With unease growing about the financing for the redevelopment of Aloha Stadium, lawmakers are calling for greater financial accountability for the project’s multimillion-dollar consulting contracts.
Even so, a joint committee of senators on Thursday killed a backup plan that would’ve redirected state funding for a rebuilt Aloha Stadium — which has ballooned to an estimated $650 million — to a stadium at University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa.
Instead, the senators advanced a measure that would give stadium officials access to a special fund with $50 million in cash that they haven’t been able to tap into yet. That’s on top of the $350 million lawmakers already allocated to the stadium project in 2019.
The $50 million fund was to be used to pay consultants who have been working for the past six years to plan for the new stadium. But as they opened up the fund, the Senate committees directed the state to closely monitor those consulting contracts going forward…