Line of Credit ‘Big Piece’ Outstanding in Federal Rail Funding
Extending Honolulu’s line of credit is the “big piece that’s outstanding” before officials can formally ask for funding from the federal government to help pay for Honolulu’s $5.2 billion rail project, incoming HART CEO Daniel Grabauskas told Civil Beat in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Grabauskas was in Washington for a series of meetings about the Honolulu rail project with Federal Transit Administration officials and Hawaii’s congressional delegates.
While Grabauskas told Civil Beat that the meetings were mostly a way of introducing him to key players and educating him about the project, he also said he participated in discussions about what needs to be done before the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation can file an application to enter into a Full Funding Grant Agreement in early May. Honolulu is counting on $1.55 billion in federal funding.
“There’s one final piece that’s currently pending, or will be pending before the City Council relative to the creditor guarantee that the FTA has advised would strengthen the application,” Grabauskas said. “They’re aware that that’s currently being worked out, and the hope is that HART and the City Council can come to a resolution on mutually agreeable language between the city and the FTA.”
But Grabauskas — who doesn’t officially begin work in Honolulu until April 9 — wouldn’t characterize what a lack of resolution could mean for the project. It’s a critical question, and comes in the wake of roiling tension about the issue among Honolulu City Council members. The line of credit funding option was added to the financial plan for rail earlier this year at the request of the FTA.
Last week, the Council , but not before grilling interim HART chief Toru Hamayasu about the financial plan’s inclusion of a line-of-credit increase of $100 million. Upping the city’s credit from $350 million to $450 million would give HART access to the line in case of unexpected revenue shortfalls or cost
overruns.
Council members — in particular Vice Chair Ikaika Anderson, Budget Chair Ann Kobayashi and Floor Leader Romy Cachola — asked Hamayasu if he would remove that funding source from the financial plan, eventually extracting a promise that he’d evaluate it. Grabauskas said on Tuesday that because he wasn’t at that meeting, other HART staffers are better suited to answer questions about what a failure to change the city’s line of credit could mean for the project. (Hamayasu told the Council Budget Committee earlier this month that failure to pass that measure .)
Grabauskas said that his meetings today “in all cases” demonstrated that Honolulu’s rail efforts are moving forward as intended. He met with all four Hawaii congressional delegates, as well as FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff and the regional administrator assigned to Hawaii, . He was accompanied by Hamayasu, according to a HART spokeswoman.
The one area of the project that Grabauskas says he aims to improve is communication with the public.
“When you’re spending taxpayers’ money, you need to be responsive — and a word I hear often is ‘transparent,'” Grabauskas said. “To begin with, to make sure that we all, on the HART staff, recognize the fact that with the largest public works project in the state of Hawaii’s history, that we have a responsibility that we need to embrace to be open and transparent.”
Grabauskas says that he has heard repeatedly from people who were once supportive of Honolulu rail, but changed their mind somewhere along the way.
“They say, ‘I was for rail but I’m not for how we got here, or how it’s being done,'” Grabauskas said. “My job is to convince folks who previously were on board with the project. If there was something we didn’t do properly or correctly or right, we will now.”
HART put out a press release following Grabauskas’ meetings, including quotes from various parties. Read that release here:
Source: Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation
Michael Levine contributed to this report.
