Where land is a precious commodity, as it is statewide and certainly on Oahu, decisions about how to use as much as 243 acres demand intense scrutiny.

Of all the possible uses for that much state-owned land on the Central Oahu plain — housing springs to mind, as well as agriculture — creating a massive, $315 million compound for first-responder training and technology surely must fall far down on the list.

Except, it doesn’t. There has been now a years-long push for what’s been dubbed the the First Responder Technology Campus on that much acreage near Mililani that would house operations and training facilities for 19 federal, state and county agencies.

The campus is vastly oversized, with every bell and whistle, including those that are plainly excessive. This is a time when the state needs to reinvest in the maintenance of its existing infrastructure (think: Hawai‘i Convention Center), and there are many other higher-priority and expensive new projects in the mill.

Instead, the campus conceptual plan includes, in addition to training facilities, an auditorium, retail space, fitness center, apartments, a cafeteria with kitchen staff, a community center and a 150-bed hotel.

Preposterous.

Arguably some of the client agencies, such as the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, need a new site and could be provided that home on part of the land, which the state purchased from developer Castle & Cooke in 2017. This could proceed as a project right-sized to fit actual needs and requirements. The Office of Enterprise Technology Services manages data servers in a flood-prone basement that could use a relocation, to name another example.

But that’s not what’s proposed here. The completed campus is envisioned as costing from $315 million to $470 million, to be built out over 15 years in six phases. This session, the state Senate has taken the opportunity of a state budgetary surplus to support locking in $100 million for it now.

However, the state lacks commitment to the plan from all of the agencies that its official sponsor, the Hawaii Technology Development Corp., wants to put there. The Honolulu Police Department, most notably, is flatly unwilling to pledge its own resources to the project.

Fortunately, there’s now some significant pushback from the state House on this idea, which last week was moving through the chamber as Senate Bill 1469. First the Water and Land Committee crossed out the $100 million, leaving the amount blank but suggesting that the House Finance Committee consider allotting only half as much.

Even more forcefully, state Rep. Amy Perruso, who chairs the Higher Education and Technology Committee and took custody of the measure next, decided to call the whole thing off. Friday was the “second lateral” deadline, when all bills being heard by more than one committee must move to the last one — the Finance panel, in this case. Perruso held it instead, rightly.

While the bill itself appears to be dead for the session, the plan could still advance if one of its key supporters in Senate leadership — including the Ways and Means Committee chair, state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz — gets the money inserted into the overall state budget, moving separately.

Ironically, both Dela Cruz and Perruso represent the area proposed for the campus, advocating for opposite ends. Their constituents need to make their concerns known.

Perruso has reached the correct conclusion. There’s too much unsettled about this whole scheme to make this kind of investment. An environmental impact statement has been published but, Perruso said, the state Land Use Commission hasn’t flashed any green lights. The acreage is still zoned for agriculture, and would need reclassification by the LUC.

“It’s really ‘cart before the horse,’” she said Friday in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Of course, stopping the whole horse-and-cart combo in its tracks would be the best outcome, or at least scaling it down drastically.

Then the cost of fitting the property with the needed utility hookups and service road, the main purpose of the $100 million being sought, might be a lot less, Perruso said. She pointed to a 2021 alternative site study identifying locations with more of the infrastructure in place.

At the House Water and Land Committee hearing, HPD Maj. Stephen Silva voiced “concerns” about HPD’s lack of funding to pay its share for the infrastructure and upkeep of the campus; further, it already has the “training facility, indoor firing range, emergency vehicle operation training track, helicopter hangar and technology storage facilities this bill proposes to create.”

So, what’s the point of this, again?

The EIS argues, weakly, that developing separate projects as needed would cost more in cash and effort and provide fewer jobs, and that delay will mean continued deterioration of aging facilities. Nonsense. The state could step up instead and do the needed upgrades, and at a more rational scale.

The state is flush with cash now, but that won’t last long. Critical improvements deserve the funding now. This technology-campus boondoggle? It is not what Hawaii needs.