The state Senate Ways & Means Committee approved a bill Wednesday to extend the rail tax, but not before trimming the proposed extension by 20 years.

The 8-2 vote came after the committee members spent more than four hours grilling Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Honolulu rail leaders on the project’s financing. Sens. Sam Slom (R, Diamond Head-Hawaii Kai) and Gil Reviere (D, Heeia-Waialua) voting against it.

The bill still has several more hurdles to face in the state Legislature. If passed by the full Senate, it will be sent to the House for consideration.

During the hearing, committee chairwoman Sen. Jill Tokuda repeatedly suggested changing Senate Bill 19 to extend the rail surcharge on the general excise tax on Oahu for five years past its 2022 sunset, instead of extending it 25 years as the bill was written.

Based on the financial details that rail officials have provided to senators, a five-year extension would get the project out of the “funding hole” that it faces to complete the 20-mile, 21-station route to Ala Moana Center and leave the project with an additional $192 million or so, Tokuda said during Wednesday’s hearing.

The move, however, would leave out 20 more years of rail tax collections to build route extensions to University of Hawaii, Manoa campus and to downtown Kapolei. 

“Five years gives us enough,” Caldwell told Tokuda. “But I don’t want to be back in five years, whether I’m here or not” needing another vote on funding for route extensions. “To put the community” through that kind of “pain” would be difficult, he said. 

Besides, Caldwell added, “If you listen to everyone in this community they say it’s crazy” that the rail route doesn’t go to Manoa.

Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) told rail leaders and Caldwell, “I think those are separate decisions … from why the Senate thought you came here, which is to finish what you started.” She also noted that those route extensions still haven’t received official approvals from city elected leaders or federal transit officials.

Tokuda further noted that the City Council has not submitted any written testimony lending its support to SB19 — and she wondered why that was. “This is a big deal and we don’t even have a piece of testimony,” she said.

Senate President Donna Mercado Kim sat in and said that Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials should have alerted the agency’s board months earlier than they did of the financial hardships ahead.  

HART officials first made the looming shortfall public in December.

“You’re saying everything happened at the beginning of December? … It didn’t all happen overnight,” Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Halawa) said Tuesday. “If somebody’s paying attention, you know that something’s happening.”  

Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz went further, calling the HART board a “rubber stamp” that hasn’t taken sufficient cost-cutting measures of its own to help address the cost overruns. Rail officials, Dela Cruz said, are making it difficult for lawmakers to support extending the rail tax. “It’s about the perception of these things,” Dela Cruz (D, Wahiawa-Mililani Mauka) added.

Honolulu resident Natalie Iwasa implored the committee not to pass the bill. “The people that are asking for this surcharge, they’re set,” Iwasa said, her voice trembling. “They don’t know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck.”

Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, speaking in support of the measure and the project, described Ewa working-class families to the committee. They typically wake up at 4 a.m. to get to work on time, then when they return home “it’s dark already, the kids have had their dinner and it’s time to go to bed again.”