Legislative picks to sit on HART board announced

State Legislative leaders have announced their four picks to serve as nonvoting members on the volunteer Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board, a provision of the $2.4 billion rail-bailout package they approved in September.

For his two picks, Senate President Ron Kouchi (D, Kauai-Niihau) selected Wesley Machida, the state’s budget and finance director under Gov. David Ige, as well as Machida’s predecessor, Kalbert Young, who served in that role under former Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

Young now serves as University of Hawaii vice president for budget and finance, as well as its chief financial officer. He also previously served as a state Employees’ Retirement System (ERS) trustee, according to a news release.

House Speaker Scott Saiki, meanwhile, selected two financial executives from the private sector: Tobias “Toby” Martyn, the vice president of investments at the firm Stifel and previously a senior executive vice president at Bank of Hawaii; and Kamani Kuala’au, a senior vice president at the asset-management firm Atalanta Sosnoff Capital and chairman of the King Lunalilo Trust Estate.

Kuala’au was also Kamehameha Schools student body president during the “Broken Trust” scandal in the 1990s, a position in which he clashed with the school’s controversial former board member, Lokelani Lindsey.

State lawmakers added the provision expanding HART’s membership to the funding bill “to ensure the appropriate use of state-authorized funds” to finance rail.