A lawsuit over tainted rail votes and a new ethics complaint against the Ho‘opili development point up how deeply the Honolulu City Council resides in the pocket of Hawaii’s building industry.

Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa sued to invalidate 11 key rail votes and halt funding on the $6 billion project because Council members didn’t disclose gifts they received from rail interests, as required by the city’s ethics law.

Former Councilmen Romy Cachola and Nestor Garcia have already been fined for the violations, and the Ethics Commission is investigating Cachola’s claim that at least five other Council members failed to disclose gifts from rail lobbyists.

The interesting thing is that Kawananakoa’s fortune is tied to the James Campbell Co., a leading rail advocate and one of the gift-givers to Council members, and she’s acting contrary to her own financial interests.

But the lawsuit indicated Kawananakoa has become tired of “systematic violations of city and county laws (and) illegal acts” that stain our local government.

“The lawsuit is not about rail” but about “restoring the public’s trust in the system,” said her attorney, Bridget Morgan. “The process here was absolutely dirty. It was illegal and it needs to be cleaned up.”

Just how dirty the system has become is seen in a separate complaint by the Friends of Makakilo asking the Ethics Commission to roll back the Council’s unanimous approval of D.R. Horton’s 11,750-home Ho‘opili development in West Oahu because of massive campaign donations Council members received from development interests.

The group released an analysis claiming that the nine Council members received from 40 percent to 72 percent of their campaign funds in the last election cycle from parties that would benefit from Ho‘opili.

Friends President Kioni Dudley acknowledged that the donations aren’t illegal, but argued, “Council members get so much of their money from the construction community that they can never refuse them anything.”

Council members might dispute this, but the truth of it is in the fact that the Council seldom denies what developers and their construction-industry backers want.

Last week, for instance, a Circuit Court jury hit Haseko Corp. with $27 million in damages for promising Ewa Beach homebuyers a world-class marina and then changing to a less-costly lagoon after homes were bought.

As the case played out in court, the Council was moving along a rezoning bill for Haseko’s lagoon that would validate the bait-and-switch.

It’s questionable whether new votes will be ordered for either rail or Ho‘opili, and if they are we’ll likely see pro forma reaffirmation of the original votes.

But Kawananakoa and Friends of Makakilo deserve credit for airing the stink and making a noble effort to get others as tired as they are of the brazen buying and selling of local politicians.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.