The Honolulu Ethics Commission voted 4-0 to dismiss complaints against City Council members Ikaika Anderson and Ann Kobayashi and former Council member Donovan Dela Cruz over claims that they failed to disclose gifts from lobbyists before taking critical rail votes.

The complaints were brought by commission Executive Director Chuck Totto, alleging that the three accepted prohibited gifts and then failed to disclose those conflicts of interest before voting on bills and resolutions that were favorable to lobbyists.

The complaints have been watched closely because of possible implications to the city’s $6 billion rail project, with some saying that failure to disclose the gifts invalidated the votes of those Council members on those measures — thus requiring the current Council to revote on them.

Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa last month filed a lawsuit against the city demanding that the Council revote on 11 measures that had been called into question because of the gifts received by Council members.

But Colleen Hanabusa, who represents the three officials, convinced commission members during a closed-door hearing Friday that the cases should be dismissed for lack of merit.

A similar case filed against former Councilman Todd Apo remains active.

The four commission members who heard Hanabusa’s arguments — Riki May Amano, Victoria Marks, Stephen Silva and Allene Suemori — signed off on the order granting the dismissals today.

Two other commission members — Michael Lilly and Stanford Yuen — recused themselves from the cases while commission Chairwoma Katy Chen was on the mainland.

The cases against the four current and former Council members were initiated by Totto shortly after state Rep. Romy Cachola, a former Councilman, agreed to pay a fine to settle a complaint that he accepted gifts and didn’t disclose a conflict of interest before voting on numerous bills.

In paying the fine, Cachola made no admission of wrongoing, but stated publicly that at least five of his colleagues voted on the same measures after accepting similar gifts from the same lobbyists.

Earlier this year, former Councilman Nestor Garcia also agreed to pay a fine to settle charges brought against him without admission of any wrongdoing.

In a related development, the Council voted 8-1 to give the first of three needed approvals to Bill 73, essentially a revote of a 2012 bill authorizing the city to issue general obligation bonds for rail and other projects. It was one of the 11 votes called into question by Kawananakoa.

City officials said they did not redo the vote because any votes cast were invalid, but because bond counsel required a check-off from Corporation Counsel Donna Leong showing no disputes involving the bond authorization. Leong could not do so using the 2012 approval because of Kawananakoa’s lawsuit, city officials said.