The new head of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, Dan Grabauskas says he has put an immediate stop to the much-criticized and taxpayer-funded rail coloring books and other trinkets that have been used to promote the train project. He also says much less information will be shielded from the public about what’s going on with rail.
A day and a half into the city’s top paying job as CEO of HART, Grabauskas says he and the rest of the agency will be more accountable when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars.
"There are going to be no more coloring books. Period,” he said, calling them unnecessary. “I gave instructions yesterday to staff that we are to produce nothing that is not related to the construction of this project. Public information is going to be necessary, safety around construction , that kind of stuff, we’re going to spend money, but no coloring books are going to be produced on my watch.”
“We’re going to be placing columns in the middle of active roadways, much of the work at night, and there are a lot of people, and a lot of cars and a lot of kids,” Grabauskas said. “So whatever we may need to do to make public awareness about construction and things like that, that’s important.”
He also said the tens of thousands of pages of the "adminsitrative record" on rail will be posted in a searchable format on HART’s website starting today. Previously the public only got a peek after plaintiffs in a federal environmental lawsuit got it through court.
“Transparency in the project has to be paramount,” Grabauskas said. “It’s something that I heard from the first days that I looked into this project, and it’s something that I heard from both our supporters and our opponents.”
They’ll also be posting agreements with all city and state agencies, planning and engineering documents, project designs, safety and security plans, real estate acquisition updates, correspondence with Federal Transit Administration including from CEO’s office.
"I was very encouraged by his commitment to fiscal responsibility first, by getting rid of the frivolous expenses,” said Honolulu City Councilmember Stanley Chang, who listened in the CEO’s first press conference.
Chang says more grilling is ahead Thursday when Grabauskas comes before the council Budget Committee.
“I’m not convinced this is the leanest budget that HART can produce for the taxpayers of Honolulu,” Chang said. “Whether it’s the 5307 bus money or line of credit that hart is asking for from the city.”
5307 bus money refers to all maintenance funds for buses for a period of several years being used to balance the rail project budget.
“It would be a terrible thing to beg or borrow from Peter to pay Paul and right now my hope is that wouldn’t be the situation,” Grabauskas said.
Last month the former HART boss, Toru Hamayasu, told the council it would be cheaper to build columns for rail and tear them down than to wait for the federal court challenge to be resolved or for federal funding to be confirmed possibly this fall, saying he’d get back to the council with an accounting justifying that claim. Councilmembers are still waiting, and that’s bound to come up again Thursday.
“I understand there is a draft response that is winding its way through, I have not had a chance to look at it,” Grabauskas said. “Everyone knows time is money and if you look at having given the OK to move forward, and if you tell a company to stop but they’ve hired people, then we’re liable to make those payments. So the calculation, which I have not seen yet, purports to say that if you stop the project and incur these penalties and these costs, and you put that against constructing the project and then having to remove them, the contention is that one is bigger than the other, and you make the decision to go the route that costs the least.”
“Building columns and then tearing them down afterwards is one of the crazier ideas that I’ve heard as a councilmember,” Chang said. “I think this is a question as much about common sense as about contracts.”
HART is also putting the finishing touches on a request through what will be a proposed Honolulu City Council resolution to expand a city line of credit to $450 million, and give HART access to it to balance the financial plan for the feds.
“You don’t want to build a project 95% and because of a very dramatic unforeseen circumstance not complete the project,” Grabauskas said, “so they’re looking for a backstop. It’s a prudent thing to do, and you hope never to use it, but if you make a huge investment and something unforeseen happens, that’s what I understand they’re looking for.”
Grabauskas said he asked for more information about actual job count created by the project so far and will make that public when he’s told.
“The promise and the pledge that was made was that this is going to create jobs for everyone, and not just people like myself, frankly, who have come from the mainland, but people who live here,” he said. “So I expect and would hope that I get regular reports.”
He did not make any announcements about HART personnel or how the agency will be restructured now that Toru Hamayasu is no longer in the interim director role. He also declined to comment on how much more has been racked up in likely delay claims as of April — it was already into the tens of millions of dollars in a past payment to Kiewit through November.
“It is in negotiation,” He said. “It’s a claim, it’s a legal claim. One hopes to avoid litigation by negotiation. It would be harmful to our position and the taxpayers position to sort of say where we think we are. We’ve told them, so we’re negotiating to a point.”
He said he is seeking answers on when construction — previously slated to already be underway — would begin.
“I don’t have an answer for you on when construction would begin, I believe that with final approvals that are currently pending with the FTA it shouldn’t be that long,” Grabauskas said. Though Kiewit had been given a Notice to Proceed when a federal Letter of No Prejudice was granted, other unspecified delays have come up. “There is work that Kiewit can do — it’s not make-work, it’s real work — but they’re doing other things and hopefully if we get something — approvals — soon, then hopefully we will have avoided any delay claims because they will have been doing work, maybe not the specific work, and then they’ll get to work.”
See the original article at: KHON2 Developing Stories
