Honolulu Has to Wait Until June for Rail Report
Taxpayers footed the bill for a rail fact-finding trip that two Honolulu City Council members took in April. But Transportation Committee Chairman Breene Harimoto says he and Council member Ernie Martin will not complete a report about their findings until June.
“We are still really swamped with budget and other pressing issues,” Harimoto wrote in an email to Civil Beat Tuesday morning.聽“We have a rough draft of our report, but it still needs much work.聽Sorry it鈥檚 taking longer than I hoped. I suspect that we won鈥檛 make much progress on our report next week since we鈥檒l be in the home stretch of budget.聽At this point, I plan to concentrate on finalizing our report right after we approve the budget on June 3rd.”
But the budget crunch isn’t the only pressure these council members face with regard to their fact-finding report. Both council members have acknowledged city lawyers warned them to be “very careful” about how much to say about the trip during a protest of a potential rail contract.
Harimoto organized the trip after Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle in March announced the city wants to award a $1.1 billion rail contract to Italian rail manufacturer Ansaldo. The council members’ mission: to visit cities that had done business with Ansaldo,聽and report back to the people of Honolulu about what they found.
The two companies that lost in their bid for the contract Ansaldo won are protesting the city’s decision. That’s why Harimoto and Martin say city lawyers cautioned them about which questions not to ask on their fact-finding trip.
Harimoto and Martin visited San Francisco together before individually visiting two other cities. Martin went on to Los Angeles and Harimoto went to Copenhagen. (Read Civil Beat’s previous coverage about what Martin shared about the trip, and what Harimoto told us.)
We note with interest that, since Harimoto returned from Copenhagen, Denmark National Rail has spoken out about problems with Ansaldo, and expressed a desire to break its contract with the company.
As for how much the mystery trip cost taxpayers? It’s not yet clear. City Council Chairman Nestor Garcia’s office is responsible for handling expense reports, and a woman in Garcia’s office said she hasn’t yet received them from Harimoto and Martin. There is no deadline for filing expense reports.
Do you think it’s reasonable for lawmakers to take more than a month to report what they found 鈥斅爋r how much they spent 鈥斅爋n a taxpayer-funded fact-finding trip?
