Here’s some advice for your grandchildren: Start practicing saying “Who elected you?” because they will be hollering that 20 or 30 years down the road.

Last week, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) voted to allow a yet-to-be named public-private consortium to finish up the city’s much- delayed and overbudget- by-$3 billion rail project.

As Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Kevin Dayton reported, the vote capped a long-hinted switch to finish the project.

According to the report: “Developers will finance, design and build the new facilities as well as operate and maintain the entire rail system from Kapolei to Ala Moana for 30 years.”

No, dear Honolulu taxpayer, the City Council and Mayor Kirk Caldwell didn’t solve the rail financing, construction or operating costs woes, they just pushed it way, way down the road.

HART, Caldwell and the Council have all been pressured by a finally fed-up federal government demanding to know what Honolulu is doing with the money given to build the train.

Andrew Robbins, HART executive director, met with Federal Transit Administration officials earlier in the month after being told to get it together.

“HART’s repeated difficulties with identifying cost savings or sufficient funding have led to significant, recurring project schedule delays and cost increases,” wrote acting FTA Administrator K. Jane Williams.

“Decisive and expeditious action is needed to prevent further cost escalation,” Williams wrote.

This “decisive action” is going to end up like a laser locked onto your wallet.

The scheme is dubbed P3, but also could be called WYW for “What’s in your wallet?”

An independent study last year recommending the P3 course of action, warned, however, that “P3 is not ‘free money’ and the private sector investments and costs need to be repaid.”

The study by Ulupono Initiative and JLL, a real estate management and research firm, said “public funding will be necessary to mitigate the funding gap.”

Public-private does address some of the concerns about moving the government project along, but government is not designed for efficiency or cost containment; simply put, government is not a business and is not supposed to be one.

So five years from now, when HART is starting to run the train, public concerns about equal access, fairness in station accessibility, design, overbearing land use and other troublesome nonprofit issues might not be given much attention.

“We have a train to run, move,” may be the future answer.

One of the Legislature’s sharper planners, and one of the authors of the state’s last bailout of the city rail project, Rep. Sylvia Luke, finance committee chairwoman, said she has “always been skeptical of P3.

“P3 does not guarantee cost savings, since the private entity would want to make a profit,” Luke said in an interview.

Precisely what HART will be able to offer the public- private partnership to develop rail is still something of an open question.

“Based on the last bailout package, the state gave enough money for construction plus financing. So there’s a concern that a 30-year financing plan would end up costing more,” Luke warned.

Although there has been some study and discussion about the P3 plan, it is not something that the public is even remotely aware of — and it certainly isn’t something that the city would let voters decide.

It may end up that the lesson to be learned by our grandchildren is that a problem delayed is not a problem solved.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.