State of State Address Mentions ‘Transit’ but Only in ‘Transition;’ Nothing Said about Tax

• Time is short to comment on rail Draft EIS; this post tells how.
Governor Linda Lingle’s State of the State Address today said nothing about holding onto the GET surcharge on Oahu – the transit tax – that’s going into the local funding vault for the Honolulu rail system.

Senate President Colleen Hanabusa last week floated the idea of using one or two years of the tax to help balance the State budget, a suggestion that both Mayor Mufi Hannemann and the Honolulu Advertiser denounced.

We know the physical layout of the Capitol building, but we don’t know our way around enough to understand what the non-mention of the tax or the rail project itself means – if anything.

Let’s just say it wasn’t in the speech and leave it there. Time will tell (as it always does) what the Lingle Administration’s intentions are for the tax – if anything.