Tourists use many parks and other facilities the counties manage, which was why portions of the statewide transient accommodations tax (TAT) revenue went to the counties, to help cover costs.

But when the pandemic economic downturn sapped other state tax funds, lawmakers this year ended that sharing, instead authorizing the counties to assess their own TAT, a new tax, to make up the loss. For Oahu, the county had been receiving a 44% share, or about $45 million annually.

Now the Honolulu City Council is advancing its proposal in Bill 40, which would assess a 3% tourist lodging tax on Oahu, expecting to more than recoup that money. This is clearly needed, given the city’s need for the anticipated $48 million to go toward upkeep of parks and other needs. Kauai and Maui counties already have enacted theirs, with a start date of Nov. 1.

What makes Bill 40 distinct is one controversial aspect: its proposal to direct some of the revenue toward construction of the city’s fiscally troubled rail system.

As much as the project needs a financial lift, now is the wrong time to dedicate any of the city’s new funds to rail, until some of its more persistent problems have been settled. The public needs some confidence that the investment will pay off with needed progress in the state’s largest public works project, and there has been little reason for confidence in recent memory.

Perhaps the most current, exasperating development has been the belated discovery that the wheels on the rail cars do not align correctly with the width of the track, which likely will result in a costly replacement of the wheel assembly.

There have been many primal screams over how such a fundamental thing could have been missed. Months after the discovery, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) still has no answer on the nature of the fix, or who will pay.

This is not the best candidate for an investment of more public dollars, at least not now — and possibly not until operational funding is needed.

Bill 40, in the form that passed its first reading on Wednesday, has left blanks to be filled later with specific amounts among the TAT recipients. Those allocations, under the current draft, would be divided among the general fund, the transit fund and a special fund “used to mitigate the impacts of visitors on public facilities, including the restoration and maintenance of beaches and parks.”

The tax would be imposed on the gross proceeds from charges for transient accommodations. Those who collect the tax — operators, plan managers, accommodations brokers, travel agencies and tour packagers — must be registered under state law.

Public testimony ranged from support of rail as a beneficiary of the tax — including comments from Pacific Resource Partnership, an advocacy group representing sectors of the construction industry — to concerns from representatives of the visitor industry, who want a delay in implementing the tax, allowing for advance notification of guests.

This, said Denis Ebrill, representing Aqua Aston Hospitality LLC and Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp., conforms to past practices when the state has made changes to the TAT law. These are reasonable requests that other industry leaders have echoed.

But it’s the proposed transit fund to receive some of the TAT that has sparked the most energetic debate. Colleen Hanabusa, who chairs the HART board of directors, has made public statements of support for tapping this source for rail, which would not be subject to limitations the state Legislature has been inclined to impose.

Those submitting written testimony in outright opposition included Hanabusa’s fellow HART board member, and longtime rail critic, Natalie Iwasa. One point she rightly raised was that the project recovery plan and financial update have not been submitted to the Federal Transit Administration for approval. That does make the provision for HART in Bill 40 premature, to say the least.

Also, she said, the amount from the TAT would be a drop in a bucket: HART’s shortfall is estimated at $3 billion. Even at more than twice the annual yield of $48 million, it would take 30 years to pay it all off, Iwasa added.

The city’s chief executive himself sounds noncommittal. On Thursday, following a media conference on energy efficiency, Mayor Rick Blangiardi said he couldn’t speak publicly about the revisions to the rail project’s financial plan, but allowed that “obviously, any additional funding source that we possibly could have is going to benefit this project, on some level.

“But the first priority above all has got to be the city operating,” he said. “Because it’s in those very services, that’s why we’re getting TAT to begin with.”

That should be obvious to the City Council as well. It would be a misappropriation of funds if TAT revenues disappeared into the black hole of a project with financing in doubt, and even its alignment and length in flux.

Get some of these rail questions answered, taxpayers say, and then we’ll talk. Maybe.