Why So Little Information About City Meeting With Feds About Rail?
Who knows what happened when Honolulu City Council members met with Federal Transit Administration officials? Not the taxpayers.
“Investigate” and “investigation.”
“Resulting findings and recommendations.”
“Shall present a written report to the Council of its findings and recommendations …”
Those are some of the words from Honolulu City Council Resolution 15-19, CD1. The resolution established a “permitted interaction group” of the council to meet with officials from the Federal Transit Administration, Hawaii’s congressional delegation and others to discuss recent cost overruns and other issues related to the rail project.
Why isn’t the City Council being more forthcoming about what transpired during a recent meeting between council members and the Federal Transit Authority?
On Feb. 24, Council Chair Martin and council members Brandon Elefante, Joey Manahan and Trevor Ozawa met with the FTA. On March 24, they released their three-page report on their one-hour meeting. It leaves much to be desired.
The report provides an outline summary of responses from the FTA. There are no recommendations. In fact, even the questions that council members asked are not included, so we are left to guess what was actually asked.
While several council members did meet with Hawaii’s congressional delegation, according to their individual trip reports, there is no mention of them in the report. Interestingly, however, a staff member from Councilman Ikaika Anderson’s office was in attendance and was given the opportunity to ask questions.
The report does say that “there is an enormous amount of scrutiny over the project.” Apparently it’s not enough, however, given the sometimes incomplete, incorrect information — and, some would say, deliberate lies — that have been provided to the public and our political representatives.
It also mentions costs. “FTA will consider cost adjustments,” and “FTA needs to evaluate cost increases.” But what does this mean? No time frames or deadlines are provided. Is any of this done through the Project Management Oversight Contractor? We are left filling in the blanks.
By way of comparison, the permitted interaction group established in 2013 to investigate and assess issues relating to the Haiku Stairs does a much better job at informing the public of the results.
Shouldn’t we expect more from an investigation related to a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded project? I do.
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