HART meets with the feds, hat in hand, options limited

While the World Conservation Congress is drawing President Barack Obama to Honolulu this week, perhaps the more important meeting will be in San Francisco, as all of Honolulu’s rail honchos meet to finally figure out what to tell the feds.

Specifically, the meeting is with the Federal Transit Administration and includes Colleen Hanabusa, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation chairwoman; Mayor Kirk Caldwell; Council Chairman Ernie Martin; and Mike Formby, acting HART executive director.

As Formby explained in a Sunday piece in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “this meeting will be an opportunity for the city to get clarification as to the process and the FTA’s expectations.”

Yes, the city’s rail project is already late and over budget, but is actually in worse shape, because the FTA is holding on to a portion of the $1.55 billion that the feds are already supposed to contribute to the project.

Hanabusa is cautioning that before the city can figure out how to pay for the estimated $1.5 billion in cost overruns, the city must first persuade the feds to give it the money to get to Middle Street.

The meeting in San Francisco is a chance for Honolulu to figure out how to convince the feds that we are really going to finish the rail project and we have some reality-based plan for paying for it.

As Formby, who is just the sort of clear-eyed, straight-shooter you want on your team, said: “We are looking vigorously at any and all funding mechanisms within the bounds of law.”

On a very elemental level, HART’s problem is still the same: There is not enough money to finish the job. When critics in 2005 said Honolulu could not afford a 20-mile heavy rail line, that’s what they meant: The city doesn’t have the money.

More than a decade later it still doesn’t have the money, but it insists on writing checks that won’t clear.

Formby detailed the pay plan as either Plan A or Plan B or the Combo Plan with a little of A and some of B.

Plan A is that the city will figure out how to build the entire rail line just like it promised the feds. Plan B is something called “build to budget.” That plan allows for some slippage, which Formby calls “descoping.” Formby writes that could mean “deferring stations, a guideway that does not reach Ala Moana or other changes.”

So this week in San Francisco, Formby, Hanabusa, Caldwell and Martin are to come up with a FTA appeasement plan. If the FTA bites, then rail is back to being $1.5 billion underwater; if the FTA says it doesn’t like the city plan, the rail line is still looking for $1.5 billion, plus some unspecified chunk of the $1.55 billion in federal money.

You can leave your heart in San Francisco, but the Honolulu crew has to be careful that it doesn’t leave the train there as well.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.