Ethics ruling poorly handled

Really? Honolulu residents likely had this kind of dubious response to the latest City Council maneuvering around its ethics problem surrounding the rail project.

If the tone-deafness of recent developments hasn’t struck the taxpayers yet, it should.

The courts ultimately might find no legal basis to invalidate key votes on the rail project. But just because something is legal, that doesn’t make it right.

The appearance of conflict is enough to further dampen confidence in the Council’s handling of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation project — the largest ever in the state’s history.

The right course of action remains the same: The Council — which still plans to revote one bill concerning bond authorization, to enable rail financing arrangements to proceed — should simply revote all the past legislation as well. This would produce official actions to dispel the legal cloud that still hovers over the original ordinances.

So many things are off-kilter here — including the the back-room way the decision was made by, of all agencies, the city Ethics Commission — that it’s hard to know where to start.

The trouble actually began years ago when planning for the city’s controversial $6 billion rail project was in its infancy, and the votes were taken enabling its financing and other aspects of the startup.

That caught the attention of the commission, which observed that gifts from lobbyists — primarly the Campbell Estate and the company formed upon its dissolution, Aina Nui, and rail supporter Pacific Resources Partnership — could have been seen as influencing those votes.

And, in complaints brought by commission Executive Director Chuck Totto, the failure to disclose the gifts were found to amount to an ethics violation, which, Totto said, could nullify the votes.

The commission pressed investigations of various Council members about their failure to disclose the conflicts of interest — and the filing of a lawsuit seeking for the votes to be invalidated complicated things further.

Two on the Council at the time, Romy Cachola and Nestor Garcia, settled their cases by paying fines. One more case, involving another former Council member, Todd Apo, remains unresolved.

But on Wednesday, four Ethics Commission members signed an order dismissing claims involving two current Council members, Ann Kobayashi and Ikaika Anderson, and former Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz.

The commission’s action was taken behind closed doors; two members had recused themselves; the chairwoman, Katy Chen, was traveling on the mainland.

Kobayashi, Anderson and Council Chairman Ernie Martin said that afternoon that the dismissal means the questionable votes on rail can stand.

But that’s not entirely clear, since the lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court by Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa, is still pending.

The complaint contends that the votes are invalid and that the city should be barred from funding or enforcing the ordinances enacted through the votes.

Bridget Morgan, Kawananakoa’s attorney, said the city’s motion to dismiss the suit is still on tap to be heard in November, but the suit is still very much alive.

“The facts are the facts,” Morgan said. “The Ethics Commission’s attempt to sweep this under the rug didn’t change the fact that we have asked the courts to determine the consequences of the Council’s action.”

The commission heard from the three Council members’ attorney, Colleen Hanabusa, before making its decision.

Hanabusa, who also sits on the HART rail board, said her dual roles as legal defense and board member were cleared by city Corporation Counsel Donna Leong.

But Leong is hardly a disinterested party, having argued against the need for the Council’s revotes in the first place. A more objective clearance should have been sought there.

The whole sequence of events reeks of back-room dealing and secrecy.

For a project that desperately needs to reinvigorate public trust, this was an abysmal way to proceed, wrong on every level.