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The leading candidates for mayor of Honolulu — Acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell, former City Prosecuting Attorney Peter Carlisle and University of Hawaii Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros — participated in a debate last week on Hawaii Public Radio.

During closing arguments, moderator Wayne Yoshioka asked the candidates to identify the biggest challenge facing the incoming mayor and explain how they’d meet that challenge. Prevedorous said, in part:

“My intent is to stop mismanagement and address the debt. The major issue is debt, but we have to get a handle on mismanagement before we address the debt. Let me give you an example of mismanagement. The city, and you can look at your statement of registration of your vehicle, is $300. There are 1 million registered vehicles on Oahu. That makes $300 million. You pay 40 cents per gallon gasoline tax. If you add it, in a year, the county collects over $500 million for roads. How come we always spend far less than $150 million for roads? That’s why we have all those potholes. That’s an absolute proof of mismanagement.”

You can on the Hawaii Public Radio website. Fast-forward to the 1-hour, 19-minute mark to listen to Prevedouros’ and others’ closing arguments.

Civil Beat explored the accuracy of his assertions:

• Does it really cost $300 to register a vehicle?
• Are there really 1 million registered vehicles on the island?
• Is the county’s portion of the gas tax really 40 cents a gallon?
• Does the city always spend less than $150 million for roads?
• Is it required that those funds all be used for road-related expenses?

The short answer to all those questions is that Prevedouros’ statement is false and misleading, with one exception — how much the city spends on roads. The long answer sheds light on why.

Revenues

Vehicle registrations depend on the weight of the vehicle, and the formula is a bit complicated. Both the state and county collect a portion of the money everyone pays in registration.

The is 0.75 cents per pound for vehicles weighing up to 4,000 pounds. For vehicles weighing between 4,000 and 7,000 pounds, the charge is 1 cent per pound. For vehicles weighing between 7,000 and 10,000 pounds, the charge is 1.25 cents per pound. And for vehicles over 10,000 pounds, the charge is a flat rate of $150. The state charges a $25 registration fee that includes $5 for the emergency management fund
related to the Hawaii Department of Health‘s emergency medical services.

The county charges its own registration fee of $20, a beautification fee of $7 to clean up abandoned and derelict vehicles, a new-vehicles-only plate fee of $5 and an emblem fee of 50 cents. But the biggest line item is the 4-cents-per-pound county weight tax that will go up to 5 cents on Jan. 1, 2011, according to the .

Put it all together and run it through and it turns out that a new vehicle weighing 4,850 pounds — for example, a typical — would cost $300 in registration today. Heavier vehicles pay more, lighter vehicles less. And of course just a portion goes to city coffers.

On top of that, there are not 1 million registered vehicles in the City and County of Honolulu. According to [pdf] the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism‘s 2009 , there were 718,253 registered vehicles in the county, and not all of those were necessarily taxable. There were 172,209 on the Big Island, 153,481 on Maui and 73,847 on Kauai, for a statewide total of 1,1117,790. (The state’s estimated population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, was 1,295,178 as of July 2009.)

Prevedouros acknowledged his accounting error in an e-mail to Civil Beat, saying the $500 million figure is correct as an average annual approximation for the entire state. He said the Honolulu share is nearly $250 million — about $150 million from regular weight fees, $50 million from the county gas tax and the rest from fees for commercial vehicles, driver licensing and other related sources.

He’s moving in the right direction, but he’s still not correct. The total amount of motor vehicle weight tax collected by the county was $70.6 million in Fiscal Year 2009, according to the city’s latest [pdf]. That number was expected to climb to $82.2 million in the 2010 fiscal year and $105.8 million in 2011 after the fee hike.

The city collected $57.9 million in fiscal year 2006, $70.7 million in 2007 and $71 million in 2008, [pdf]. None of those figures approach $150 million. The various other vehicle-related charges — plate fees, tag fees, transfer fees, annual fees, drivers license and more — were on the scale of $20 million in 2009, not $50 million.

Prevedouros is right, however, about what the gas tax generated: the city budget shows it generated $50.3 million in 2009 and is expected to bring in $49.5 in 2010 and $51.1 in 2011. Between 2006 and 2008, it hovered between $50.6 million and $52.4 million.

But he’s not right about the tax charged at the pump. He said the tax is 40 cents per gallon. But the Honolulu tax is 16.5 cents of that total. (It’s important to remember that the state is responsible for many of the major thoroughfares.)

Expenditures

Prevedouros said the city has spent “far less than $150 million for roads” in recent years.

The operating budget of the Department of Facility Maintenance included $24.6 million for road maintenance, according to the budget for 2009. (That’s the last year we know exactly what was spent.) More than 400 full-time employees — many of whom were contracted by the city — patched 64,816 potholes, cleaned or inspected 10,113 manholes and catch basins, repaired 137,184 square feet of sidewalks, picked up 1,006 dead animals and painted 29,440 lane-feet of curbs and 592 miles of traffic lines, among other tasks.

But there’s also a capital improvements budget, which pays for construction and repairs. For 2009, the budgeted figure for roads and highways was $118.8 million. Of the city’s $2.1 billion [pdf] for 2011, 5.9 percent or $124.3 million dollars, is allocated for highway and streets. That includes $77 million for rehabilitation of streets, $18.5 million for West Oahu traffic improvements and $5 million for Waikiki improvements. Bicycle projects and bridge rehabilitations are also included. So the figure has been roughly constant.

Together, the expenditures do approach Prevedouros’ $150 million figure. So that was the one place where he was correct.

Conclusion: Mismanagement?

Prevedouros’ claim raises the question whether not spending all the fuel tax revenues and vehicle registration fees on roads is “mismanagement.”

Is there a requirement that all those revenues go to road-related expenses?

The answer is, yes. But the definition of road-related expenses is broader than Prevedouros might indicate.

Revenues from the county fuel tax, authorized by of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, are deposited into the Highway Fund. Motor vehicle weight tax revenues — as well as some $90 million to $100 million in public utility franchise tax revenues — are also deposited into the Highway Fund.

Some smaller fees — for plates, tags, transfers and drivers licenses — go into the general fund that can be used to provide a host of other, unrelated services like police, fire, and trash pickup.

The Highway Fund is to be used for transportation-related purposes like construction, improvement, repair and maintenance of roads, tunnels, and overpasses. But it can also be used for traffic control, public safety, street signs, traffic lights, bikeways and mass transit like TheBus, which is projected to receive a $64.3 million subsidy from the Highway Fund in Fiscal Year 2011.

The rules are laid out in Sections and of state law.

At the debate, Prevedouros said the “mismanagement” must be addressed to fix the city’s debt problem. In his conversation with Civil Beat, he used the term “misappropriation” to describe how the government is “robbing essentially from cash cows” and using it for unrelated functions.

“It’s disingenuous to tax something and then use it for a completely different purpose. That’s bad politics,” he said. “Why are you collecting money from drivers to pay for non-driver-related things? … Where is the result of that money?”

He may think it’s disingenuous, but the law is clear: The money can be spent more broadly than just to fix potholes.