4 resolutions could propel tax extension for HART

Some key state and city leaders are voicing support for another tax extension to help fix rail’s latest financial problems, even though the project’s board chairwoman said earlier this year that state lawmakers likely would reject such a move.

“It’ll be challenging again, but I’m sure I feel comfortable that it’ll proceed,” state Sen. Lorraine Inouye (D, Kaupulehu- Waimea-North Hilo) said Thursday at a groundbreaking for three more rail stations. “I doubt it if there’s anyone out there in the Capitol that won’t support continuing till the end.”

This past summer, the Legislature’s two money committee chairwomen, Sen. Jill Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) and Rep. Sylvia Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu), both said the city shouldn’t return next year to ask for more money to fix rail’s latest budget gap, estimated at some $1.8 billion.

In May, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board Chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa said her former state Capitol colleagues had already told her HART should not request another tax extension.

Nonetheless, this week Honolulu City Council members considered several measures in favor of building the full rail transit line to Ala Moana Center, which could help spur support at the Capitol for a rail tax extension. It’s a step the Council didn’t take in 2015, when city and rail leaders last went to the state and assured them a five-year general excise tax surcharge extension likely would be enough to finish rail.

“We have to take a position,” Councilwoman Kymberly Pine said at the Council Budget Committee meeting Wednesday, recounting how the Council’s silence in 2015 vexed some state lawmakers. “They just want to know where we’re at.”

The four resolutions that the Budget Committee discussed offer different degrees of support for rail. Resolution 16-238, for example, calls on island leaders to extend Oahu’s general excise tax surcharge in perpetuity to build and operate the project. Resolution 16-248 offers more generic support for completing the 20-mile, 21-station transit line.

The committee opted to wait until December to decide. That’s when rail officials are expected to finally deliver the project’s first new financial plan since 2012.

John Bridzle of the local group TimeOut Honolulu, which opposes the elevated rail project, asked the committee Wednesday to halt rail until its leaders provide more reliable details on finances, ridership, costs to citizens and the “reality” of how rail will operate. Community advocate Natalie Iwasa said the Council’s resolutions don’t consider the effect a GET extension would have on island residents and families trying to make ends meet.

The Rev. Bob Nakata of the nonprofit group Faith Action for Community Equity, or FACE, countered that the rail line would eventually lead to badly needed affordable housing for families of Oahu’s workforce.

The tax extension also hinges on who wins November’s mayoral race. Mayor Kirk Caldwell has said he’ll lobby for another rail tax extension and that he’s already started talking to state leaders. His opponent, former Congressman and Honolulu Councilman Charles Djou, has said he’ll neither pursue nor approve any such rail tax extension.

Councilmen Joey Manahan and Ikaika Anderson both said Wednesday that they’re hearing different proposals from state lawmakers that involve a GET surcharge extension.

Manahan said a state senator, whom he declined to name, has a plan to extend the rail tax but not in perpetuity. It “could be a real possibility,” Manahan said. “They have their own ideas.”

Pine and other Council members asked HART officials to assure that their latest $8.6 billion cost estimate was solid.

“The true picture was not given to the legislature regarding the finances,” Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who chairs the Budget Committee, said Wednesday. Rail’s project manager, Sam Carnaggio, told the members it was and that it was based on more solid information than before because HART recently issued another major construction contract.

HART officials don’t want to “find ourselves in a situation like we had in the past” with a lowball number, acting Executive Director Mike Formby added. The agency wants to make sure it has “a number we can defend and manage down” from there.

The goal, Formby said, is to complete rail at less than $8.6 billion.