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When Gov. David Ige last week released the list of pending bills he intends to veto, the extension of the general excise tax supporting the Honolulu rail project was not among them. And for good reason: He understands that the project is short of funds it must have to complete the first segment of the rail line, which of course is already significantly into the construction phase.

“I am committed to seeing the rail project successfully completed,” Ige said at a press conference where he discussed the veto list.

In the days before Ige’s announcement, media accounts raised new concerns about transparency and full disclosure concerning the often-embattled rail project. The most recent point of focus: whether Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, in advocating for passage of the GET extension, misled legislators about the extent of property tax increases that might be needed.

Legislators in May passed a five-year extension of the GET surcharge funding the $6 billion project, with Caldwell leading a full-court press to approve the measure. There’s no question that the mayor said if the tax extension weren’t passed, Honolulu property taxes would have to be raised by 30 percent to 43 percent to build and maintain the rail line.

Email records released by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, however, make clear that the tax increase would be necessary to cover not only the project’s current $1 billion shortfall but to subsidize rail operations and fund future extensions of the rail system to the University of Hawaii Manoa and Kapolei.

Some legislative leaders now say they thought the figure pertained only to more immediate expenses, such as the shortfall and remaining construction expenses on the existing line, and that Caldwell’s frequently cited property tax prediction was key in securing their support.

Citing Caldwell’s Jan. 26 testimony, Caldwell’s office counters that the mayor was “very clear” that the GET should be extended in perpetuity “specifically to build, maintain, and operate rail and to fund extensions to UH Manoa and Kapolei.”

For some legislators, the mayor’s claims might be mildly described as unconvincing.

“It puts the mayor’s credibility on the line,” state Rep. Sylvia Luke, chair of the House Finance Committee and a lead negotiator on the GET extension bill, told Civil Beat’s Nick Grube. “From the pre-session discussions to the end of session when we had to ultimately vote on this bill, we were always led to believe that the equivalent amount of property tax increase that the city would have to increase was 30 to 40 percent. I think the city, the mayor and HART had always been consistent on that number.”

We get the frustration. Neither the mayor nor HART have set an acceptable standard for transparency and full disclosure with regard to rail finances. Civil Beat has been mightily frustrated, for instance, by a lack of full disclosure with regard to subcontractor expenses that have largely driven the project’s current cost overruns. HART’s position continues to be that it has no responsibility to track those expenses or make them public.

But lawmakers were not only aware of those dynamics, they took turns upbraiding Caldwell about them during committee hearings and complaining loudly about project details being kept from them, prompting calls from both the Legislature and the City Council for project audits. They weren’t alone in their concerns. In the thick of session, state Budget Director Wes Machida said he lacked certain project information and hadn’t had the opportunity to verify data furnished by HART and the city.

Caldwell’s office counters that the mayor was “very clear” about what his figures pertained to. For some legislators, the mayor’s claims might be mildly described as unconvincing.

Still, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for anyone claiming to have been misled by Caldwell on a matter as fundamental as this. The possibility of such an enormous property tax hike should have prompted legislators to push harder until they had complete, legitimate answers for the data behind the claim.

We were sufficiently concerned about key details relative to the largest public works undertaking in Hawaii history that in March we editorialized in support of a special session to allow lawmakers and the governor to focus exclusively on rail’s many unanswered questions without the distractions of other legislative business. Legislators instead scrambled to pass the five-year extension during the regular session, spending more time in the final days on the duration and amount of the tax than on fully understanding the needs for the tax.

But this saga is not over. Though Ige is now set to follow the Legislature’s lead in approving the tax, the Honolulu City Council must also sign on for the measure to be implemented.

Recent signals from Council Chair Ernie Martin and his colleagues strongly suggest this will be no slam dunk. In May, Martin said the Council will engage in a process “just as difficult, if not more difficult” than what the mayor encountered at the Legislature.

With the property tax explanations of the past week, we’ll put our money on “more difficult.”

And that’s exactly as it should be. The City Council, often criticized for not having enough “skin in the game” on its own rail project now stands as the last line of defense for the public’s wallet.

Council members should insist that the mayor and HART provide information that they’ve consistently refused to turn over, including details about payments to subcontractors and other accounting of where more than $1 billion spent to date has gone. The Council has called for an audit and members should not hesitate to force the city to carry that out.

Council members should ask all the questions they need, verify all the data that needs verification and generally conduct a level of due diligence appropriate for a $6 billion project.

The work on this tax measure is far from pau, and if lawmakers share our concerns about public confidence in the rail project, they’ll work hard to make sure there are no more surprises.