Burgess accuses Seattle City Council of having ‘optimism bias,’ but is not ‘shady’

There aren’t too many topics that KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson and Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess agree on. But count the Pronto bike share as one of them.

Burgess was one of two people who voted against rescuing Seattle’s bike-share program and called out his peers for falling for biased testimony.

Burgess says he and the rest of the council heard anecdotal stories on the value of bicycles. However, those stories don’t justify the city spending $1.4 million on Pronto! in addition to the $305,000 it already spent to keep it alive until the vote.

“Frankly, there is a lot of ‘optimism bias,’ the term economists use to describe judgments people make even when the facts suggest otherwise,” Burgess wrote in an email to constituents.

Related: City Council approves Pronto! bike-share system bailout

And Burgess says he voted “no” for more than one reason. In addition to feeling like the council was making decisions based on biased opinions, he says he is frustrated that the Seattle Department of Transportation failed to tell the council Pronto! was in financial trouble until months later, when it suggested rescuing the program.

“After receiving the rescue proposal, the council considered it incomplete, lacking the kind of financial rigor we would expect,” Burgess wrote. “We imposed a budget restriction, called a proviso, which prohibited spending money on the rescue until a business plan was presented. One month later, in December 2015, SDOT sent $305,000 to Pronto to pay operating costs, a violation of the spirit and intent of the council budget proviso. This payment was not disclosed to the council until February of this year.”

Burgess says the lack of transparency and the violation of the budget directives are “significant.”

“On both the substance of this proposal and the process by which it was pursued, the city fell short of the standard we should set for ourselves,” Burgess wrote. “I am disappointed in the final outcome, but I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that we invest wisely in our transportation infrastructure.”

Burgess was joined by council member Lisa Herbold in the opposition vote. The council approved the bailout by a 7-2 margin, and this time it looks like the vote was counted correctly.

Dori has been vocal about his opposition to the project and Burgess told him Wednesday that the council received hundreds of emails about Pronto! with about 98 percent asking for a “no” vote. He noted that many of the writers were avid cyclists, just like Dori.

However, while Dori describes the connections between the Seattle Department of Transportaion Director and the company that runs the bike share systems as “shady,” Burgess wouldn’t bite.

“I’ve certainly seen no evidence to indicate that, so I would not agree with you there,” he said. “I think that there is a very passionate advocacy in our city for a wide variety of transportation choices and a majority of my colleagues felt that, while there is risk here, it is a worthy effort to make sure that we have a very diverse transportation system. I just disagreed with them on this specific issue.”