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For the Honolulu City Council, the answer is no.

The Transportation and Transit Planning Committee meeting Wednesday quickly turned from a numbers-heavy discussion of the state of the city’s transit fund to a personality-heavy argument over the .

After the city’s Budget and Transit departments briefed the committee on the status of the fund, Chair Breene Harimoto attempted to rein in his colleagues, asking that they stick to the topic at hand and not veer off into a debate about the merits of rail in general or even the financial plan specifically. He said he hoped to break the broader conversation into discrete, manageable chunks rather than one contentious marathon meeting.

That rubbed some the wrong way. Freshman Stanley Chang seemed a bit baffled at the line between the transit fund and the financial plan, but backed down. Veterans Romy Cachola and Ann Kobayashi pushed back by continuing to ask administration officials about other matters. Examples included paid public relations consultants, a proposed bond float in the next year and the funding source for the Alternatives Analysis, conducted even before the transit fund was created in January 2007.

When the chair made clear he wouldn’t tolerate any more off-agenda questions, Cachola said that meant the meeting was effectively over, drawing his hand across his throat. After Harimoto gaveled the meeting adjourned, he said he didn’t appreciate Cachola’s remarks and demonstrative hand signals, then picked up his things and stormed out of the room.

Tom Berg didn’t want to wait for another meeting to start working. He sidled up to Kobayashi, and asked quietly if it would be a violation of the state’s Sunshine Law for the two of them to discuss potential resolution. (It’s not.)

When Cachola, drinking from an oversized blue and white mug, walked up to the pair smiling, the three had convened their own council meeting — this one sans a strict agenda or a bossy committee chair.

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