The next sound we hear from the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District should be a screeching halt, until scheming lawmakers provide coherent answers on what exactly is being built, who’s running it, what’s the cost and how we’ll pay.

Legislators promised in 2019 the new stadium would be the opposite of Honolulu rail — transparent, on time and on budget.

Two years later the Halawa project, which combines the stadium with massive commercial development of surrounding property, is none of those.

The management structure and financing are ever-shifting, the original $350 million cost has already been recast as high as $423 million and it’s at least a year behind the promised opening by the start of the 2023 University of Hawaii football season, with every sign it’ll slip even further.

The Legislature at first assigned oversight of stadium construction and surrounding development to the Hawaii Community Development Authority, which has managed Kakaako’s controversial growth.

Then last year lawmakers abruptly tried to move oversight to the Stadium Authority, only to see enabling legislation fail because of botched language.

This year’s House Bill 1348, cobbled out of public view by House and Senate conferees at session’s end, gives the ill-qualified Stadium Authority control of both the new 35,000-seat stadium and the surrounding housing, hotel and retail development in a confusing mash-up that also involves HCDA and the Department of Accounting and General Services.

HB 1348 also drastically changes stadium financing, which originally had the state covering costs with $180 million in revenue bonds and $170 million in general obligation bonds.

The bill deletes the revenue bonds and leaves the state to find a private partner to front those funds in a scheme DAGS admits will cost taxpayers more in the long run than bonds.

DAGS is in secret negotiations with three potential stadium development teams, hoping to overcome the shifting criteria and agree on a public-private partnership next year.

Sen. Glenn Wakai, a leading new stadium booster, shrugged off the changing financial landscape, saying, “We will adapt to financing this project with what we have and work with private investors to fill in the pukas.”

How did that work out for rail? Cocksure supporters blithely dismissed every warning sign on the road to the project’s collapse.

UH, an anchor Aloha Stadium tenant that’s been excluded from a meaningful role in the planning, is building its own modestly priced 9,000-seat campus football stadium, to be expanded to 15,000 seats next year.

With UH football taken care of for now, there’s absolutely no need for lawmakers to keep winging it in their irrational push to fast-track this stadium when we have plenty of time to properly consider options with full transparency and public participation.

In February, Gov. David Ige questioned the wisdom of hurrying a new stadium in the pandemic economy.

Let’s hope he follows this good instinct and includes HB 1348 on the long list of poor legislation from this year’s session deserving of veto.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.