I ran into City Council Member Sally Bagshaw last night and she was very politely ticked off with me—and deservedly so. In a post last week, I noted one of her quotes at a press conference: "People say that this is the biggest tunnel that will ever be bored. That's not necessarily the case. Japan, Germany, China all have done the kinds of tunnels of the size we're talking about, and there's two that are even larger on the books in Russia."

In that post, I linked to an article in Seattle's DJC called "Seattle tunnel would be the world's widest," and I wrote—this is where I was being an ass—that Bagshaw was "lying."

Neither Sally Bagshaw or her husband, Brad Bagshaw (a combined package of exponential cuteness, honestly), were pleased with that statement. Those tunnels in Japan, Germany, and China actually are smaller than Seattle's proposed deep-bore tunnel, but the tunnel proposed in Russia is three meters wider. However, that project has since stalled, which is why I wasn't considering it. "The project is on hold due to the financial situation in Russia," said WSDOT's Kristy Van Ness, who is working on the deep-bore tunnel project in Seattle.

If our tunnel gets built here, it will be the largest one ever built. Even so, I could have been more gracious and shouldn't have called Bagshaw a liar.

That said, the city council has been hyperbolic and disingenuous lately in its handling of the deep-bore tunnel. On one hand, they have tried to couch delaying permits as a measure to protect the city when it's more apparently an attempt to block a referendum. They've claimed seeing the bids will allow us to prevent cost overruns, even though overruns often occur after the bids come in. And Bagshaw said last week that "the Mayor wants to spend all of his time in a fight with the State, rather than working with us to define funding options for the Seawall and viaduct"—when in fact the mayor has spent time briefing the council twice on seawall replacement funding and has had his staff working with the council for months. But that's not lying, really. That's politics.

And in the world of politics, Sally Bagshaw's a stand-up person. Even when she and I happen to disagree.