The 2017 Legislature has been portrayed as a failure for adjourning without resolving a $3 billion bailout for Oahu rail, but the fault is misplaced.
Pin this donkey tail on Mayor Kirk Caldwell, the City Council and civic leaders who refuse to budge from their irrational “build-at-any cost” devotion to an original rail plan that’s so flawed it now threatens the state’s financial health as well as the city’s.
We don’t need the Legislature back in special session to write the city a blank-check extension of the rail excise tax for more of the same awful management.
We need city leaders to go back to the drawing board and produce honest numbers and a credible plan to control costs going forward. More responsibility before more money.
In the meantime, there’s funding to keep building to the Middle Street transit center and possibly to Aloha Tower, according to the city’s recent report to the Federal Transit Administration.
“Who looks at a project that’s double or triple the size of the original budget and says we cannot change a thing?” Sen. Laura Thielen asked.
The project that started out at $5.2 billion is now at $10 billion with not even the easier half of the 20-mile line from Kapolei to Ala Moana Center completed.
Who believes the city will meet its optimistic cost projections for the more difficult construction through the urban core? Without a course correction, this project is likely headed for $13 billion to $15 billion.
The cost in lost opportunities is staggering. The billions blown on rail cost overruns could slash Hawaii’s crippling public pension debt, put air conditioning in every classroom, rebuild our infrastructure, and make huge progress on ending homelessness and providing affordable housing.
New House Speaker Scott Saiki said the Legislature has been forced to take a larger oversight role on rail because the city has failed to steer the project responsibly.
“Without continued oversight from someone … the cost will simply increase over time to a point where it’s out of control,” he said.
To House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke, such oversight means “assuring the public we are not going to give a blank check, we are going to give them a finite number of funds, and we are going to put restrictions on the city to make sure that this job is done right.”
Luke added, “It is our responsibility to stand up for the people who don’t have voices, who cannot hire lobbyists.”
Saiki, Luke and others such as Sen. Jill Tokuda, who lost her post as Ways and Means chairwoman for standing up to the rail bullies, are not failures for finally demanding accountability from the city.
They are our last hope for getting this ruinously botched project pointed in the right direction.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
