Magical numbers flew like cow chips last week around Honolulu’s favorite fiscal black hole — the debt-ridden rail project.
The rail agency’s projections of funds needed to complete the 20-mile commuter line from Kapolei to Honolulu miraculously shrank from $12.5 billion estimated in March to $11.48 billion, while the projected deficit dipped from $3.5 billion to $1.97 billion — with the giddy possibility it could drop $500 million more.
At the same time, the expected annual revenues from a 3% city hotel room tax moving through the City Council amazingly mushroomed from the $48 million projected by the state when the Legislature authorized the tax earlier this year to $86 million by current city estimates.
The Council bill up for final approval Dec. 1 would allot $43 million of this real or imagined bounty to rail each year.
The pro-rail organization Move Oahu Forward — funded by a who’s who of the rail lobby such as Stanford Carr, Hitachi Rail, Howard Hughes, Pacific Resource Partnership, First Hawaiian Bank and the James Campbell Co. — released a loaded poll suggesting Honolulu residents are eager to levy the new tax and cut rail a big piece.
It all got the blessing of senior U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, who seldom seems able to help us out of this mess but always feels entitled to tell us what to do.
“I’m glad they’re getting better fidelity on that number,” he said, as if any member of this miserable Congress has the right to lecture on good faith.
So Shazam! Abracadabra! Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo! With the wave of a wand and a little creative accounting, everything is OK and the city can assure the Federal Transit Administration it can finish the project to Ala Moana Center.
Unless FTA cares about the odor of those cow chips flying around.
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation isn’t releasing details of a new audit that’s the basis for the revised numbers, and after more than a decade of HART misinformation about its finances, even board chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa doubted the public would buy the new outlook.
“The people are beginning to wonder whether we know what we’re talking about,” she said.
Rail CEO Lori Kahikina acknowledged HART’s “terrible reputation of every time you turn around, the number goes higher and higher and higher,” but stood behind the new lower numbers without offering supporting data.
She attributed the reduced deficit to reductions of staff and contractors, streamlined operations and a scheme to move the Dillingham Boulevard segment away from troublesome utilities that would need relocation.
These may be worthy efforts, but budget cuts in the millions don’t save billions, and the new Dillingham plan isn’t firm and hasn’t passed environmental review. HART doesn’t know how much it would cost or even if it’s possible.
In the end, this seems to serve the same desperate purpose of every previous rail bailout: Keep the pea shells moving and buy time to blunder along until the next inevitable funding crisis.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
