Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation turns over more rail records in response to a federal subpoena

Some mixed-up files at the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation have forced the rail authority to amend its response to a federal grand jury subpoena for records on the rail relocation program.

HART has acknowledged receiving three subpoenas as part of a U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation into the $9.2 billion rail project, including one in February seeking information on payments made to tenants and property owners who were relocated to make way for the 20-mile rail line.

It isn’t clear yet what the focus of the federal inquiry might be, but the information demanded in that particular subpoena included 18 files that were part of an internal HART review that discovered potential overpayments to property owners or tenants who were being relocated.

HART discovered those “irregularities” in the relocation payments in late 2017 and reported them to the Federal Transit Administration in early 2018.

The rail authority also provided the relocation records to the Justice Department by March 21 in response to the subpoena, according to HART officials. However, according to a recent report by the rail authority, “additional files were found” by HART staff in April that were also covered by the February subpoena.

Bill Brennan, spokesman for HART, said in a written statement that “there were relatively few additional documents” found in April.

“Most of the documents located were copies of documents that had been originally provided to FTA,” he said in the statement. “Others were an individual’s hand-written notes that were discovered in the right of way files. In an abundance of caution, HART felt it important to turn over everything.”

The rail authority is working with city Corporation Counsel staff to transmit the documents located in April to federal authorities, according to the HART report.

The irregularities in the relocation program files apparently raised significant concerns with the FTA, which conducted its own review of the Honolulu program in May.

The FTA conducted phone interviews with HART right-of-way staff and consultants in April and sent a team of five staff members to Honolulu in mid-May. That team spent a week reviewing HART’s relocation files and “strongly recommended that the files be ‘cleaned up’ and HART pursue hiring a staff member,” according to a recent report by the rail authority.

A final report on the FTA review of the HART relocation files is expected in a few months, but that report can only be discussed with the rail authority board in a closed-door executive session “because there are confidentiality issues associated with the federal regulations,” HART Executive Director Andrew Robbins told board members last month.

HART provided the results of its own inquiry into the apparent overpayments to the FTA, but federal guidelines do not allow the rail authority to make that public, either, according to HART.

HART reported to the FTA last year that it found irregularities in 15 of the 18 files it checked as part of its initial internal review, and said those files represented some of the project’s most complex and expensive relocations.

Of those 18 relocations, some were handled by in-house HART agents, and others were handled by agents from a former city contractor called Paragon Partners Ltd., according to HART.

Robbins has said he does not know how much money was overpaid and that he cannot identify the specific properties involved because that information is confidential.

When asked earlier this year why there would have been overpayments, Robbins replied, “I know that there was always a sense of fairness in dealing with people. We didn’t want to go through the eminent domain process if we didn’t need to. We’d rather negotiate acquisitions as well as relocation.”

Robbins has said he saw nothing in the files that rose to the level of criminal misconduct. HART officials have said the problems with the relocation files include missing or inadequate documentation, mathematical errors and “payments made without sufficient justification.”

The senior HART staff who would have authorized the apparent overpayments are no longer with the rail authority, and HART has taken corrective action to ensure it strictly complies with federal requirements, according to Robbins.

Dylan Jones, the recently hired director of real property acquisitions and relocation for HART, told the rail board last month that staff was deployed to rearrange the files “mostly just so that it’s easier to read the files, so it’s in some kind of a logical order. As far as what’s missing from the files, I can’t comment on that.”

He also said HART has been advertising to fill a vacant position that will specialize in acquisitions.

Robbins told the HART board last month that “we do expect some corrective actions in this area” once the FTA report on the relocations is finalized.

Brennan said in a statement Thursday the HART right-of-way section is implementing new document retention policies, but the FTA has not yet delivered its report to specify how the files should be “cleaned up.”

As of Dec. 31 the city had spent more than $167 million on real estate and right-of-way acquisitions in connection with the rail project, according to a year-end HART financial update. HART reported to the FTA early last year that it had spent nearly $13.2 million on relocations at that time.