Why So Little Information About City Meeting With Feds About Rail?
Who knows what happened when Honolulu City Council members met with Federal Transit Administration officials? Not the taxpayers.
鈥淚nvestigate鈥 and 鈥渋nvestigation.鈥
鈥淩esulting findings and recommendations.鈥
鈥淪hall present a written report to the Council of its findings and recommendations …鈥
Those are some of the words from .听The resolution established a 鈥減ermitted interaction group鈥 of the council to meet with officials from the Federal Transit Administration, Hawaii鈥檚 congressional delegation and others to discuss recent cost overruns and other issues related to the rail project.
Why isn’t the City Council being more forthcoming about what transpired during a recent meeting between council members and the Federal Transit Authority?
On Feb. 24, Council Chair Martin and council members Brandon Elefante, Joey Manahan and Trevor Ozawa met with the FTA.听On March 24, they released their on their one-hour meeting.听It leaves much to be desired.
The report provides an outline summary of responses from the FTA.听There are no recommendations.听In fact, even the questions that council members asked are not included, so we are left to guess what was actually asked.听
While several council members did meet with Hawaii鈥檚 congressional delegation, according to their individual trip reports, there is no mention of them in the report.听Interestingly, however, a staff member from Councilman Ikaika Anderson鈥檚 office was in attendance and was given the opportunity to ask questions.
The report does say that 鈥渢here is an enormous amount of scrutiny over the project.鈥听Apparently it鈥檚 not enough, however, given the sometimes incomplete, incorrect information 鈥 and, some would say, deliberate lies 鈥 that have been provided to the public and our political representatives.听
It also mentions costs.听鈥淔TA will consider cost adjustments,鈥 and 鈥淔TA needs to evaluate cost increases.鈥听But what does this mean?听No time frames or deadlines are provided.听Is any of this done through the Project Management Oversight Contractor?听We are left filling in the blanks.
By way of comparison, the permitted interaction group established in 2013 to investigate and assess issues relating to the Haiku Stairs does a much better job at informing the public of the results.听
Shouldn鈥檛 we expect more from an investigation related to a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded project?听 I do.
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