"Legislators can’t figure out if or why the state should pick up the extra costs."  This is the same kind of flawed thinking Sylvia Luke and others keep quoting. It's NOT the state's money.  It's the taxpayers of Honolulu's money, via the additional half-percent excise tax we are paying. 

Except for our cockamamie tax code, this would be –- and SHOULD be -- a local issue to resolve, not a political football for career politicians like Luke, Tokuda, Saiki and others to kick around. If the taxpayers of Honolulu are willing to extend the half-percent -- beyond 2027, by the way...this doesn't affect anyone's taxes for more than a decade -- then that should be what we do. Oh, wait.  Nobody's really bothered to ask us. 

For now, though, Sylvia Luke is on track to be the next Rene Mansho, depriving yet another generation of mass transit, and costing us tenfold in the future.