As public confidence in the $12.5 billion Oahu rail debacle sinks ever lower, chaos abounds at the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.

HART board Chairman Tobias Martyn resigned this month after questions about whether his company benefited from the sale of city rail bonds and his role in an aborted $1 million consulting contract for Colleen Hanabusa, in which bidding appeared rigged in her favor.

The political veteran Hanabusa is scheduled to join the volunteer HART board this week after being appointed by Mayor Rick Blangiardi in a face-saving move to defuse the contract controversy, leaving the agency nervous about the sharp elbows she displayed in a previous term.

Now the City Council is making the bad situation worse by dismissing HART board member Joe Uno, a construction cost estimator who’s earned public respect for his independence and straight talk, and moving to replace him with Anthony Aalto, a filmmaker with questionable qualifications and objectivity.

I don’t know Aalto and personally agree with some of his views about rail, but his resume and business ties sound alarms.

Aalto, nominated by Council Chairman Tommy Waters and Councilwoman Radiant Cordero, portrays himself as a journalist whose 2013 film, “Railroading Paradise,” presented a balanced view of rail.

But his critics say the documentary tilted strongly toward views of pro-rail lobbyists; as Oahu Sierra Club chairman, Aalto was key to the group’s early decision to support rail, highly controversial among environmentalists.

Big rail boosters such as Pacific Resource Partnership, Stanford Carr Development and First Hawaiian Bank liked his rail movie well enough that they became major financial contributors to his next film, on homelessness, “No Room in Paradise.”

Blangiardi, then general manager of Hawaii News Now, was a big supporter of this film and broadcast both the rail and homelessness documentaries on his stations.

Blangiardi was also a booster and fundraiser for Aalto’s latest film, “A Climate for Change,” which received a $135,000 grant from the Legislature and contributions from 26 local corporate and institutional sponsors — including the Carpenters Union, a leading lobbyist for full rail build-out.

Aalto’s business and financial ties to key rail interests and political figures would seem to run afoul of the Council’s own policy — cited in its resolution nominating Aalto — that HART directors “be free of actual or potential conflicts of interest.”

The Council’s criteria also call for expertise in “relevant subject matter areas” such as transit operations, construction, financial management, land use planning or property development.

For the Council to ignore these professional qualifications, it should be only for somebody widely known and trusted in the community, with no ties to rail interests, who could be an honest broker in pressing to change the course of this toxic project that’s draining our city’s present and future financial resources.

Aalto simply owes too much to business and political benefactors with big stakes in rail. With his appointment, the Council sends the wrong message at the wrong time to a public reeling from rail’s corruption.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.