Confusion about voting rules for members of the board that oversees the city’s troubled rail project remains unresolved after bills that attempted to provide clarity appear to be dead this legislative session.
At the same time, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s board of directors has been moving toward hiring three separate outside consultants at a total price tag of $1.05 million, including one to make recommendations to sort out voting issues involving the board.
The total consulting fees, if approved, would cover parts of fiscal years 2021, 2022 and 2023 and involve advising on board voting policies, helping with a rail recovery plan and serving as a federal liaison, said HART spokesman Joey Manahan.
The 20-mile, 21-station rail
project is now expected to cost $12.45 billion and take until March 2031 to complete, and has a current budget shortfall of
$3.58 billion.
The HART board has 14 directors, nine of whom are allowed to vote, raising questions of what represents a quorum in order for the board to even meet, and how many votes are needed to pass or derail motions.
The nine voting members include three appointed by the City Council; three picked by the Honolulu mayor; one selected by the HART board; one representing the state Department of Transportation; and one who represents the city Department of Transportation Services.
The five nonvoting members include two each selected by House speaker and Senate president, and one representing the city Department of Planning and Permitting.
The lack of clarity from the Legislature about rules for HART’s voting and nonvoting board members has profound implications because dissenting members now play outsize roles on the 14-member board. Amid the uncertainty, an informal policy was adopted that allows two dissenting votes to block board actions.
“To me it’s significantly important because right now two members can stop anything from moving,” said board member Joe Uno. “With that math you can’t have proper
dissent. … Right now if just two people don’t agree with something, it’s just done. Two people become the majority. I cannot believe that this is happening.”
In one instance, HART board member Kika Bukoski’s “no” vote in September — along with a “no” vote from then-board member Terrence Lee — delayed the panel’s initial public effort to oust Andrew Robbins, HART’s CEO and executive director at the time.
Then, just before Christmas, with Lee retired from the board, Bukoski had no support to extend Robbins’ tenure or postpone the
hiring of his interim replacement, Lori Kahikina, the city’s former director of environmental services.
Two groups of disparate legislative bills would
have addressed the voting
question in different ways:
>> Senate Bill 998 Opens in a new tab would specify that the members appointed by the Senate president and House speaker would be voting members, meaning that 13 of the 14 HART board members would have voting power.
>> House Bill 1288 Opens in a new tab and its companion bill, Senate Bill 1324 Opens in a new tab, would keep the board members appointed by the House speaker and Senate president as nonvoting members but make it clear their positions “shall not be counted towards a quorum,” making it easier for the board to at least hold meetings.
Just getting enough board members to show up for the hours-long HART meetings has sometimes been a problem for a board of unpaid volunteers who often face other demands on their time.
Back in 2018 the HART board could not even muster a quorum to vote on a motion on whether to support a City Charter amendment intended to resolve the voting questions. The amendment would have clarified the minimum number of both voting and nonvoting board members needed to constitute a quorum, as well as specify how many votes were necessary to pass motions before the board.
Only seven HART board members showed up to
the 2018 meeting on the amendment, so there were not enough members to constitute a quorum to
express support to fix the problem.
The confusion first arose in 2017 when the number of board members expanded to 14 from the original 10 when the Legislature required adding two nonvoting members selected by the House speaker and two more nonvoting members picked by the Senate president as part of a $2.4 billion rail bailout.
HART and city officials at the time knew that increasing the board membership with four nonvoting members could be problematic but were in no position to make demands during their contentious request for more state funding, said Manahan, who was a councilman at the time after serving in the Legislature.
“Relations were strained,” Manahan said.
Even if the Legislature this year had passed laws clarifying the HART voting issue, questions would still remain over the state’s authority over a city-chartered agency, Manahan said.
“The Legislature is trying to be helpful and trying to help us out,” Manahan said. “To truly fix the problem, it’s truly going to require a charter fix.”
