Former Oakland A’s outfielder Rickey Henderson used to call it “the old okey-dokey.” That’s when someone appears to be doing one thing when they are actually doing something else.

Henderson has long since retired, but the okey-dokey lives on in City Hall, where members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are making a show of regulating the so-called Google buses that tech workers ride from the city to jobs in the South Bay at places like Facebook, Google and Apple.

The Municipal Transportation Agency is just concluding an 18-month pilot program for the tech buses meant to calm fears that they are clogging streets and to provide a way for the shuttle companies to pay for using Muni bus stops. Most people thought the program worked and would be made permanent.

But the progressive wing of the supervisors, particularly Jane Kim and Aaron Peskin, say they need to improve the system and want to streamline routes and create new rules the shuttles must follow. They say the buses are the cause of displacement and gentrification.

Unfortunately, none of that is true. Let’s look at the okey and the dokey:

Tech shuttles are regulated by the city supervisors: Actually, the supervisors have no authority over the shuttle buses, which are regulated by the MTA. The supervisors may pass a resolution of some kind, but as one insider put it, they would be passing “a non-binding resolution in support of a tentative agreement over which they have no jurisdiction.”

“They’re playing politics,” says MTA Board director Gwyneth Borden. “We’re separate agencies, so they don’t get to tell us what to do.”

All right then, the supervisors can pass something that will say the shuttles can’t use Muni bus stops: Go ahead. As Supervisor Scott Wiener says, the board can’t stop private buses from using public streets. The shuttle companies already have parking lots and white zones picked out for stops and will just use those.

And, he says, “If they start using those, we have no leverage (to increase fees or negotiate changes to routes). The leverage we have is that they are using Muni stops.”

A nice, sensible solution would be to create bus hubs where tech workers would take a shuttle bus to reach the hub for another shuttle bus: “And where are you going to put those hubs?” Wiener asks. “Who wants to have a hub in their neighborhood with hundreds of buses?”

In fact, a memo sent to the MTA board by Sustainable Streets cited five likely hub sites and said there was not enough space at any of them.

Well, something has to be done, because this controversy isn’t going away: Really? Because it seems we hadn’t heard much about this from residents until this overheated rhetoric from some supervisors — Kim called the buses “rolling gated communities” — started up. The pilot program created some changes, like taking big buses off narrow streets, and it seemed to be working.

“I represent the district that is most impacted by buses and has the most riders,” Wiener said. “I am receiving far fewer complaints than even a year ago.”

In fact, a January survey by the Bay Area Council found that 63 percent of voters support shuttles, and 83 percent said they helped get cars off the road.

Yeah, well, we can prove that the buses are causing gentrification and displacement: Nonsense. The buses don’t create housing demand any more than a rooster crowing causes the sun to rise.

For starters there are only 8,000 to 9,000 riders. The real story is that the city is gaining 10,000 new residents a year — many with well-paying jobs — which creates intense pressure on the housing market. Explain to residents in the Sunset, where there are few tech buses, why the shuttles are causing their home prices to go through the roof.

The real issue is the consistent failure to build housing, which creates a shortage that drives up rents and home prices.

So what if it is harder for the techies? Maybe they will just leave: Not likely. A 2014 survey by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning found that if shuttles were not provided, 48 percent of riders said they would drive alone, and 15 percent would carpool.

But c’mon, the real issue is that hard-core progressives are mad as hell that the city is changing. They’re angry that the techies not only have good, high-paying jobs, but that they have the nerve to move into their trendy, hip neighborhoods.

Now they want them to leave so we can turn back the clock and no one has to change. But no one can stop the simple economics of a wonderful, desirable place to live and a boom economy.

So the haters and critics direct their anger to a scapegoat — the tech shuttles — all in the name of “improving” the program.

It’s the old okey-dokey.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius