Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s effort to stick U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa for skyrocketing rail costs is shameless even for him.
Caldwell, who supports Gov. David Ige against Hanabusa’s election challenge, injected himself into the race by claiming she failed to control costs during her stint in 2015 and 2016 as chairwoman of the city rail agency.
“When I appointed Congresswoman Hanabusa to the HART board, and she went on to become the chair of the board, I expected her to get better control of the construction costs for rail, and that did not occur under her,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “In fact, construction costs went up. That’s the simple, bottom-line fact.”
Rail hangs around Caldwell’s neck like a stinking dead papio.
He’s been a key figure in this debacle longer than anybody else, first from 2008 to 2010 as Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s managing director and self-described “primary point person on rail” and now as mayor himself since 2012.
He promised to “build rail better” and did absolutely nothing to make that happen; during his tenure, rail construction costs have increased from $5.2 billion to $9 billion — he says it should be rounded up to $10 billion — and the completion date has slipped five years.
Blaming Hanabusa for rail costs is nonsense. She did more good than harm during her time with HART and helped strip away the years of “on time and on budget” lies.
Caldwell’s then-Transportation Director Mike Formby at the time credited the Hanabusa-led board with finally “being open and transparent about the potential cost of this project.”
The chance to return to Congress after the death of Rep. Mark Takai was unexpected and it’s hard to fault Hanabusa for leaving HART to seek her old seat. She had served on the unpaid HART board longer than her original commitment.
Caldwell’s beef with Hanabusa is mainly her refusal to provide him the political cover he expected when he went before the Legislature in 2017 with his latest inflated rail bailout request.
Instead, she joined her one-time rival, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, in calling out the mayor’s phony numbers and supporting legislation to limit reliance on the excise tax and add the hotel tax and city funds to rail’s financing mix, along with more city accountability.
Before you know it, Caldwell will be blaming Hanabusa for the next rail crisis coming down the track — some $140 million a year in operating costs for which he’s produced no funding source except “faith.”
This is in no way intended to influence the election for governor; some Hanabusa backers have wrongly implicated Ige in rail’s troubles.
The point is, the hauna of rail is on Caldwell and the city and any involvement by any governor is only to clean up his mess.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
