Honolulu’s future rail transit line, whose concrete guideway is starting to take greater shape along southern Oahu, received nearly $62 million in local tax surcharge dollars from January through March to help fund its completion, project officials report.
That’s the second-largest quarterly take for the project since collection of the island’s 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge began in 2007. The project received its largest amount two quarters ago, when it got nearly $64 million for the period that ended Sept. 30.
The latest haul brings the total GET surcharge amount provided for the project to $1.25 billion.
Rail project leaders say they’re pleased with the evenues, along with the $1.55 billion in federal funding secured for the effort.
Nonetheless, the rail project continues to see big quarterly swings in the GET revenues that it receives from the state Department of Taxation.
The $61.7 million it received this past quarter was some $8.5 million more than project officials had expected. However, in the previous quarter the project received about $10.6 million less than officials expected.
"We’re working closely with DoTax to assure the disbursements come regularly," Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said Friday. "They continue to have some of their technological and administrative challenges, but we’re working with them together."
Issues over those fluctuations — and whether the rail project was getting its proper share of GET revenues — surfaced last year. State tax officials continue to point to a lag between the posting of payments and the posting of accompanying tax returns as the reason for the swing in rail receipts.
The reason for that lag, Tax Department Director Frederick Pablo said, is tied to outdated computer software that will be replaced after 2014.
When that software gets replaced depends on which vendor the state eventually chooses, he said. Pablo assured that fluctuations aside, the rail project is ultimately getting its proper share of GET collections.
The project also remains some $27 million short of the total GET revenues that were originally expected to be collected by this point, HART officials say. Grabauskas said he isn’t concerned by the shortfall because the revenues remain extremely close percentage-wise to the original projections, even with the impacts of the Great Recession. "I’m feeling we’ve weathered some really difficult economic times," Grabauskas said Friday.
Ivan Lui-Kwan, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board chairman, also said in a statement that he was pleased with the local cash influx.
The entire rail project is projected to cost $5.26 billion, with two-thirds of that to be funded by the GET surcharge.
In recent months some of rail’s top leadership, including Mayor Kirk Caldwell, have started to publicly float the idea of extending the surcharge past its 2022 sunset as the best way to help pay for rail and other local public transit.
