"I don't hide my ambition," Mayor Mufi Hannemann once said. That became evident when he awarded a $486 million construction contract to Kiewit Pacific Co. The contract "formally encumbers rail transit funds" Hannemann declared and "(t)herefore it cannot be shifted or used by anyone for any other purposes."

Not quite — the contract is not encumbered until construction begins and that should not happen until the Environmental Impact Statement is approved by Gov. Linda Lingle and authorized signatories such as the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Thereafter, the Federal Transit Administration must give final approval of the EIS and issue a Record of Decision before construction can begin. At any time, the state Legislature could either pass a law to divert the one-half percentage point general excise tax to the state general fund or to terminate the tax permanently.

Federal environmental law requires "consultation" with all affected parties and dictates that it should take place before the rail route is planned. Not only has Hannemann avoided doing that but he ignored the concerns expressed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. District Court judges (Hawai'i), Kamehameha Schools, and the Hawai'i chapter of the American Institute of Architects, among many others.

When the city issued the draft EIS last October, the state O'ahu Burial Council complained of a "gross lack of consultation." The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation — a federal agency which is a signatory to the EIS — wrote the FTA that it did not understand how the EIS had got to its final draft "without ongoing consultation with all consulting parties."

Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, recalling the fate of the Superferry, warned, "It's not wise to belittle a process that's very much a part of our law." And the National Trust for Historic Preservation warned the city that its failure to perform an Archeological Inventory Survey Plan prior to selecting the route alignment "renders the project legally vulnerable."

Hannemann's reaction? Hire lawyers to defend the city in anticipated lawsuits. Cost: $300,000. The appropriation was necessary, Council Chairman Todd Apo explained, to save the public money in "the long run." How, he did not say.

Hannemann has spent more than $5 million for a one-sided public relations campaign touting his rail project. The information being fed to the public is coming almost exclusively from the city's consultant, Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has a huge financial stake in the project.

Since 2005, the city awarded Parsons two contracts worth $96.2 million. If the project is built, the city estimates at least $549 million in so-called "soft costs" (planning, design, engineering) — most of which will be paid as fees to Parsons.

Infraconsult, a consultant company formed by three former Parsons employees, received an $11.2 million contract to provide "oversight" of Parsons' work. Another former Parsons employee, Wayne Yoshioka, was appointed by Hannemann to head the City Department of Transportation Services. The obvious conflicts of interest of this cozy arrangement did not faze the mayor.

No need to worry, City Managing Director Kirk Caldwell opined in a recent op-ed, saying that FTA consultants reviewed and approved Parsons' work. But all rail projects go through the same review process. And as the debacle of Tren Urbano reveals, the process is not without its flaws.

Tren Urbano was once hailed by Parsons as one of its top projects. San Juan's politicians were told that it would cost $1.086 billion to build and carry an average weekday ridership of 110,000 by 2010.

Opened in 2005, the final cost: $2.228 billion (a 105 percent cost overrun); average weekday ridership (2009): 31,900 (29 percent of original forecast). Tren Urbano is a financial disaster for San Juan's taxpayers, an embarrassment for Parsons and — as the FTA admitted in testimony before Congress — an example of a project gone badly.

The mea culpas provide little comfort for San Juan's 2,217,000 residents who are footing the bill. The irony is that the cost overruns result in higher fees for Parsons, which still gets paid.

The city's $5.5 billion rail system will be the most costly public works project in Hawai'i's history. Surely, O'ahu's 905,600 residents deserve assurance that their tax dollars are being spent wisely and prudently. Instead Mayor Hannemann is rushing the rail project through, apparently hoping to begin construction before he leaves the city to run for governor in 2010 — abandoning the rail project and leaving the city's looming financial crisis to his unlucky successor.