Separate efforts to halt the city’s $6 billion rail project and the 11,750-unit Ho‘opili development project in West Oahu started Tuesday in different forums.

Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa filed a lawsuit in state Circuit Court, seeking to invalidate 11 key votes cast by the Honolulu City Council for the rail project. It also seeks to stop funding tied to those approvals — at least until the votes on the unspecified number of bills and resolutions are properly ratified.

The complaint claims “systematic violations of City and County laws, constitute illegal acts, involve the expenditure of public funds collected from taxpayers such as Plaintiff, and have imperiled, and if not remedied will continue to imperil, the public interest and cause injury to the public,” the lawsuit states.

Council Chairman Ernie Martin told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday that, in view of Kawananakoa’s then-pending litigation, he intends to ask his eight colleagues whether they want to take the revotes.

City ethics laws require Council members who have a direct or indirect interest in pending legislation to disclose such interests publicly before voting on them.

Former Councilmen Romy Cachola and Nestor Garcia agreed to pay fines to the city Ethics Commission to settle charges that they failed to disclose receiving free golf and meals from lobbyists and others who benefited from the votes the Council had taken and approved.

The lawsuit also says that Garcia failed to disclose that he was a director, and then later executive director, of the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce when he voted on proposals that benefited the chamber’s members beginning in April 2008. He was fined by the commission in connection with those votes, as well.

The lawsuit says, as did Cachola shortly after he was fined, that at least five additional Council members voted on the measures that were called into question.

Cachola reasoned that if his vote was invalid, so were those of the other Council members. Ethics Commission Executive Director Chuck Totto also said the votes were invalidated and should be retaken, as did Ethics Commission member Michael Lilly.

Totto said Tuesday that the investigations into the other Council members tied to the disputed votes is ongoing.

The 11 measures raised in the lawsuit are ones in which the outcome “turned on votes cast by Council members while under undisclosed conflict, and which are thus null and void,” the suit states.

All 11 are tied to rail, but Kawananakoa’s end goal is not to kill the project, said Bridget Morgan, attorney with Bickerton Dang LLC. “The lawsuit is not about rail. The lawsuit is about good government, ethical government and … restoring the public’s trust in the system,” Morgan said. “The process here was absolutely dirty, it was illegal and it needs to be cleaned up.”

Kawananakoa, acting as an individual, would gain nothing financially from winning the lawsuit but felt “nothing had been done” to remedy the flawed votes, Morgan said. “Fining individual Council members does not provide a sufficient deterrent to this behavior in the future … so Miss Kawananakoa felt that a lawsuit would be necessary to provide the public with a remedy and to attempt to restore public trust in the system.”

A descendant of landowner James Campbell, Kawananakoa received the largest share of stock in the James Campbell Co. when the Campbell estate was terminated in 2007. Her share has been estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Campbell and the Kapolei Development Co., one of its subsidiaries, were among the lobbyists mentioned by the Ethics Commission that gave gifts to the Council members.

Her financial stake in a company that would benefit from rail “speaks even more to her motives,” Morgan said. “She is really interested in seeing this process cleaned up despite who the lobbyists were who made the gifts.”

Martin, the Council chairman, has suggested that he will seek new votes on the measures in question, so Kawananakoa is holding off taking the legal procedures for either a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order that could halt the expenditure of funds for rail unless it’s clear the Council will not seek to remedy its errors, Morgan said.

Martin told the Star-Advertiser last week that he hoped to bring the matter publicly before his colleagues next month.

City Corporation Counsel Donna Leong, who could not be reached Tuesday, has previously maintained that revotes are not needed because the commission “made no findings of misconduct or ethical violations” involving either Cachola or Garcia.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit Friends of Makakilo filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission seeking to throw out the unanimous rezoning approval the City Council gave to D.R. Horton-Schuler Homes’ contentious Ho‘opili project in May.

Kioni Dudley, the group’s president and founder, said Tuesday that the votes should be invalidated because each of the nine Council members had received large amounts of campaign contributions from Horton employees, the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce, contractors, labor interests and other parties that would benefit from the project.

Because the Ethics Commission’s executive director and one commission member have said votes by Council members who received gifts from people benefiting from the rail project should be invalidated, so should the votes of all the Council members who voted on Ho‘opili, Dudley said.

Each of the nine Council members received significant campaign contributions from those interested parties, and six of the nine Council members got a majority of all their contributions the last two years from those parties, Dudley said. None of the Council members disclosed in detail the extent of the interests before voting, he said, and the votes of all nine were tainted, he told reporters at a Honolulu Hale news conference Tuesday.

“We’re at a point right now where all of the Council members are so indebted to the construction community that … they can’t vote against the community, and that’s a real problem,” Dudley said. He said he wants the commission to study firming up the law “so the Council members have to state publicly their contributions, and who contributed, and their total sums at least.”

An analysis of Campaign Spending Commission reports by the Star-Advertiser in May showed that during the last election cycle, eight of the nine Council members received contributions from Horton executives.

Martin received $6,500. Ikaika Anderson received $2,000; Brandon Elefante, $200; Carol Fukunaga, $1,750; Joey Manahan, $1,500; Ron Menor, $700; Trevor Ozawa, $1,500; and Kymberly Pine, $1,500.

Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi was the only Council member who did not receive campaign contributions from Horton executives. But like several other colleagues, she filed a disclosure statement citing a potential conflict. Kobayashi said she is friends with Horton Vice President Cameron Nekota and his mother. And like other colleagues, Kobayashi received contributions in the last cycle from an attorney and a planner who are working on Ho‘opili.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who signed the rezoning bill into law and whose planning director recommended approval of the rezoning, received $8,400 from Horton executives during the last election cycle.

In response to a request for comment by the Star-Advertiser, Horton said, in a statement, “As private citizens, D.R. Horton Hawaii employees are free to support the public servants they believe in, whether through volunteerism or financial contributions.”