State legislative leaders picked four financial experts to serve on the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board.
When lawmakers passed a $2.4 billion rail-bailout package in September, they included a requirement that the Senate president and House speaker appoint two members each to HART’s all-volunteer board. The four new appointees were added “to ensure the appropriate use of state-authorized funds,” according to the new law.
The new positions are non-voting. With their addition, HART now has
14 board members, including five non-voting members.
In an Oct. 16 letter to the City Council, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell raised concerns that too many non-voting members could affect the board’s ability to take action. Based on the City Charter, eight of the nine voting members must attend all HART meetings to have a quorum, Caldwell stated. Furthermore, those eight members would have to vote affirmatively to pass items, he added. Caldwell has proposed a Charter amendment to fix the quorum issue.
For his two picks, Senate President Ron Kouchi (D, Kauai-Niihau) selected Wesley Machida, the state’s budget and finance director under Gov. David Ige, as well as Machida’s predecessor, Kalbert Young, who served in that role under former Gov. Neil Abercrombie.
Young now serves as University of
Hawaii vice president for budget and
finance, as well as its chief financial officer. He also previously served as a state Employees’ Retirement System (ERS) trustee.
House Speaker Scott Saiki selected two financial executives from the private sector: Tobias “Toby” Martyn, the vice president of investments at Stifel and previously a senior executive vice president at Bank of Hawaii; and Kamani Kuala‘au, a senior vice president at the asset-management firm Atalanta Sosnoff Capital and chairman of the King Lunalilo Trust Estate.
Kuala‘au was also Kamehameha Schools’ student body president during the “Broken Trust” scandal in the 1990s, when he clashed with controversial school trust board member Lokelani Lindsey.
