The Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA) has had its share of growing pains, some that flared up decades after the agency was established in law. At one point, during the 2014 legislative session, lawmakers weighed a package of bills to curb the power of the authority, even abolish it altogether.

Now they are increasingly looking to HCDA to steer the development of multiple projects, huge ones. Much of this makes sense, especially for those priority developments requiring significant upgrades to the area infrastructure. HCDA has experience to contribute on complex projects involving a mix of state and private land.

But there is concern that the workload on this 23-staffer agency not be increased at the expense of clear supervision and community input on what, after all, are taxpayer-funded projects.

HCDA was authorized by the Legislature in 1976. According to its latest strategic plan, adopted in November, it was conceived as “a new form capable of long-range planning and implementation of improved community development.” The idea is streamlining permitting processes, empowering HCDA to handle zoning decisions and some other regulatory matters.

The primary aim at the start, and what today remains its best-known project, is Kakaako. That is still one of its development districts — now also including Kalaeloa, Heeia and, most recently, the planned Maui prison site called Pulehunui.

However, in 2022, the Legislature passed what became Act 184, establishing a new Transit Oriented Development Infrastructure Improvement District, taking in land identified by counties as TOD zones. HCDA was tapped to do this, according to the legislation, because “no single state agency has the authority to improve infrastructure along a transit corridor in the best interest of the state.”

That’s true, and that need along Oahu’s rail corridor is an urgent problem that HCDA could help to resolve. At the same time, plainly, this will be a heavy lift.

HCDA’s strategic plan, prompted by this expansion of tasks, identifies its strengths and opportunities — including TOD, broad statutory authority and partnership collaborations — as well as weaknesses and challenges.

As a weakness, the plan notes that the addition of new geographic sites demands the building of relationships with new communities. And among the challenges is the astute observation of “too many projects that stretch staff capacity and board focus.”

On that front, legislators keep heaping their demands onto the authority — so staff capacity to manage things well remains a top worry. Among its many projects, HCDA is on tap to help with the Women’s Community Correctional Center expansion, which doesn’t seem to be the kind of project requiring a power agency.

And HCDA now is among the entities tasked with sorting out the Aloha Stadium redevelopment. Once selected, private developers there also will be working with the Stadium Authority and the state Department of Accounting and General Services.

Clarity is needed: Efficiency, transparency and community engagement can quickly go out the window when the lines of authority aren’t defined.

Fortunately, it appears that at least one project on the HCDA to-do list — supporting the development of a First Responders Technology Campus and Cybersecurity Data Center in Central Oahu — has been back-burnered, at least for now.

Gov. Josh Green on Wednesday said that he wants to have a clearer sense of total costs before investing earnest money in it, and that’s exactly the right impulse.

Overall, though, the potential for problems persists. Lawmakers 47 years ago intended HCDA to have broad shoulders, but now their successors must consider whether they’re piling on too much.