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$6.6 BILLION AND GROWING. “On Time and On Budget” lost most of its bite as a Honolulu rail project punchline some time ago. Once the sunny promise of Executive Director Dan Grabauskas on how efficiently the 20-mile rail line would be built, it began to draw chuckles late last year when the first major cost overruns for the project were disclosed.

After newly revised project costs were released last week estimating a price tag totaling nearly $6.6 billion — now a shocking $1.3 billion over original estimates — no one’s laughing. The most expensive public works project in Hawaii history now calls to mind images of the gluttonous Jabba the Hut rather than a sleek transit line intended to bring commuter relief to congested southwest Oahu.

The latest bloat is being attributed to the costs of moving utilities, doing traffic work, adding escalators and paying off debt, all of which will now — wait for it — cost more than originally expected. In return for paying those additional costs, taxpayers can look forward to a rail line that will be two years late in becoming fully operational. (A portion may begin running sooner, HART says; we’re not holding our breath.)

There is really only one lever left to pull in hopes of extracting any efficiencies or changes for the better on this sprawling, poorly managed disaster, and it’s in the hands of the Honolulu City Council. While the Legislature and Gov. David Ige last spring approved legislation continuing the general excise tax extension largely funding the rail project, the tax won’t go into effect unless the Council approves it first.

More immediately, HART and the Council must decide how much money it needs to borrow to cover cash shortfalls that may begin cropping up as early as three months from now. The Council authorized up to $450 million in bonding for such funding gaps three years ago, but the ability to pursue such bridge funding is now tangled in a lawsuit, a city ethics investigation and a lack of agreement over how much money is needed and when it should be sought.

And as any casual observer of the rail project knows, indecision and delays only grow the price tag larger.

The project’s estimated per-mile cost is now approximately $314 million, and the Council stands as the last bulwark between additional bloat and taxpayers.

Council Chair Ernie Martin promised back in May that he and his colleagues wouldn’t simply supply a rubber stamp of approval for the GET extension.

Other tools may be much more useful for the Council at this point: A sledgehammer to break down the walls of secrecy that still hide too much of the project’s costs (maybe Rep. Tom Brower isn’t using his anymore?); a crowbar to pry loose information that must be included in comprehensive audits called for by the Legislature and City Council earlier this year; and a compass to help project leaders find the University of Hawaii at Manoa, which always ought to have been the rail line’s final destination.

The project’s estimated per-mile cost is now approximately $314 million, and the Council stands as the last bulwark between additional bloat and taxpayers. HART may lack any sense of thrift or efficiency in managing this project, but there is one activity it still seems remarkably capable of conducting on time and ostensibly on budget: asking for more money. Perhaps because it doesn’t cost anything to hold out your hand.

RULES ARE FOR EVERYONE. The National Marine Fisheries Service disappointingly published a rule last week that permits Hawaii longline fishers to catch another 1,000 metric tons of bigeye tuna this fall, even though the fishers hit their seasonal limit in early August and have been on the docks ever since.

We don’t begrudge the fishers the ability to earn a living, and lord knows we love a good ahi poke bowl as much as the next person. But it’s the mechanism by which the longliners are being allowed to resume their trade that we find objectionable.

The international agreement establishing catch limits was set through negotiations involving the 26 member nations of the . Members agreed to limit reductions for important reasons: to help brood stocks recover from overfishing and protect the long-term sustainability of bigeye tuna, as regulators, fishing community members and others discussed at a Civil Beat Café in August.

Rather than honoring those limits, NMFS is simply creating a 2,000-ton catch limit for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; the Marianas in turn will be allowed to allocate half the limit to the United States for cash payments.

Some might call it a win/win/win — cash in the coffers of the Marianas, income for Hawaii fishers and delicious ahi on Hawaii plates.

But what example do we set when we react to poor circumstances by simply changing the rules in our favor? Is ensuring the longterm viability of bigeye tuna only a concern for others who lack the clout or influence to get around inconvenient rules?

And what of 2017? The bigeye catch limit is set to shrink by another 200 metric tons, and U.S. (including Hawaii) fishing fleets seemingly have no plan as to how they’ll manage the lower cap. Other than perhaps look for another way around the rules that apply to everyone else.

It is incumbent on fishers to plan collectively now for a more constrained future, mapping out guidelines that enable them to ply their trade throughout the season and spread income across a longer span. Otherwise, their future will continue to look more like this year: Feasting in the summer, starving in the fall.