The city’s rail transit board plans to take up the mounting issue of a planned major contractor’s fragile future, which is of major importance, at a meeting tomorrow. The board’s leader considered holding the discussion behind closed doors but has made the right decision to find a way to make the talks open to the public.

The contractor is Ansaldo Honolulu, which won a $1.45 billion city contract to design, build, operate and maintain the rail car system between Kapolei and Ala Moana. However, its parent, Finmeccanica, an Italian conglomerate, is facing "structural problems," its chief executive officer, Giuseppe Orsi, said in a webcast during an investors’ presentation in London last Thursday.

Orsi said he will decide by the end of this year "one way or another in respective of selling or restructuring" AnsaldoBreda, one of the two subsidiaries forming Ansaldo Honolulu. Finmeccanica’s CEO said AnsaldoBreda has "at least three of four main contracts" totaling $718 million with "significant problems."

In the past, Orsi has said that building rail cars — "rolling stock" — is not among the parent company’s "strategic pillars." The company specializes in defense systems.

Carrie Okinaga, chairwoman of the Hono-lulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, reviewed the webcast and said Orsi’s comments "raise more questions than answers at this point for me." She said over the weekend that tomorrow’s HART board meeting would probably be in executive session — closed to the public — because the London webcast came too late to include the issue on HART’s agenda.

The state’s sunshine law requires that a county board notify the county clerk of a scheduled hearing at least six days in advance. However, the board can add a topic to the agenda after approval by at least two-thirds vote of its members, unless the "item … is of reasonable major importance and action thereon by the board will affect a significant number of persons."

The topic is important, of course, but no board action is expected at this point. Further, the phrase precluding last-minute agenda additions for action is intended to guard the public against shenanigans; in contrast in this case, candidly discussing Ansaldo’s business predicament serves the public’s interest.

Also, the sunshine law allows a county board to meet behind closed doors only to consider personal information about licenses, discuss employment and labor issues, consult with the board’s attorney, investigate criminal conduct, or discuss private donations, public safety or security, or information required by law or court order to be confidential. None of those reasons apply to the Italian company’s economic health.

Instead of going through a process of asking board members to vote on adding the agenda item, Okinaga decided that the topic can be addressed in the routine weekly report to the board by Toru Hamayasu, HART’s interim executive director.

"The city has built-in protections," Hamayasu had told the Star-Advertiser in regard to Ansaldo Honolulu. "But we haven’t executed a contract yet."

The newly created HART would have set a bad precedent and provided ammunition to skeptics of the rail transit project by engaging in an important discussion secretly about the status of a key contractor in the system’s construction and operation. The move to be open about HART’s policies and decisions can only help build public support for the massive project, and ensure that it be stringently vetted.