It’s easy to feel the frustration of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs after yet another scheme to repay OHA for ceded-land revenues owed by the state flounders.

OHA’s ongoing misfortune is a combination of state sucker punches and its own inability to tell a good deal from a bad one.

House Speaker Scott Saiki last week killed legislation to lift a ban on developing Kakaako lands makai of Ala Moana Boulevard, likely ending OHA’s plans to build two 400-foot condo towers and sell development rights on other parcels it received from the state in 2012 to repay $200 million in ceded-land revenues the state owed OHA.

Without the right to develop the property, OHA receives nowhere near the revenues anticipated from the deal to fund its economic, social and cultural programs for Native Hawaiians.

The decades-old dispute derives from the 1978 state constitutional amendment that created OHA and determined it should be funded by a share of state revenues from ceded lands — former Hawaiian crown lands now owned by the state.

When parties couldn’t agree on OHA’s share, a state judge ruled in 1996 that the state owed OHA $1.2 billion in back payments, which the state appealed to the Supreme Court.

Then-Gov. Ben Cayetano offered OHA revenue-producing lands worth hundreds of millions to resolve the case, but OHA declined despite a not-so-subtle hint from former Chief Justice Ronald Moon that it was in its interest to settle.

The Supreme Court ultimately overturned the lower court ruling, leaving OHA trustees who had refused Cayetano’s offer to accept a pennies-on-the-dollar deal with the Lingle administration involving properties worth $187 million in Kewalo, Kalaeloa and Hilo’s Banyan Drive hotel district. Even that deal was rejected by the Legislature in a dispute with the administration.

Meantime, the state was facing citizen outrage over its plans to develop its Kakaako Makai lands in much the same way private developers were doing with their mauka properties.

Opponents demanding to preserve the Kakaako shoreline forced the Legislature in 2006 to ban major development of Kakaako Makai.

During the Abercrombie administration, a scheme was born to kill two birds with one stone by passing the state’s Kakaako Makai lands to OHA to settle the ceded- lands dispute, on the thinking OHA could knock down the development ban by arguing Hawaiians should be able to do as they please with Hawaiian lands.

But public opposition to makai development remained fierce, and after Saiki moved to preserve the development ban, OHA was left holding the bag again.

Saiki and other legislators expressed willingness to work with OHA to either find ways to monetize the Kakaako lands without massive development or exchange them for other revenue-producing state lands.

This could finally settle the 40-year-old dispute only if the state is less scheming in negotiating with OHA and its trustees are more astute on what they’ll accept.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.