussed plans for a more sustainable, environmentally friendly kind of tourism, one that guides visitors to be mindful of the aina and culture that supports it.

Instead, the state’s brain trust is squabbling over money and playing political games.

As the Star-Advertiser’s Allison Schaefers reported this week, the House of Representatives sent to the Senate its budget for the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA): $1 for operations, $0 for staffing. It also approved $1 for the convention center (which HTA oversees), and $1,000 to fix the center’s roof.

Given that HTA is the state’s primary agency for managing tourism — the state’s largest economic driver — defunding it would have a profound impact, especially now. But you can’t take these House budget numbers too literally.

HTA president John DeFries said placeholder budget dollar amounts were “anticipated as the starting point for future budget negotiations and should not be misinterpreted as an effort to defund or eliminate HTA.”

In other words, a $1 budget for HTA is political gamesmanship, a standard procedural move or just plain sarcasm. Or all of the above. Whatever it is, the public is left to wonder what is going on.

What can’t be disputed is the necessity of managing tourism in a more serious, thoughtful way. The public’s growing hostility to ever-increasing numbers of visitor arrivals — 10 million in 2019 — can’t be ignored, especially if that hostility becomes directed at the visitors themselves.

The HTA has responded appropriately, with a six-year strategic plan that emphasizes sustainability and authentic Hawaiian cultural experiences, a shift from sheer marketing to destination management.

Nonetheless, the Legislature’s view has been that HTA needs to be on a short leash. Last year, lawmakers cut HTA’s budget from $79 million to $60 million, and eliminated the agency’s dedicated funding source, requiring it to come hat-in-hand for funds every year. For an agency that makes multiyear contracts, not knowing what your budget will be from year to year — $1 or $60 million? — makes it unnecessarily difficult to do business.

The Legislature is not entirely wrong to want a full accounting of how HTA spends its millions.

“We felt that we didn’t have enough information of (HTA’s) needs on the destination management side,” said House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke. “They are giving us more information.”

Fair enough. But destination management is complicated; it requires long-term planning and investment. Back-seat driving by the Legislature won’t help.