It’s rarely a good idea to buy real estate in a heated rush. That goes double when it’s government officials contemplating taking such a leap.

State lawmakers would be well advised to turn down the heat and more carefully examine and justify to the taxpayers the proposal to buy Alii Place, a high-end commercial property downtown, to accommodate some of the state agency offices that are now in leased space.

House Bill 1366 — which proposes that the state Department of Land and Natural Resources begin the process of acquiring the property at an asking price of about $90 million — is racing along toward passage. There needs to be more due diligence first.

Ordinarily a bill that has passed one house and has approval of its last committees in the other has been probed and widely discussed. That has not happened in this case, which suggests that legislators should approve only funds to do the initial due diligence on the acquisition idea.

What happened here is that HB 1366 started out as a place-holder type of bill seeking "to appropriate funds to identify, plan, and acquire or build upon real property in urban Honolulu to provide office space for state governmental agencies and offices." That generic version of the measure received testimony from a single source, the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) comptroller Douglas Murdock. He gave support to the bill "provided the measure does not replace or adversely impact priorities indicated in the executive budget."

When it moved to the Senate, lawmakers added a provision that DAGS consider lease buyback options (essentially a monetizing program), facilitate facility agreements with private investors and conduct an inventory of property leased to state offices.

No official word of Alii Place was aired publicly until Monday’s hearing, in which the bill is suddenly full of specifics. The bill, now Senate Draft 2, asserts that the state spends about $10.15 million on leasing more than 420,000 square feet of office space in downtown Honolulu.

Alii Place, now owned by the San Francisco-based Bristol Alii Holdings LLC, has 337,370 square feet of space in a prime location, across Richards Street from the state Capitol. About a third of that, 114,663 square feet, is currently available for state agencies, according to the bill.

That fact rightly puzzled attorney John Dellera, one of only two non-state employees submitting testimony on this bill.

"The legislative findings do not explain why one-third of the net rentable space at Alii Place is available for rent or whether that vacancy rate is comparable to other office buildings that could serve the state’s needs at a lower cost," Dellera said in his written testimony.

Dellera said in a later interview that HB 1366 caught his attention because, when he worked in the state Office of the Attorney General, he argued a case concerning property taxes the state pays on leased property.

"The bill would have an adverse effect on the City and County of Honolulu because real property owned and occupied by the state for public purposes is exempt from real property taxes," he said in testimony.

Dellera called for the state to study the impact of the measure on city tax revenues.

The other written testimony came from Wynnie Hee, who argued that the state should be looking for space in Kapolei instead of downtown Honolulu, another rational point. It’s only been days since a massive H-1 traffic tie-up that showed the impact of too many people commuting between downtown and the supposed "second city" in West Oahu. If any money is to be spent, it might make sense to direct a move leeward.

Additionally, it’s not even clear that the state has carefully evaluated its own available space in town, including the long-overdue, soon-to-be renovated Kamamalu Building. And there’s the state-owned cancer center in Kakaako — some of its offices sitting vacant — that likely could save the state lease money.

State Rep. Mark Hashem, one of the sponsors of the bill, said the investment in Alii Place would be cheaper than another proposal, to build a $270 million office building in Liliha. But that’s a false economy because the state has not yet committed to Liliha, either: The first $15 million in planning and design money was set aside only last session.

DAGS officials also raised concern about funding for maintenance, another red flag that deserves full discussion.

Hashem cited savings in lease rent at Alii Place that would offset the $90 million outlay, but questions remain over the financials and the public deserves time to hear the details. Lawmakers should take at least a year, not just the waning weeks of session, to get sufficient answers.