City officials are pulling off brazen Great Train Robbery

Every year, newspapers in places like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago publish stats about the most dangerous rail lines in the city, both in terms of crime and accidents, but mostly crime.

Here on Oahu we’re getting only one line and it isn’t even built yet, but already it’s packed with thugs, pickpockets and menacing characters.

The proposed rail spending cap has, more than any recent political maneuver or complication, brought this treachery to light.

The Honolulu City Council is voting to extend the 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge by five years to help pay for the mushrooming deficit in the $6.6 billion rail project. Extending the tax would raise an estimated $1.5 billion. However, the fear is, the more money there is for rail, the more the cost for rail will go up. Council members want to set a limit on how much goes for rail and use the rest like Chuck E. Bucks they get to spend at the arcade.

Meanwhile the feds are making big-body threats of pulling their part of the funding, and the rail honchos are saying if they don’t get it all, we will get nothing.

The train isn’t even running and already we’re getting jacked.

Yes, we’re stuck. There are enough ugly pillars up in Waipahu to make stopping the rail construction a ridiculous notion. Too much has been spent putting those things up to throw away more money taking it down. And to leave them up would only serve as a monument to how messed up Hawaii government really is. Nobody wants that much honesty.

The rail is only secondarily about helping those poor souls out in Waipahu and Kapolei get to town without sitting for hours on the freeway. Primarily, it’s a career vehicle for everyone who is involved in building it.

Caldwell wants to stay mayor. Martin wants to be mayor; but perhaps even more than that, Martin wants Caldwell not to be mayor, and so is looking for any chance to mess him up. Caldwell wants the legacy of being the man who, after a long line of false starts by lesser mayors, finally brought that train into the station. Bow choo-choo wow wow.

Because of term limits, nobody on the City Council is a lifer. The clock’s ticking, up or out. Most have aspirations for higher office (or were in higher office and had to start back at the beginning, like picking the wrong card in Monopoly or Candyland). They must look at themselves in the Honolulu Hale bathroom mirror and whisper, “If Tulsi can, I can, too.”

So nobody wants the stink of the train tax sticking to them.

Or maybe somebody could do some math and figure out how not to take more taxpayer money than they need.

Naaaaaah.

At this point it’s not about doing the project right. It’s about using the project for one’s own personal agenda, which is what makes it so dangerous.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@ staradvertiser.com.