“Regardless of where people
stand on Honolulu’s rail transit project, it is clear that the community
benefits from more transparency and more discussion about how taxpayer money is
being spent on a project that will have a significant impact on the future of
Oahu and our state.”
That’s the opening paragraph
of an op-ed piece in today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required) by the co-chairs of Move
Oahu Forward, a new group formed to support the Honolulu rail project.
Transparency is what HART’s
new chief executive officer Dan Grabauskas says will define the project under
his leadership. People all over town – City Council members, rail opponents,
project supporters, the media – are embracing the commitment to transparency in and
around the largest construction project in the state's history.
But not everyone shares that
commitment. The one person who holds more individual power over rail’s future
than nearly anyone else is following the anti-transparency playbook. Mayoral
Candidate Ben Cayetano, whose campaign is driven by his opposition to rail,
has turned his back on transparency and everyone who believes in it.
Missed Deadline
Mr. Cayetano announced his
candidacy on January 19 and his intention to terminate the rail project if elected
saying, “There’s no sense in criticizing if you don’t come up with some kind of
solution.” Since then, he’s been campaigning against rail while avoiding any
details about his alleged solution.
What he has offered is the
headline of a solution and nothing else – Cayetano’s Transit Plan Mirrors
Harris’ in 2000. Civil Beat used that headline for a March 21 piece that
included this: “Cayetano told Civil Beat Editor and General Manager John Temple
in an email that he would share the full transit plan by mid-April.”
We noted two days ago that
Mr. Cayetano had failed “The 100 Day Test” – a standard measurement for the
accomplishments of office-holders, beginning with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933
and continuing to this day. We suggested then that the candidate who would kill
the rail project and everything it represents should have met that test, but didn’t.
Politics as Usual
What’s there to make of Mr.
Cayetano’s non-commitment to transparency? It seems obvious. He’s employing a
favorite strategy of political candidates who think they’re leading in their
race: Don’t let yourself be pinned down on specifics.
The leading candidate
willingly risks the opponent’s outrage and media criticism that he or she is
ducking debates and plows ahead with campaign messages that seem to be working.
By confining his statements
to rail’s cost and aesthetics, Mr. Cayetano avoids the potentially disastrous
prospect of defending the Harris Administration’s bus rapid transit plan, which
was attacked from nearly every side and died.
Mr. Cayetano wants to kill
rail without telling the public any details about his BRT replacement –
precisely because BRT is woefully inadequate in matching
mobility-enhancing, travel-time-reducing, development-guiding,
transportation-equity-ensuring and job-creating Honolulu rail.
We shouldn’t expect the
anti-rail candidate to volunteer answers to any of the questions we included in
our “First 100 Days” post two days ago. But the public deserves to have those
and many more questions answered about the Cayetano/Harris BRT plan.
Mr. Cayetano has been silent for 102 days since his announcement, with 103 days remaining before
the primary election on August 11. If his strategy has been to wait until the
second half of his campaign, that half begins tomorrow. A commitment to transparency by the candidate who would kill rail is way overdue.
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