Mayor Rick Blangiardi and the City Council have written yet another blank check to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation despite its repeated malfeasance in handling Oahu rail money.

With Blangiardi’s encouragement, the Council voted 6-3 last week to give HART half of a new 3% city hotel room tax in perpetuity — estimated at $43 million a year to start — without an honest accounting of rail finances or a workable plan to finish the deficit- ridden commuter line from Kapolei to Ala Moana Center.

HART’s continuing free ride comes after it twice failed to live up to promises made when it received earlier bailouts from the state Legislature — also given without requiring any plan from the rail agency.

It culminates a whirlwind effort by the mayor, Council and HART to make a rail deficit previously estimated at $3.5 billion magically disappear with the help of some fiscal sleight of hand.

First, Blangiardi appointed former Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa to HART’s board of directors after public outrage stopped a controversial board effort to hand her a sweetheart $1 million lobbying contract. She was soon elected board chairwoman.

Hanabusa quickly took issue with the HART staff’s conservative cost estimate of $12.5 billion to finish to Ala Moana Center, which was 2-1/2 times the original $5.2 billion budget and left the project with a $3.5 billion deficit.

Based on a HART-commissioned audit that has yet to be made public, Hanabusa abruptly slashed the projected cost to Ala Moana to $11.4 billion and the deficit to $2 billion.

The hotel tax money would raise an estimated $1 billion if used to buy bonds. HART has offered no plan to cover the remaining deficit other than further creativity with the books, which it hopes will satisfy the Federal Transit Administration’s demand for an updated plan.

The earlier $12.5 billion cost estimate was issued by interim rail CEO Lori Kahikina and HART staff in an attempt to give a realistic number they were 95% confident could be met.

The scheme hatched by the politicians who took over the accounting arbitrarily reduced the projected cost to a laughable number they have about a .000095% chance of meeting.

The tragedy is that while the mayor, Council and HART directors treat the new hotel tax revenue as play money, it’s very real cash sorely needed for pressing city challenges such as public safety, climate change, homelessness, water and sewage, roads, park maintenance and tourism-related disruption in communities.

Any hotel tax money for rail should be considered not for construction, but for some $140 million in annual operating costs that have no clear funding.

Blangiardi and new Council members Radiant Cordero, Esther Kia‘aina, Calvin Say and Andria Tupola owed taxpayers a fresh look at this misbegotten project that threatens city finances for generations.

Instead they’ve again choked off a true reckoning on rail while spouting tired bromides from the long- discredited script written by the powerful rail lobby of developers, labor unions and bankers.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.