Blangiardi calls for multi-year contract for rail CEO

Mayor Rick Blangiardi today told officials who oversee the city’s rail project to offer a multi-year contract to Lori Kahikina — its CEO and executive director — and fully cooperate with an investigation into any alleged “bullying and harassment” of Kahikina by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s board of directors.

Blangiardi’s two-page memo to the HART board and Kahikina asks them to:

>> “Cooperate with the Mayor and Managing Director in the investigation of alleged bullying and harassment of the CEO by the HART Board;

>> “Suspend all public discussion of personnel matters subject to investigation, except within the context of public and open HART Board meetings in which both the HART CEO and the HART Board may speak and conduct business; and

>> “Provide the HART CEO a multi-year contract extension in which both the HART CEO and the HART Board exercise their responsibilities, authority and powers and, for which, each side will be accountable for their performance and conduct.”

In the last quarter of 2023, after agreeing with Federal Transit Administration officials “on the need to prioritize project stability, I strongly recommended the HART Board extend the CEO’s contract,” Blangiardi wrote. “Since then, relations between the HART CEO and the HART Board have become increasingly tense.”

On Monday, the FTA told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that instability at HART’s leadership could threaten the next round of $250 million in federal funds expected by the rail project as it pushes toward its final destination into Kakaako.

Kahikina’s $275,000 contract is scheduled to expire on Dec. 31 and the first discussion of her future has been scheduled for Friday before the board’s Human Resources Committee.

Relations between Kahikina and the HART board — specifically Chairperson Colleen Hanabusa — became notably tense after Blangiardi appointed Hanabusa to the unpaid, volunteer, 12-member board in July 2021.

Kahikina told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week that she would be insulted if the board offered her a one-year, contract extension given the rail project’s turnaround under her leadership.

Asked if she would stay on if she were offered a three-year contract like her predecessors — if Hanabusa continued on the board — Kahikina she would have to “think about that.”

At the end of his memo today, Blangiardi wrote:

“By this Memorandum, as CEO of the City and County of Honolulu, I am calling on the HART CEO, HART staff and HART Board to prioritize this transformative taxpayer-funded project and put personal differences aside. We owe it to the FTA and the taxpayers of the City and County of Honolulu.”