Don’t fold HART into city department

In an ideal world — which is not where Honolulu’s rail project resides — all the rapid transportation systems serving the city would be managed by a single entity, one that operates semi-autonomously from the political institutions of municipal government.

Although a current proposal concerning rail governance does seek to unify operations of rail, bus and Handi-Van systems, it does so under the city administration.

That’s not the most desirable outcome, because intense political influences could encumber the management of transit.

It needs both government oversight and a structure with enough insulation from those influences to operate professionally and responsively to the ridership. Putting an elected city administration squarely in charge would be the wrong direction.

For that reason, it would be best for the Honolulu Charter Commission to withhold from the November ballot the current administration’s proposal to do just that. Maintaining the status quo until a better proposition can be put before the voters would be the best decision the commission could make.

Unfortunately, the panel seems positioned to move ahead with the idea, but there’s still an opportunity to reverse course. The commission gave tentative approval June 2 to a proposal to place all transit operations under the existing city Department of Transportation Services.

After a review by a style committee to clarify the language for the ballot, the proposed amendment to the Honolulu City Charter will have its final approval. Then a simple majority vote in the general election would enact the change.

There are various models of transit agencies across the country, most of them falling within five major types:

>> A state transit agency, like the one in Massachusetts.

>> A general-purpose transit authority, enabled by state laws and initiatives — Ohio is one state with such authorities in place.

>> A special-purpose regional transit authority, authorized by special legislation. Many of these agencies cross city or county jurisdictional lines, such as in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

>> A joint powers authority, in which local governments agree to create a new agency. For example, California’s Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties created Caltrain.

>> A municipal transit agency, such as the City of Phoenix Transit Department.

This latter category is what the administration of Mayor Kirk Caldwell favors, under the proposed Charter amendment. Caldwell argues that the people would have better accountability in this way, electing — or unelecting — the mayor at the top of the management structure.

The voters need a voice because, he said, in the absence of a dedicated local funding source for operations, much of the cost burden would be recouped through the fares the riders pay.

Caldwell is right about the operation funding source, but that issue should be resolved by lawmakers and, ultimately, the voters well before the rail system goes into operation.

And the current Charter language, assigning operational duties to the semiautonomous Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, already ensures that the city administration has votes on the HART board.

The charter provides a means, separate from the once-a-decade review by the Charter Commission, for amending the city’s organic document. A better amendment for ratification in the next election two years from now could be submitted by the City Council, or the public could petition to have one placed on the ballot.

Finally, despite the public pique with the increasing costs for rail, it’s not at all plain that the city administration would have done any better.

Voters should remember that many of the cost-inflating episodes — the lawsuits over prematurely issued contracts, the failure to anticipate costs associated with clearance of the utility lines — date back to the era before HART was created by an earlier Charter amendment.

The fact that the rail has become a core issue of the hotly contested mayoral race should stand as evidence of the pressures being brought to bear on transit.

Creating a managerial environment for transit that contends with less political pressure, not more, should be the goal.