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Editor’s Note: Late Wednesday, City Council Chair Ernie Martin withdrew the budget request detailed below, saying he instead wants to direct $250,000 to social services. Click here to read Civil Beat’s coverage of that development.

Let’s be abundantly clear from the beginning: There is no scenario in which the Honolulu City Council should approve handing $250,000 of the public’s money to a well-to-do church to help pay for a parking garage and meeting space complex.

For anyone familiar with the constitutional concept of separation of church and state, such an idea would be frankly laughable.

But elections apparently make people do crazy things.

Exhibit A: City Council Chairman Ernie Martin, who pulled papers just last week for his mayoral race, and City Councilman Joey Manahan, who has pulled papers for his own re-election, are proposing to give at least a quarter-million of your tax dollars to a $10 million capital campaign for New Hope, the Christian megachurch with congregations and many thousands of members scattered across Oahu.

Reaction to the proposed grant-in-aid, first reported Tuesday by Civil Beat’s Anita Hofschneider, was swift, sharp and shocked. Among the hundreds of comments on the story on CivilBeat.com and Facebook by Monday afternoon:

“This is a joke, right?”

“Heck, as a tax paying citizen who DOES belong to New Hope, I am appalled and find this offensive! Ugh why?!?!”

“Seriously … this is absolutely NOT OK. I don’t understand how this is even built into the budget.”

“N��!”

The optics are bad enough for Manahan, whose wan effort to justify the expense sounded like even he didn’t believe it: “The center will benefit its thousands of islandwide church members and provide various outreach programs.”

But here’s why they are much worse for Martin:

It boggles the mind to think that any elected official in Hawaii would believe that giving general fund money to New Hope wouldn’t draw serious scrutiny, even if it were perfectly legitimate. And this isn’t.

On April 11, Don Horner resigned as chairman of the under heavy pressure from Martin, who very publicly had called on him to step down the previous week, in a letter to Mayor Kirk Caldwell. Martin has been sharply critical of the $6.6 billion Honolulu rail project, and it bears noting that his colleague, Manahan, chairs the council’s Transportation Committee.

Horner, a successful retired banker, also happens to be a volunteer pastor at C4 Christ Centered Community Church, formerly known as New Hope Diamond Head. One of the most dynamic churches of the New Hope family, with four locations — including one in Taiwan — and a , C4 is one of many New Hope congregations that have been very politically active in Hawaii.

In 2013, for instance, New Hope churches led a highly visible effort to block passage of the state’s marriage equality law, busing thousands of congregants to the Hawaii State Capitol for a week of noisy protests.

In 2014, Elwin Ahu, who currently serves as senior pastor of New Hope Metro, was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, though he and gubernatorial nominee Duke Aiona lost that race.

Going into a competitive mayoral race facing legions of New Hope voters unhappy over Martin’s treatment of one of their pastors would certainly seem to create an electoral challenge for the council chair.

If Martin’s political calculus is that a $250,000 grant to New Hope’s $10 million capital campaign will mitigate the damage, he might be partially right. But the firestorm created by this shockingly bad idea now threatens to kill his mayoral candidacy before he officially files to run.

What makes all of the above even worse is that New Hope has repeatedly found itself under the microscope for inappropriate use of public resources.

In 2014, for instance, New Hope paid $775,000 to resolve a lawsuit over systematically shortchanging the state in renting public school facilities around the state.

The issues in that case were substantial: Though a judge dismissed the matter for lack of sufficient detail, it was alleged that three New Hope churches purposely shorted the state nearly $4.6 million in unpaid rent and fees. There were additional allegations that the practices on rent and fees extended to other New Hope churches as well.

That suit was settled, by the way, while Horner also served as chair of the state Board of Education, which is responsible for the very school facilities that New Hope was using.

So it boggles the mind to think that any elected official in Hawaii might think that giving general fund money to New Hope would not draw serious scrutiny, even if it were perfectly legitimate. And this isn’t. It makes zero sense to give taxpayer funds as a grant-in-aid to support the capital campaign of a church that, let’s face it, isn’t exactly hurting for money.

What of the multitude of serious city priorities crying out for stronger investment? Homelessness. Affordable housing. Those many efforts to shore up Honolulu’s crumbling infrastructure that Martin’s probable election opponent talks about so endlessly. Surely $250,000 could be better invested in any of those areas than in what could easily be seen as a naked effort to buy political cover.

As criticism mounted on Tuesday afternoon, Martin and Manahan wouldn’t speak to Civil Beat, but both released statements trying to put a different spin on the matter than the original budget documents indicate.

For Martin’s part, he intimated the “increased funding for current expenses” that his budget request said was for New Hope’s capital campaign would really be used to fund charitable programs for New Hope Ministries on Sand Island for “the homeless, needy veterans, youth with special needs, victims of domestic abuse and those in need of marriage and family therapy.”

Manahan extolled the benefits of “new parking stalls for public use at no charge” and supporting the “revitalization of the Sand Island industrial area.”

Both Martin and a representative of New Hope’s capital campaign reminded Civil Beat that it’s wrong to discriminate against religious organizations and that grants-in-aid are provided to a variety of faith-based organizations.

We appreciate the reminders. But grants-in-aid aren’t granted to build church facilities.

The people of Honolulu are fortunate, indeed, that Martin and Manahan are but two voices on a nine-member City Council. They should yank this budget request immediately, and if they are too stubborn or immune to the growing tide of public outrage their $250,000 suggestion has caused, their Council colleagues should give this grant-in-aid an emphatic thumbs down.