Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell has appointed Island Insurance executive chairman of the board Colbert Matsumoto to serve as the newest member of the board overseeing the $6.5 billion Oahu rail project by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART).
The previous chairman for the rail project, Don Horner, resigned amid concerns of cost overruns and mismanagement during his tenure.
According to hawaiinewsnow.com, Caldwell appointed Matsumoto to the board as his personal bet for chairman. The city stressed in official documents, however, that the board itself is the one that determines who serves as chairman.
Matsumoto is set to attend his first board meeting on April 21. That meeting’s first agenda would be to hold a vote on who will chair the board. Horner’s replacement will serve the rest of his term through June 30, 2020.
Caldwell chose Matsumoto due to his “long history of public service,” as well as his ability to rally large institutions even in times of difficulty.
“He positively helped shape Kamehameha Schools’ future as the court master during their very difficult transition in the late 1990s,” the mayor said in a news release.
“As chairman of the board of trustees of the Employees’ Retirement System, he helped secure state and city workers’ retirements by beginning to pay down the unfunded liability in the retirement system. Under Colbert’s leadership, the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii went from near bankruptcy to solvency.”
The mayor also hopes that the addition of Matsumoto would bring “much-needed transparency, accountability and oversight” to the rail project.
“This is a challenging time for HART but I look forward to working with the other directors to restore public confidence in the project,” remarked Matsumoto. “HART’s role in shaping Honolulu’s future needs to be responsibly undertaken with transparency and accountability by all involved. I hope to contribute to achieving that outcome."
