Mayor allows financing bills to pass

Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Monday allowed key fiscal bills to become law without his signature, citing a disagreement with the Honolulu City Council over whether it has authority to oversee the budget for the contentious rail project.

Among the bills that will now become law without Caldwell’s signature: Bill 14, the city’s $2.33 billion operating budget; Bill 15, the city’s $882 million capital improvements budget; Bill 18, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s $19.3 million operating budget; Bill 19, HART’s $2.16 billion capital improvements budget; Bill 20, allowing the sale of bonds to help pay for the HART project; and Bill 13, the Council’s own $19.2 million budget.

The fiscal 2017 year begins July 1.

As the public outcry about the project’s rising costs has grown louder, Council members have been voicing with increased frequency their own frustrations with the now $8 billion project and a desire to make the agency more accountable to them.

The final version of Bill 18, the HART operating budget, adopted by the Council on June 1, included cuts of $807,000 for office space rent funding, about $570,000 in salaries and $1 million for attorneys’ fees. Instead, the bill earmarks $2 million to establish a transit mitigation fund for landowners and businesses harmed by rail construction.

The final version of Bill 19, meanwhile, includes language added by Council members requiring $12 million to be used for a study examining planned route extensions to downtown Kapolei and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Additionally, provisos were inserted that cap the amount of money that can be spent on the project at $6.8 billion, short of the $8 billion-plus now being estimated it would cost to build the full 20-mile route from East Ka- polei to Ala Moana Center.

Last week Caldwell joined Council Chairman Ernie Martin’s call for HART officials to stop the rail line at Middle Street, rather than Ala Moana, in a new Phase 1. HART officials are studying their options amid the rising price tag.

But Caldwell, in memos explaining his decisions, said the Honolulu City Charter “does not afford the City Council the degree of fiscal oversight” over HART that it exercised by trimming the coming year’s rail operating budget.

Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said late Monday that she and colleagues do not feel HART’s status is the same as the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, which presents budgets that the Council does not change. The Water Board does not seek approval for revenue bond funding through the city financing system, while HART does, ostensibly to take advantage of the city’s superior credit rating, she said.

“So if HART feels they’re semiautonomous like that, they can float their own bonds,” Kobayashi said. “Then they’re truly semiautonomous. You can’t have it both ways.”

Caldwell, in his budget communications, also questioned two grants to nonprofits in the city operating budget bill that are earmarked for construction projects. That’s inconsistent with the law, which allows only for grants to go to programs and services, not capital improvements, of nonprofits, he said.