Where Are Honolulu Rail’s Latest Financial Records?
Many of HART’s numbers have been incorrect, incomplete and inconsistent. Now some of them are nonexistent.
Just about everyone recognizes that no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes at one point or another, including government agencies and employees. With respect to Honolulu’s rail project, errors and inconsistencies have been found in ridership “raw data” projections, the monthly FACTs newspaper ad, HART’s monthly progress report, its most recent draft business plan and even at least once in a Project Management Oversight Committee report as well as other documents.
Given the amount of errors I’ve discovered, I felt it important to follow up on projections that were brought up during a Feb. 15 joint Senate committee hearing regarding Senate Bill 1183. SB 1183 and its drafts deal with funding rail construction, and the projections that were mentioned go out to 2047.
On Feb. 24, I sent HART a request for the summary and details of the 2047 projections. On March 3, I was informed that my request cannot be granted, because the “Agency does not maintain the records.” In about 10 years of requesting documents, this is the first time my request was turned down for this reason.
The mayor and HART representatives were questioned by senators about these projections, and I recently discovered that HART did provide the summary projection to Sen. Les Ihara on Feb. 15. (See council communication D-092(17).) According to HART’s response to my request, however, they apparently no longer have that record or the details underlying the projections.
At this point, I’m not sure which is worse – all of the errors that I’ve found or the fact that HART is not maintaining certain records that are important for political representatives making significant financial decisions on our behalf.
One thing is crystal clear to me, however. We cannot continue to blindly follow HART and the rail project on its current path. Too much is at stake, and when these types of stumbling blocks (or whatever you’d like to call them) are present, it is all the more reason to stop and reassess.
The residents and taxpayers of Oahu deserve no less, and I hope senators will consider that when they convene on Tuesday for third reading on SB 1183, SD2.
GET IN-DEPTH
REPORTING ON HAWAII’S BIGGEST ISSUES
Community Voices aims to encourage broad discussion on many topics of community interest. It’s kind of a cross between Letters to the Editor and op-eds. This is your space to talk about important issues or interesting people who are making a difference in our world. Column lengths should be no more than 800 words and we need a current photo of the author and a bio. We welcome video commentary and other multimedia formats. Send to news@civilbeat.org. The opinions and information expressed in Community Voices are solely those of the authors and not Civil Beat.
