It was a good idea at the wrong time

While building a public school in booming Kakaako is a worthy idea, the Hawaii Community Development Authority acted prudently in shelving a plan to do just that.

The HCDA, mindful of protecting the integrity of the bidding process, rejected a proposal to modify an existing affordable rental housing project plan by developer Forest City Realty Trust to include a school at 690 Pohukaina. It would have been unfair to other potential bidders on the project, because a school was not mentioned in the original request for proposals.

Still, if young families start filling up the residential towers popping up all over Kakaako, a new school might make sense — assuming it’s built by the book.

Now let’s define what is sufficient

Surely Gov. David Ige is breathing a sigh of relief after Circuit Judge Jeannette Castagnetti this week said she’d amend her November order specifying the amount of $28.5 million be set aside for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands administration and operations. The current level for these purposes is $9.6 million.

Castagnetti indicated she didn’t change her overarching view that this amount was insufficient. She instructed the state to “comply with its constitutional duty to make sufficient sums available.”

So now we’ll see how Ige and others working on the state budget interpret this. How much is enough? Perhaps anything substantially short of $28.5 million would be considered insufficient by the judge.