Introduction: Billion Dollar Boondoggles Abound
From Office of Sen Joni Ernst (R-IA) August, 2025 (excerpts)
Going a billion dollars over budget isn’t a rounding error; it’s a financial train wreck.
Likewise, being five years behind schedule isn’t just losing track of time; it’s a derailment.
For too long, taxpayers have been taken for a ride by budget busting boondoggles that keep costing more but never seem to reach the end of the line.
To hold Washington accountable for promises made about costs and timetables, I wrote a provision of law (Section 11319 of Public Law 117-58) requiring the Department of Transportation (DOT) to issue a public report every year disclosing any project that is a billion dollars over budget or five years behind schedule.1
Predictably, the list itself has missed one deadline after another. The first installment was due in November 2022 but was never delivered. Another year came and went with no report. And then yet another.
While managers of a private company or organization would be expected to account for cost overruns or delays, whether due to a lack of knowledge, bureaucratic indifference, or embarrassment, the Biden administration was unwilling, or unable, to do so. Only a government bureaucracy could get away with being late delivering a report listing its projects that are behind schedule and over budget.
But finally, two-and-a-half-years later, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy unburied the report that was withheld by the Biden administration.2
This “report” that took so long to finish is a one-page chart providing few details, leaving out key information, and even omitting some well-known boondoggles (the document is attached in the appendix of this report, good luck trying to read the small print).
While the DOT report is disappointing for lacking details, simply providing the names and locations of the boondoggles allows us to bring greater transparency and accountability to each and every project on that list.
And that is already happening.
Since 2019, I’ve been calling for the cancellation of taxpayer funding of California’s HighSpeed Rail project that is now nearly $100 billion over budget and more than a decade behind schedule.3
The Trump administration is taking back the $4 billion4 that was going to be wasted on this train to nowhere. That’s right, the California crazy train will no longer be choo choo chewing up taxpayer money.
But that isn’t the end of the line! This report outlines other opportunities to save taxpayers billions of dollars by canceling other boondoggles.
Building on the DOT report, Off the Rails, The Billion Dollar Boondoggles Taking Taxpayers for a Ride digs deeper into the projects on DOT’s list and exposes other taxpayer-funded megaprojects that are going off the rails due to poor planning, mismanagement, political plotting, and free fast money from the federal government.
This includes filling in missing details on projects in DOT’s boondoggle report, providing a glimpse into problematic projects financed by other government agencies, and making recommendations on how to bring billion dollar boondoggles to a squealing halt.
What the Department of Transportation Report Reveals
The DOT boondoggle report lists 14 projects. Of these, the five with the largest cost overruns are collectively more than $23 billion over budget. Five are more than a decade behind schedule. Two projects made it onto both the most over budget and most delayed lists.
There are some significant caveats to some of these numbers that are explored in the next section of this report
What the Department of Transportation Report Doesn’t Reveal
The DOT report lacks detailed substantiative information to provide a complete picture of the problems with the projects. The public deserves more than a two or three-sentence excuse when a project goes a billion dollars over budget or is delayed by years.
While the explanations given for the delays and cost overruns in the DOT report all sound like fairly typical bureaucratic red tape, I’ve tracked down the real reasons.
Billions of dollars in cost overruns for the two costliest boondoggles listed in the DOT report— California’s High-Speed Rail and Honolulu’s Rail Transit Project—are the direct result of massive mismanagement and intentional manipulation to secure fast money from the federal government using bait-and-switch budgeting.
In a bid to grab billions of dollars of Obama bucks, both projects overpromised while underdelivering and overspending.
…
Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project (Hawaii)
Just like California’s high-speed train to nowhere, the Honolulu’s High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project was sold as a “shovel ready” project to lock down dollars from the Obama-Biden stimulus program fifteen years ago.38
It also went off the rails almost immediately,39 becoming a boondoggle in paradise.
The $9.9 billion price tag to complete the rail service is roughly twice the original estimate. The cost reached $12.45 billion in 2021,40 but 1.25 miles were cut from the planned 20-mile rail line and construction of a $330 million parking garage was postponed in a scheme to bring down the price and increase the likelihood of receiving more federal funds.41
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) committed $1.55 billion to the project in 2012.42To date, more than $931 million has been provided by DOT. Local “officials are now scrambling to secure the remaining” $619 million “amid concerns that the incoming Trump administration may be hostile to a project that is already years overdue and over budget.”43
Despite numerous warnings from FTA about “weaknesses” in the project’s financial plan, the mayor of Honolulu promised in October 2009 the rail service would be “on time, on budget, and on schedule.”44
A decade later, the state auditor concluded the schedule was never “practical or predictable,” noting the mayor’s “speech was only the beginning of a pattern of rail officials pledging the Honolulu Rail Transit Project would be built cheaper and faster than was reasonably foreseeable at the time. These promises would be contradicted by delays and cost overruns, which would break the Project’s budget and erode public confidence.”45
The audit concluded, “City officials neglected their responsibility to spend public money prudently” from the beginning when they “prematurely entered into contracts under an artificial timeline and a fragile financial plan.” The mayor admitted this was done to avoid losing out on federal funds, stating, “The longer we delay, the greater the chance the money will go away.”46
The decision to award construction contracts before receiving federal approvals resulted in delay costs, which started accruing almost immediately.47
More than $200 million has been paid to contractors for sitting idle48 due to numerous delays resulting from prematurely awarding the contract,49 incomplete designs,50 and lawsuits.51
Hundreds of design and construction workers and dozens of subcontractors and suppliers were mobilized for work that could not be done until years after the Rail Authority scheduled it.52
In one instance, contractors were paid $40 million for “idle work, idle equipment and offices” for more than a year while an archaeological survey was being conducted.53
Another contractor has filed a lawsuit demanding $324 million for costs caused by delays due to the mismanagement of the project.54 If approved, the price tag paid to contactors for not working could exceed more than half-a-billion dollars. That’s a lot of money for doing nothing!
