Rail officials in bind over blood bank

Rail officials this week struggled to explain why they filed an eminent domain lawsuit against the island’s lone blood supplier but then told city leaders the next day that they didn’t have an update on the matter.

The city and Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation filed their Blood Bank of Hawaii suit in state Circuit Court on May 15 — the latest move in a dicey dispute over land needed to build the rail line outside of the blood bank’s Dillingham Boulevard offices.

The day after that filing, Councilman Ikaika Anderson asked HART for the latest on the blood bank situation during a public budget hearing. HART Interim Executive Director Krishniah Murthy responded that he wasn’t familiar with it, but could have someone follow up.

Hours after Murthy’s testimony, Anderson said, he learned through local media that HART had actually filed suit.

On Thursday, Anderson voiced concerns that HART’s leader hadn’t been kept informed on arguably the rail agency’s most high-profile condemnation proceeding — one that has worried Council members because it involves a key community health care resource. He pressed Murthy and other rail officials for an explanation.

“How could that be that you as the executive director would not have been brought up to speed?” Anderson said during the Council’s Transportation Committee meeting. “What was going on?”

Abbey Mayer, HART’s director of planning, permitting and right-of-way, told Anderson that he typically alerts HART management within a couple of weeks of filing a condemnation lawsuit and that the city’s Corporation Counsel Department then keeps him posted. “I think that’s the reason for the disconnect on that particular day,” Mayer said.

However, Deputy Corporation Counsel Richard Lewallen then told Anderson that “there’s always communication” when a rail condemnation lawsuit is filed.

“So how is it then that the executive director was unaware? How does that happen?” Anderson asked Lewallen.

“I don’t believe I have an answer for that,” Lewallen replied.

Mayer then took responsibility for the “failure of communication” and for HART’s not having fully briefed staff at the Council hearing.

“What’s more alarming to me is that the director had no idea of what was occurring,” Anderson said.

Murthy said he would send a memo to rail agency staff instructing them to keep him and HART board members copied on communications related to condemnation proceedings, to avoid that from happening again.

The city hasn’t yet taken a property via eminent domain, HART officials say — it almost condemned the Stuart Plaza property in Pearl City, but the parties reached an 11th-hour settlement. The HART board has approved around 40 to 45 resolutions to start eminent domain proceedings even as it continues to negotiate with property owners. Eight of those cases, including the blood bank dispute, have been filed in state court, according to a HART spokesman.

The city says it needs to at least initiate the process to keep rail construction on schedule as best it can should those talks fall apart. However, property owners along the line have said the move gives the city undue leverage in the negotiations.

Last year the blood bank’s president and CEO, Kim-Anh Nguyen, likened the move to “living under (a) gun.” She added that the city’s condemnations proceedings would “interfere with our ability to provide a safe and reliable blood supply for the people of Hawaii.”

At the heart of the dispute, HART says it’s willing to pay for the stretch of land outside the blood bank’s Dillingham office, but the blood bank says that running the rail line so close could threaten its accreditation and will require it to relocate offices entirely. Thus, the blood bank says, the rail agency needs to purchase the full building.

HART has countered that it can’t justify spending those added millions of dollars based on the case that the blood bank has made.