Despite pressure from City Council Chair Tommy Waters, Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration is hoping that decisions about how to spend $386 million in federal Covid-19 relief funds can continue to occur behind closed doors. 

The city administration already has started spending the money provided under the American Rescue Plan Act, the first batch of which was received in June. But now that the mayor’s pandemic emergency powers have expired, Waters says city officials need to allow for public input and ask the council to sign off on spending decisions. 

“We believe that the legal authority of the Administration to unilaterally approve, encumber and expend these monies is questionable,” Waters wrote in a March 23 letter to Managing Director Mike Formby. 

Waters wrote that the administration should disband an informal committee it set up to help make funding decisions and instead submit funding requests directly to the council. Expenditures that have already been approved without the council’s sign-off should also be submitted to the council, he wrote.

The legal exemption that allowed former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration to unilaterally spend CARES Act funds without council approval in the early days of the emergency has expired, according to Waters.    

In an interview on Tuesday, Formby resisted the idea of opening up meetings of the State and Local Federal Recovery Fund Awards Committee to the public. He said doing so might actually open up the city to charges they are trying to usurp the council’s authority.

“If we start opening it up to the public, somebody is going to say to us: Hey, you’re doing a council process. You’re doing it in the administrative branch,” Formby said. “And I don’t want to do that.” 

“Under the charter, we’re responsible for execution and implementation. At the end of the day, we have to get our work done,” he added. “We have a lot of stuff that we’re trying to implement. I have nothing against transparency and public participation. But I have to think about the implications of us doing that and how that looks to a council that is thinking: What are they doing?” 

In an April 4  letter to Waters, the mayor and Formby rejected the council chair’s legal argument, noting that the Corporation Counsel had signed off on the current arrangement. They asserted that the administration has tried to work collaboratively with the council, including allowing Vice Chair Esther Kiaaina to join the State and Local Federal Recovery Fund Awards Committee. 

“The administration has never sought to do this without council knowing what we’re doing,” Formby said. “To ask us to stand down at this point is frustrating.” 

In their letter, they said Waters’ request is “simply unreasonable” and not in the public interest. 

“Our primary focus and goal has been to serve our residents, businesses and communities-in-need across O’ahu and, as we have said on many occasions, these are not our (Administration) funds or your (Council) funds, they are the people’s funds,” Blangiardi and Formby wrote. 

“You may never have been personally satisfied with how the Administration thoughtfully decided to execute and implement the first tranche of (State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds) funds, but the truth is you have allowed the Administration to proceed without a vote of Council in opposition.” 

They called Waters’ request to claw back the first tranche of funds and “obstruct” the allocation of additional funds a “non-starter.”

“We have always been open to new ideas,” Blangiardi and Formby said. “We are not, however, the least bit interested in setting back our successful City process by 10 months or longer. This would only serve to harm the people of Honolulu.” 

In an April 8 response, Waters wrote that he still has concerns about the legality of the process and that he hopes the city will allow for more public input in its decision-making. That should include an updated online dashboard showing project names, descriptions, departments and funding details; detailed proposals under consideration; and a publication of proposals already considered, according to Waters.

The council chair also requested information on the city’s State and Local Federal Recovery Fund Awards Committee, including a list of its members and a justification as to why its meetings are not public.

Formby said the administration hasn’t made a final decision about how to proceed, but noted he hopes the public dust-up doesn’t breed distrust in city government. The administration and the council have a good relationship and agree on most matters, he said.

In a statement, Kiaaina didn’t take a side in the dispute between Waters and the mayor but said she supports getting out funds to support the priorities of council members and the administration. 

Millions Already Accounted For

The first round of federal pandemic relief money through the CARES Act passed in 2020 was designed to be spent on needs specific to the pandemic, like Covid testing, isolation and quarantine facilities. They had to be spent by the end of December.

The parameters for ARPA funds, which can be spent through the end of 2026, are much broader and could be used to replace lost city revenues. 

So far, nearly $70 million has been allocated in a variety of areas, including efforts to modernize city operations and address the economic impacts of the pandemic, the dashboard shows, and over $16 million has been spent. 

In the Department of Planning and Permitting, the city is using ARPA funds to hire 10 contract workers to address operational deficiencies and enhance turnaround time for permits and planning reviews, according to a spending breakdown shared with the council, which is up to date as of March 29. 

City parks will gain 347 benches and 299 picnic tables thanks to a $2.8 million allocation, the breakdown shows. 

The department also will spend $2.5 million on youth programs; more than $660,000 for staffing at Hanauma bay; and over $820,000 to deploy five park rangers to gather data and identify hotspots of unauthorized commercial activity in city parks. 

The city budgeted approximately $6.5 million in ARPA funds to establish the CORE program in which health specialists partner with police to assist unsheltered homeless people. That includes building leases, the hiring of health professionals and the purchase of several vehicles. 

The Honolulu Police Department got nearly $1.4 million to operate a task force in Chinatown to help connect unsheltered people to shelter, vaccines and other programs.  

The city also invested millions in direct pandemic response measures, including $2.6 million to provide isolation and quarantine services at the West Loch Modular housing complex and former Harbor Arms Hotel, and $15 million to purchase Covid test kits.