Honolulu Mayor Can’t Pass The Buck On Rail Project
Coming off a week of particularly bad news for rail, Kirk Caldwell has political and moral reasons to show a new level of leadership.
Success has many fathers, the old saying goes, but failure is an orphan. It鈥檚 an adage that comes to mind when considering the Honolulu rail project: Hemorrhaging red ink, the subject of a withering new audit and in short supply of leadership.
The $6.6 billion project continues to move ahead. The 43-acre Rail Operations Center is , more than five miles of the 20-mile project鈥檚 guideway and the first rail cars arrived in Honolulu in late March.
But Mayor Kirk Caldwell told reporters聽this week he expects and fall further behind schedule. Some observers say the project, estimated just a year ago to cost $5.3 billion, could carry an ultimate price tag of $10 billion.
Current problems are more pressing.
Don Horner, chair of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, the rail project鈥檚 parent, abruptly resigned聽April 11 after meeting with Caldwell. City Council Chair Ernie Martin had publicly called for Horner鈥檚 resignation, along with that of HART Executive Director Dan Grabauskas; Caldwell said he would have asked Horner to step down had he not volunteered to do so.
Three days later, Grabauskas went public with a scathing critique of a city audit that hadn鈥檛 yet been formally released, but had been given聽to some Council members and media representatives. He called the review a 鈥渕ess鈥 and a 鈥渏oke.鈥
But that was mild compared to the criticisms of Grabauskas and the project throughout the 68-page audit.
By the time the audit formally was released on Friday — questioning whether HART could control mushrooming costs — it included an 85-page rebuttal from HART and Grabauskas.
Grabauskas wrote that 鈥渋t is discouraging when a report is written in a fashion to intentionally mislead, is issued in an improper manner, and conceded to politically motivated pressure.鈥
Hard to believe that it was only one year ago that rail supporters聽were putting their best foot forward, working to win an extension of the general excise tax surcharge so they could keep funding the largest public works project in Hawaii history. Leading that charge was Caldwell, who called rail a looming 鈥済ame changer鈥 for Honolulu. He energetically lobbied legislators for聽months to pass the tax, despite $910 million in project overruns that had only recently been made public.
Caldwell continues to make the game-changer claim,聽but project overruns have grown to $1.3 billion.
And having just launched his re-election campaign, he seems to want to take聽a step back, saying that he鈥檒l to hold the project accountable. In short, he seems to be saying, “don’t blame me.”
It鈥檚 time for the mayor to step up. He bears greater responsibility for the rail project than any other elected official.
Mayor Caldwell was “extremely busy” Tuesday and unavailable to discuss his role in the project, according to his communications office. But as the mayor noted Saturday in a conversation with Civil Beat鈥檚 Chad Blair at Caldwell’s campaign headquarters grand opening, rail is not only going to be the issue in the mayoral campaign this fall, it is likely to be the dominant issue in the 2020 mayoral race, because the project isn鈥檛 expected to be finished by then.
Though Caldwell hasn鈥檛 drawn a significant opponent yet for his re-election race this fall, there鈥檚 still plenty of time to file, and Council Chairman Martin pulled his candidacy papers聽Tuesday. In a competitive race, the mayor won鈥檛 be able to tiptoe around rail. He won’t be able to defer questions to HART board members or to the semi-autonomous agency that, according to the new city audit, isn鈥檛 up to controlling rails rising costs.
No, with Horner out, Grabauskas on the ropes and Martin circling, it鈥檚 time for the mayor to step up. He bears greater responsibility for the rail project than any other elected official. If he believes his own words, that rail in its current, 20-mile status, is the game changer that Honolulu needs, he should聽embrace the challenge of seeing to it that HART gets spiraling costs under control.
He has a partner to work with on this: his appointee, HART board member Colleen Hanabusa, who may be looking to add to her own bona fides with the 2018 election looming and some people already speculating that she鈥檚 eyeing a primary challenge to Gov. David Ige.
But more important than the political calculus is the moral and ethical one: Caldwell sold this project and the need for additional GET funding, and he sold it hard, both to the Legislature and to the City Council.
He got what he wanted. And now it’s incumbent on him to give voters what they deserve 鈥 a rail project that becomes the game changer he promised it would be.