Safety defects and design flaws are also causing delays and cost increases.
The wheels on the train cars didn’t fit the rail properly,56 and all the wheels will all have to be replaced.57
Some of the train cars failed fire testing and deficiencies were found in the aluminum beams used in the shell of the cars.58
Cracks are already forming in the rail system’s tracks, which were supposed to last decades,59 and in the overhead supports.60 Engineering reports about the extent of the cracks and what should be done about them were late and incomplete.61
Some of the paddings along the track were faulty and required replacing.62
Construction has stopped on part of the rail route because the design drawings were not complete.63
Calculated efforts were made to hide the cost increases. Staff were ordered to stop cost calculations until the first $1.5 billion bailout from the state legislature was approved in 2015.64 Whistleblowers who claimed they were intimidated to withhold information about the misuse of federal funds were not even questioned for further information and the allegations were not reported to FTA.65
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART), which is overseeing the rail project, is itself a bloated, mismanaged bureaucracy that lavishes excessive perks on its own executives66 and consultants.67
The transit’s executive director is one of the city’s highest-paid employees,68 collecting a salary double that of the mayor69 in addition to receiving a housing allowance, a transportation stipend,70 and bonus71 after bonus.72
Despite concerns about the job performance of the current executive director, including complaints that she restricted access to information and created a toxic work environment, the Rail Authority board unanimously voted to extend her contract with a $39,000 raise. This brings her salary up to $336,000.73
Even after covering up the project’s growing financial problems from city and state officials, an executive director who departed in 2016 was rewarded with a nearly $300,000 golden parachute as severance.74
HART was operating with a bureaucracy of 130 staffers75 and spending $12 million a month on its own operating costs.76 “I do see quite a bit of redundancies and inefficiencies,” admits the latest executive director. “We’re paying layers upon layers of not just HART staff, but consultants and contractors and we need to cut that waste out,” she added.77
Due to a lack of expertise within its own bureaucracy, the rail agency has relied heavily on consultants, who have been well-compensated. Just 19 contract workers from one firm were paid $9.6 million in a single year, which is more than $500,000 each. The state auditor notes this leads to “consultants managing consultants” with little oversight or accountability.78
None of these critical details bedeviling the Honolulu rail project are mentioned in DOT’s explanation for delays and cost increases.
To avoid raising any red flags about the real problems plaguing the project, the report simply states, “Multiple unsuccessful attempts to award a construction contract for the Center City Segment has delayed the project and increased the cost. Utility relocation complications and delays also impacted the project schedule and cost.”
The report does mention that “Due to cost increases, the original 20-mile project scope was truncated by 1.25 miles and the last two stations were also eliminated.”79 That’s right, taxpayers are being charged more while getting less than promised.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that according to the executive director of the rail authority, “A lot of the feedback from the public is, ‘Just kill it.’”80 In fact, the majority of those surveyed in public opinion polls have consistently opposed the project.81 But the executive director says failure to complete the full route would make it “a train to nowhere” and put the federal funds in jeopardy….
Read … Full Report
LINKS:
Ernst: Bringing Gravy Trains To A Squeal... | U.S. Senator Joni Ernst
off_the_rails_report_v3.pdf
f819d974-b98b-4c6e-ad69-25f337a1ad7a-billion_dollar_boondoggle_actpdf.pdf
Iowa senator calls for cuts to Skyline "boondoggle" -- UPDATE Aug. 11: HART Executive Director and CEO Lori Kahikina provided the following statement Friday evening:
"We are aware of the Act, which essentially requires federal agencies affiliated with projects that are five or more years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget to submit annual project status reports to the Office of Management and Budget. The Act does not appear to mandate or require withholding funds from any project, including the Honolulu Rail Project.
"For context, following years of cost overruns and delays, HART’s new leadership team submitted a Recovery Plan to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in 2022 that detailed numerous corrective actions HART had undertaken and that continues today. The FTA accepted the Recovery Plan within four months. The corrective actions, along with additional performance milestones, were then incorporated into a revised Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) between HART and the FTA, which governs the release of federal funds for the project. HART has consistently met all corrective actions and milestones in the FFGA and continues to do so. As a result, HART does not anticipate any changes to the remaining federal funding for the rail project. HART also continues to maintain strong relationships with both the Hawai‘i congressional delegation and the FTA, and will continue to work closely with them on matters pertaining to the rail project."
HNN: Rail construction enters final phase while enduring more criticism