Well, I’m going back to work, at least for a while. City Council Member Duke Bainum called last week and asked if I would be interested in filling in temporarily for a staffer who has had to return to the mainland. I worked at the council as senior advisor to then-councilmember Neil Abercrombie from 1988-1990, so it’s been quite a while since I made Honolulu Hale my home-away-from-home. The chance to see how things have changed in the way the council does its business piqued my interest and so I said yes. And, after very quick preliminaries, I’m starting today.

I did provide fair warning that I’ll be blogging through the experience, following the same informal approach I did while working at the legislature. That is, public (or non-confidential) events, documents, procedures, rules, insider perspectives and debates are fair game for blogging. Confidential matters remain off limits, except perhaps indirectly.

In any case, I trust that it’s going to be interesting.

Meanwhile, I may have understated the funding issue that the city council has to deal with tomorrow.

On Sunday, I wrote:

Here’s another somewhat overlooked point. Mayor Hannemann has proposed beginning construction even before the federal environmental impact assessment process has been completed and well before there’s any commitment of federal funding.

This means that for now, at least, the rail is being entirely funded by the city. To do this, Hannemann proposes a billion-dollars of general obligation bonds. As I understand it, once the city goes ahead in this manner, this phase of the project will not be eligible for retroactive federal funding.

Some believe the mayor is bullying ahead in this way to end run the environmental process by awarding the first contracts and locking in his particular choice of technology without waiting for the results of the city’s environmental review. If federal dollars aren’t involved, he doesn’t have to wait for the process to be completed because it doesn’t apply to city-funded projects.

That prompted this email response from a prominent backer of a more flexible and less expensive rail technology than the mayor has chosen:

I wanted to comment that I believe if the Mayor awards any of the contracts related to the Honolulu transit – before the final Record of Decision (by the Federal Transit Administration), we will not be eligible for any New Starts funding for the project. Such a move would jeopardize the entire project should the city move ahead and start with their own funding – before the final EIS is approved and subsequent ROD is favorably issued.

I spoke to the FTA region 9 the other week, and he confirmed that the ROD is key before the city can begin construction.

This was further clarified by another person tracking the process, who said that in order to be eligible for future federal funding, the city cannot begin construction before either the Record of Decision or a “Letter of No Prejudice” is issued, essentially providing a waiver of the ROD requirement.

This funding issue is further complicated by the fact that Honolulu, at best, is likely to see only a very small percentage of the overall cost of the mayor’s transit system paid with federal dollars. While many systems have qualified for nearly 50 percent federal funding, Honolulu is looking at something closer to 10 percent, in part because of the inefficiencies of the mayor’s proposed all-elevated technology.

In any case, the tomorrow’s City Council meeting is where these issues all come to a head.

We were listening to NPR’s All Things Considered on the drive home yesterday afternoon and happened to catch an excellent segment describing the development of “behavioral economics”. It provides an excellent intro to this important approach to the world.

I found a few more photos of my parents which appear to be from the period around 1939-40, when they were newly married. I’m not sure where this photo was taken, but it shows my parents and my mother’s dog, Kiki, who appears in a couple of other photos as well. Just click on this photo to see the others in this little gallery.

Looking at this photo again, it looks a lot like the area at the entry to Miller Hall at the UH Manoa Campus, looking back to the railing that runs along the sidewalk surrounding Varney Circle. But then it could be any number of other similar spots, I suppose.

I was struck by the picture of a party with a pig roasting over an open fire. It looks so old, from such a different era, that I thought it couldn’t have been from the same era as my parents. Then I noticed that one of the men is holding Kiki in his lap. Without a doubt, she places the photo! I just sent these over to my sister and I’m hoping my mother will be able to tell the stories behind the photos. More to follow.