Prison land swap worthy idea

Some ideas are worth pursuing, even if there’s a cost attached. The feasibility study for a land swap aimed at relocating the state’s overcrowded Dillingham Boulevard prison and preserving agricultural land is one such proposal deserving of legislators’ support.

However, the immediate question that still needs resolution in the measure, Senate Bill 1374, is: Who bears this cost?

Senate committees handling prisons, land and agriculture concerns are due to take a vote at their 2:45 p.m. Wednesday session, and lawmakers should move the bill along at that time. However, before this proposal reaches its final form, they should revise the financing plan so that the private developers that would be involved pay at least a fair share of the tab for the study.

That’s because the deal would exchange the site of the Oahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi for about 15,000 acres of agricultural and conservation lands between central Oahu and the North Shore now owned by Dole Food Co. Hawaii.

Dole stands to do well in the exchange, given that the urban prison site’s location is adjacent to the planned rail route, and is more readily developable for lucrative uses.

According to the bill’s primary sponsor, the state could tap revenues yielded by the deal to build a sorely needed new prison on state land in Halawa. State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz said the value of the OCCC property makes this possible.

But even if the public can capitalize on that value to help build a new OCCC, surely Dole has a prevailing interest in this deal moving forward, so it should absorb some of the exploratory costs.

As written, the bill would allot $500,000 out of the land conservation fund to investigate the deal, and this mechanism has rightly raised eyebrows among public-interest groups that maintain the fund is meant for actual acquisitions, not feasibility studies. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources was the source of additional critique of the idea as being an "inappropriate" use of the fund.

While that objection has merit, it shouldn’t be allowed to scotch the whole proposal. The process of studying land acquisitions is part of the acquisition cost, and there ought to be a way to resolve the conflict. If there is a finding by the state commission overseeing the fund that this use is precluded, another source can be considered.

Other protests arose in testimony from residents who dislike the notion of funding a new prison. However, it’s well established that OCCC is outmoded and overcrowded, so what is being contemplated is a replacement prison to accommodate current needs, not expanding prison capacity. This is a means to finance that needed project, seizing the opportunity presented by the transit-oriented development planned along Dillingham.

A new location adjacent to the existing medium- and high-security prisons in Halawa makes sense, and if there’s potential for financing it through a larger deal, that should be explored.

Although the benefit of enabling a replacement prison is the most persuasive aspect of the proposal, the ability to advance the state’s pro-agriculture agenda is also attractive. Ironically, state agencies have different analyses of how much good this would do.

The state Office of Planning submitted testimony asserting that "much of the area does not appear to contain productive agricultural lands," because more than half of it is more steeply sloped than is usually good for farming. That finding plainly should factor into the land valuation for the swap.

However, state agriculture officials also testified that putting this fallow pineapple land to use in diversified crop cultivation would enhance the state’s food security.

There is a caveat, of course: The state has not always been the best steward of its lands, and state control of this acreage must come with enough oversight to prevent unauthorized uses. Responsibility for that should fall to the state Agribusiness Development Corp.

Once that control is in place, there is significant potential for a land exchange here to be a win-win for the developer, the state in meeting its public safety and agricultural mandates, and for farmers, who are otherwise hard-pressed to find affordable, long-term leases enabling their businesses to thrive.