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First Hawaiian Bank CEO and Chairman Don Horner has topped a number of important short-lists lately. Less than a week after being sworn in as chairman of the new appointed state Board of Education, Horner on Monday was named one of 10 members on the board of a new Honolulu mass transit agency.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle hand-picked Horner for the respective leadership roles.

Carlisle said his three picks for the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit have enough “gravitas” that specialized rail experience isn’t necessary. The mayor introduced his appointees in a Monday afternoon press conference. Other than Horner, they were:

• Retired Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Director William “Buzzy” Hong
• Honolulu Corporation Counsel Carrie Okinaga

Voters in November approved a charter amendment creating the authority, a semi-autonomous agency that will oversee construction and operation of the $5.5 billion, 20-mile rail line from Kakaako to Ala Moana.

“I think they bring with them a level of respect and experience that is known in the community,” Carlisle. “And more importantly, specifically, known in the fields that are critical to what HART’s mission is going to be.”

Carlisle said he selected Horner as an appointee to HART before he knew Abercrombie planned to name him to the Board of Education.

“I called him almost directly after I found out he had been cornered by the governor, and I said, ‘I thought we had a deal,’ and he said, ‘We have a deal,'” Carlisle said. “So he is willing to work.”

Horner is also chairman of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.

“Don brings the necessary experience, the financial wherewithal,” City Council Chairman Nestor Garcia said. “The man’s focused. He’s got a lot of energy. With the kind of passion he brings to the school board, I hope he had something left over for the transit.”

Carlisle called his pick of Okinaga “a real loss” for the city but a “real gain for HART,” and said she would be particularly valuable “considering the number of lawsuits” the rail project faces. Carlisle also said it was a priority for him to appoint a woman, and Okinaga is so far the only woman of nine already nominated or appointed to the 10-member board.

Okinaga had already planned to leave her job with the city come July, in order to spend more time with her family. The position with HART is volunteer. Still, it’s clear HART nominees will have to devote considerable time to the project.

The mayor said the main disqualifying criteria for potential candidates — dozens applied to be on the HART board, he said — was being “anti-rail.”

Like the mayor, the Honolulu City Council also appoints three HART board members. The council’s Transportation Chairman, Breene Harimoto, introduced his three picks — he selected them from a pool of nine nominees submitted by the council — at the mayor’s press conference:

• Keslie Hui, development manager for Forest City Enterprises with experience in strategic planning and construction
• Damien Kim, the business manager and financial secretary of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers chapter
• Ivan Lui-Kwan, an attorney and former Honolulu Budget and Fiscal Services director

Those picks must still be advanced by members of the council’s Transportation Committee, then confirmed in a vote by the City Council.

While few of the nominees introduced on Monday have any real experience with rail, Garcia says he likes Hui so much in part because he has worked with transportation development.

“He’s running a transit-oriented development project on the Big Island,” Garcia said. “Not that they have rail over there, but incorporating some kind of transportation, and that TOD experience will be good to have on the transit authority.”

Garcia said he also likes that Hui is younger by at least a decade than most others who will serve on the board.

“I like his age,” Garcia said. “He’s going to be 32 next month. He said something interesting to me when I sat down to talk to him about this possible appointment. He said his generation is going to have to live with the decisions we make with regard to the transit project, not just the transportation aspects of this but the development that will come from it. I was like, ‘OK, that’s good perspective.'”

The City Council will take up more business related to HART in a full council meeting on Wednesday. Council members will consider what Harimoto characterized as a “compromise measure” about the council’s oversight of the agency.

Council members have raised concerns that Carlisle cut them out of the process of approving HART’s first budget by keeping the new agency’s budget out of his spending plan for next year.

Okinaga, who has represented the Carlisle administration’s position in closed-door executive sessions with the City Council, did not comment on the matter when asked Monday afternoon.

Other HART board members will include Honolulu Transportation Services Director Wayne Yoshioka and State Department of Transportation Director Glenn Okimoto. The city’s Planning and Permitting director, David Tanoue will be a nonvoting member. Until the creation of HART on July 1, the city’s transit-oriented development staff and resources have been under his purview.