Hoping that you won’t notice a continued 12.5 percent tax increase seems about as realistic as Honolulu officials hoping that you won’t notice the huge, concrete heavy rail system plowing through Oahu neighborhoods.

But, that appears to be the plan for city officials as they line up to lobby the Legislature for more and more money.

When former Mayor Mufi Hannemann led the charge to raise Oahu’s general excise tax from 4 percent to 4.5 percent, it was acknowledged as a way to pay for the rail line. The law says it will end in 2022, but now the city wants to explore keeping the tax increase forever.

Just to make sure you know they were serious about not having enough money, last week Mayor Kirk Caldwell asked the City Council for permission to borrow money via floated city bonds.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser transit reporter Marcel Honoré reported that HART, the city agency running the rail project, wants to borrow as much as $350 million in short-term loans this year to cover the cost of building the rail when revenues don’t keep up with costs.

Council rail critics, like Ann Kobayashi, grumbled that "I’ve been told so many things, and many of them untrue, and there’s been so many changes so I just want to make sure."

The usual course of action is for the Council to jump around and wave sticks in the air and then fall into line. That is likely this time because borrowing the money has always been part of the city’s transit plan.

What is different now is Caldwell’s hope to permanently raise the state general excise tax.

Although he supports rail, Gov. David Ige is already on record as calling Caldwell’s plea "premature."

So far the rail line has pulled $1.4 billion from Oahu taxpayers for the construction and planning.

The latest budget draft puts the fiscal year 2015 rail budget at $1.58 billion with a total of $5.3 billion, give or take an overrun or two.

The problem is that the lowest bid for the first nine stations was more than $110 million over the $184 million that HART had previously budgeted for the stations, and now the entire rail plan is estimated to be between $500 million and $700 million over.

For years, rail critics have said the project would come in late and over budget, while supporters vowed that it was going according to plan.

That is clearly not happening, and it is likely that the city will again be at the Legislature asking for a bailout.

Ten years ago, when the Legislature approved the rail tax increase, the Hawaii Tax Foundation estimated that the new tax would take $900 annually from a family of four.

Since 2005 we have had a complete change in state and county leadership. The mayor, governor, House speaker and Senate president all involved in the initial tax increase have left the stage, so it does no good to grumble about their actions.

Now the new players may be faced with "regifting" a permanent tax increase because they will have to decide if "until 2022" really means forever.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.