Two years ago, the folks running the yet-to-be-built rail transit line put out the call to all artists: "Show us what you can do."

The appeal was for public art to grace the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s 21 stations along the 20-mile route.

Each station will have pieces of art that, according to the specs:

"Embrace the history, cultures, traditions, and character of the community surrounding the stations."

For instance, included in each station’s planned artwork would be six 10-feet-wide by 9-feet-high glass windscreens with a lei theme.

"Each station will have pre-selected flowers or plants used in the lei that will be aesthetically designed on the platform windscreens. The windscreens commemorate the master lei makers of Hawai‘i and document their ephemeral work," says the call for bids.

OK, I get it — as the contract says, the lei is a "traditional Hawaiian cultural expression of a gift that honors a person or loved one, to mark a momentous occasion or event or used as adornments in Hula."

This is just so wrong.

What needs to be celebrated is Hawaii’s vivid and unique politics that have brought us to the point of fighting to preserve an over-budget rail system that, depending on the time of the survey, either slightly more or slightly less than 50 percent of the people don’t want.

If Honolulu is going to spend public money on art for the rail line, the artists should start with the columns.

The first of the planned 840 columns are already rising like giant whale bones in Leeward Oahu. With that many concrete canvasses awaiting adornment, there is much potential.

Each column should be named for a Hawaii politician who brought us to today’s dilemma.

To be commemorated is a rail project, first estimated at $3.5 billion, which now with cost overruns is nudging up against $6 billion and needs to borrow up to $1.9 billion.

The names to remember are legion.

Artists could start with former Mayor Neal Blaisdell, who in 1966 first suggested a mass transit rail line. Of course, former Mayor Frank Fasi would be included for his work, first in the 1970s and then in the 1990s to bring rail to Honolulu.

And with Fasi, give all the members of the Honolulu City Council their own memorial pillar.

Former Councilwoman Rene Mansho gets one for her vote to kill Fasi’s first transit plan.

Then there would be a former Gov. Linda Lingle column, maybe two, because upon becoming governor she called for a tax for a Honolulu transit system and then changed her mind and opposed the plan.

That scheme was sold to the Legislature in 2005 by former Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who certainly deserves his own concrete column.

The Legislature’s 2005 edition would give us 76 more columns for the members’ votes for and against rail.

Don’t forget the nine-member City Council that then approved the transit plan.

Also getting two columns would be Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who worked on the plan as Hannemann’s managing director and then as candidate for mayor who promised to control costs.

Former Gov. Ben Cayetano should get his own column for being a consistent voice of protest against the heavy-rail plan. The late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye should have a nearby column because Cayetano and Inouye were bookends in the build-it-or-don’t-build-it argument.

If Honolulu builds rail without bankrupting Hono-lulu, we will have permanent reminders of whom to thank.

And if the project fails and goes broke, well, for a very long time, we will know who to blame.

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Richard Borreca runs on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.