Dori: Scott Kubly’s $10K fine is a joke compared to the costs

Taken from the June 30, 2016 Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio

Here’s some news that illustrates what criminals we have running the City of Seattle. Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation Scott Kubly was hit with a $10,000 fine by the city’s ethics department.

Which is nothing. It’s nothing. In fact, this fine ends up costing the taxpayers a bundle of money.

Related: SDOT Director Scott Kubly agrees to settlement with Seattle over ethics violations

Kubly used to work for Alta Bike Share, it re-branded as Motivate, and Motivate runs Pronto!. Kubly broke rules when he helped funnel money to his former employers. We found out Pronto! misled the Seattle City Council by a huge margin, overstating the number of riders they had — so the City of Seattle taxpayers could bail out this failed bike share system.

Scott Kubly played a huge role in all of this. And then we find out that Kubly has agreed to a $10,000 settlement for his ethics violations.

Let me tell you why this is such a joke.

Kubly didn’t disclose his prior connection to the company. He was supposed to either recuse himself or obtain a waiver to work on matters related to Pronto! bike share, which he did not do as he broke rules funneling $300,000, then they overstated ridership to get a city council bail out. It’s another example of how incompetent the people on the Seattle City Council are — they bought these wildly inflated numbers for Pronto! as they did the bailout.

They say there’s no evidence that Kubly sought or received any personal financial gain in connection with the violations. Of course, the fallacy is that it’s in the past tense. He neither “sought,” nor “received” — both past tense. But do you think there is going to be some gigantic future pay off for Scott Kubly? Do you think that when the people in this region get tired of the gridlock that he has help engineer, and he’s looking for his next gig, you don’t think that he will have a large six-figure salary waiting for him from these bike-share companies that go from city-to-city bilking taxpayers?

The other reason this is such a clown show: The city hired a former prosecutor to do the ethics investigation of Scott Kubly — Marilyn Brenneman. I went back when I heard that Kubly agreed to a $10,000 settlement to see how much the city is paying Marilyn Brenneman. Their contract with this former prosecutor to investigate Scott Kubly’s ethics violations calls for her to make $20,000. So in other words, the cost of Kubly’s ethics violation investigation to the taxpayers is more than what his fine is. It is another way Scott Kubly has figured out how to screw over the taxpayers of this region. We have to pay an investigator more than what his fine is.

I’m telling you, I’ve never seen a public official who has cost the people so much consistently — when you add in all the gridlock, breaking rules to funnel $300,000 to his former employer, overstating ridership numbers, and now paying a fine doesn’t even equal the cost of an investigation. This is somebody who is a cancer in our public life in Seattle. Scott Kubly — over his head, incompetent at this job, ethically challenged — ends up costing the people of this region a fortune.

Great hire Mayor Ed Murray. And the Seattle City Council. It’s unbelievable.

Taken from the June 30, 2016 Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio

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