City rail transit meetings to be aired on television

Rail board meetings will be broadcast on local cable television starting next week, thanks to a push by the public and lawmakers for more transparency into the cash-strapped transit project.

City officials announced the agreement Thursday between Hono­lulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and Olelo Community Media to show the live HART board meetings on ‘Olelo Channel 55, rebroadcast them at least three times and then archive the footage on the ‘Olelo website.

The deal was spurred by a resolution introduced last month by Hono­lulu City Councilman Trevor Ozawa urging HART to televise its board meetings amid growing scrutiny and financial woes surrounding the project’s completion.

"This is a way to instill public trust in the biggest project that we’ve ever seen here. It’s a sensible way to get transparency — real transparency," Ozawa said prior to the deal’s announcement Thursday while touting his resolution to media in front of Alii Place. The 25-story office building downtown is where HART keeps its headquarters and holds most of its board meetings.

"Everybody sees our discussions at the City Council, and I think it’s about time that we have the biggest project in our state’s history be on TV."

The HART board also occasionally meets at Kapo­lei City Hall. The agency’s staff and consultants typically comprise most of the audience at those meetings — along with a handful of residents concerned by or interested in the project.

Broadcasting the meetings will cost HART a one-time expense of $7,000 for the equipment, plus annual costs of about $9,000 to $10,000 to provide closed captioning, according to city officials. ‘Olelo won’t charge a fee for production services — those costs will be covered by the nonprofit media company’s own budget, funded by fees received by cable service providers, according to Jesse Broder Van Dyke, a spokes­man for Hono­lulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell.

The first live broadcast is slated for Thursday.

The deal to televise rail meetings also comes as state lawmakers weigh whether to extend Oahu’s 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge to help close a project budget gap of as much as $910 million.

Ultimately it would fall to Gov. David Ige to decide whether to sign such a rail-tax extension into law.

Ige has said in recent weeks that he has not seen a reason to pass an extension now. However, asked Thursday whether he still sees no immediate reason to act, Ige said he’ll be watching to see what the Legislature decides, adding that "any measure should really be focused on the approved project, so the 20 miles that the public has embraced and the funding agreement is focused on."

His comments Thursday were similar to sentiments expressed last week by Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda (D, Kai­­lua-Kane­ohe), who said that any rail tax extension passed in this session should be limited to helping the city finish what it has already started.