The Honolulu City Council is moving ahead with a measure supporting construction of the full 20-mile rail transit line to Ala Moana, despite the project’s crippling cost overruns and lengthy delays.

The Council’s Budget Committee voted 3-1 Wednesday to advance resolution 16-248, which reaffirms its support for the complete route. Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, the Budget Committee’s chairwoman and a staunch critic of how rail has progressed, dissented.

The full Council is poised to vote on the measure Dec. 1, before state legislators take up another potential rail tax extension early next year.

Council members looked at several pro-rail measures in recent weeks — including one that would have declared support for extending rail’s general excise tax surcharge in perpetuity to build the cash-strapped project and help fund its operations — before ultimately deciding to go with 16-248.

The resolution they settled on does not call for a permanent rail tax extension, but Council members did add language to the latest draft that supports a rail tax extension for an unspecified length of time.

Councilman Brandon Elefante, who introduced the measure supporting a permanent rail tax extension, said he was disappointed it wasn’t included in the resolution, but that “at the end of the day, it’s still important to take a position.”

Just last year, city and rail leaders told state lawmakers that a five-year extension of the general excise tax surcharge likely would be enough to finish rail. At the time, some state lawmakers, including state Sen. Breene Harimoto (D, Pearl Harbor-Pearl City-Aiea), questioned why they weren’t hearing any support from the full Council.

On Wednesday, Council Chairman Ernie Martin, who isn’t a member of the Budget Committee but sat in on its meeting, said he didn’t mean to slight Elefante by excluding support for a permanent extension that could be used for operations, not just construction.

“I struggle with that,” Martin said. However, after discussing the issue with state and federal leaders, he concluded that the priority is simply to get rail to Ala Moana Center as agreed in the city’s funding deal with the Federal Transit Administration.

Resolution 16-248’s latest draft also calls the GET surcharge “an equitable and fair way of funding the Honolulu Rail Project, spreading its costs across visitors and residents.”

Two Honolulu residents who testified Wednesday — the Rev. Bob Nakata, a former state senator; and Natalie Iwasa, a community advocate and frequent fiscal watchdog for public spending — called on state leaders to enact an earned income tax credit to help the low-income residents whom they said would be harder-hit by a prolonged GET surcharge extension.

Steven Melendrez, the Mililani Mauka/Launani Valley Neighborhood Board’s Transportation Committee chairman, implored Council members to demand that rail officials provide a quality-assurance program and corrective-action plan to measure the project’s progress before they pass the resolution.

“Rail has not crashed — rail has derailed. How do we get this back on track?” Melendrez said Wednesday.