Thanks to Star-Advertiser reporter Gordon Pang for his Oct. 2 story spelling out the present confusion over quorum requirements for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART), the agency charged with controlling development of the city’s vastly over-budget rail project (“Oahu voters asked to solve HART board members dilemma”).

Here’s the problem in a sentence:

For the past year, the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation has had difficulty holding votes or taking any other action during meetings because of an ongoing struggle to maintain what it perceives to be a quorum, the number of board members needed to conduct business.

But the details are tricky.

HART was established by an amendment to the City Charter with 9 regular members. Three members are chosen by the mayor, three by the City Council, plus the state and city transportation directors, and one member chosen by the first eight. The city director of planning and permitting sits as a nonvoting, ex officio member.

Pang reports:

The 2010 Charter amendment language says a majority of the entire panel must agree for the board to take action. Since November, under advice from city attorneys, the board has considered the number of votes needed to take action at eight (a majority of 14) where it was previously six (a majority of 10).

Actually, the 2010 Charter amendment simply refers to provisions governing all city boards and commissions.

There, in the general section 13-178 provides, in part: “A majority of the members shall constitute a quorum.”

And, separately: “The affirmative vote of a majority of the entire membership shall be
necessary to take any action, and such action shall be made at a meeting open to the public.”

And there’s the problem. It appears that when the general provisions were written and adopted, the possibility of non-voting members wasn’t considered.

The “solution” proposed by the city further seems clumsy. It provides that a majority of voting members will be required to establish a quorum, but also requires increasing the board to 15 members, with an additional voting member named by the council. The latter step is “required” in order to rectify what the council sees as a board weighted in favor of the mayor, because the city’s transportation director, who serves ex officio, is essentially appointed by the mayor.

Why not recognize that the problem of nonvoting members might recur, and simply change the general charter provisions to provide that a majority of voting members of any board or commission are required for a quorum or for any official action?

I did go back and examine testimony given during the 2017 special legislative session that passed the funding bill requiring expansion of the HART board from 10 to 14. None of the testimony pointed to problems with the addition of nonvoting members. So these are legal considerations that arose after the fact, and that are exacerbated by the unpopularity of the rail project (stoking fears of potential litigation) and by the conflict between the mayor and the council majority.

One further question: I wonder what the Office of Information Practices has to say about the conflicting provisions of the current law, and the city’s proposed “solution”?