But the chair of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board is capable of fire, and it came out during the Civil Beat editorial meeting when the subject of the lawsuit challenging the rail project’s environmental review came up.

“Let’s talk about that,” she said, eager to get into it. Here’s what she said about the case:

The public expression of the lawsuit has always been that we didn’t study it adequately or sufficiently. That’s not the legal standard. When your government has spent $300 million studying something, you’re praying that there’s some deference that a court will give to this multi-jurisdictional, multi-year, $300 million effort. The standard is arbitrary and capricious. So throughout the lawsuit, that’s the words used. It is a higher legal standard, but even by the sound of it, it’s not ‘Did we study it enough?’ I mean, truly, were your decisions so arbitrary that you threw a dart and you came to the same conclusions? That’s arbitrary and capricious.

Asked about complaints from opponents who accuse the government of dragging its feet to bleed them dry, Okinaga said that’s not true.

“There are definite remedies for a party who feels like they’re being aggrieved somehow to bring their concerns to the court. They have not filed any motions for expedited anything,” she said. “These were deadlines that were agreed to by both sides.”