The man the Oregon Department of Transportation tapped nearly five years ago to deliver billions of dollars in freeway expansion projects in the Portland region is leaving the agency.
According to Willamette Week, ODOT Urban Mobility Office Director Brendan Finn has taken a job as chief of staff for Multnomah County Commissioner Vince Jones-Dixon.
Finn was the first ever director of the office and assumed the role just six months after it was launched. The Urban Mobility Office (UMO) was created in 2019 (initially called the Office of Urban Mobility & Mega Projects) with the goal of completed a suite of freeway expansion projects funded in the 2017 legislative transportation funding package known as HB 2017. That bill included earmarks for several megaprojects that ODOT claimed would reduce congestion in the region: the I-205 Tolling project, the Regional Mobility Pricing Project, the Boone Bridge Improvements project, the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvements project, and the I-205 Improvements. The projects became known as ODOT’s “Urban Mobility Strategy” and it was Finn’s job as UMO Director to get them done.
Finn earned a salary of $222,650 from ODOT in 2023 and oversaw a staff of 37 FTE with annual payroll of around $4.5 million. I’m not yet aware of why Finn left, but he appears to be taking a big paycut. A typical chief of staff at Multnomah County makes about $130,000 per year.
The last five years at the Urban Mobility Office have been a roller-coaster and Finn has been sitting on the front row.
When he took his position in 2020, the I-5 Rose Quarter project, which will widen I-5 through the Lloyd Center and adding highway covers with surface street improvements and real estate development on top, was in shambles. It lacked support from the City of Portland and ODOT was taking heat from activistsand elected officials. Even Metro called ODOT’s assessment of the project “inadequate” and “highly misleading.” In June 2023, Finn became emotional and walked out of an I-5 Rose Quarter advisory committee after members expressed disappointment about a lack of funding and progress. While there’s been some great news for the project earlier this year, it’s still dogged by lawsuits and lacks funding to be completed.
Finn’s mission received another big blow back in March when Governor Kotek paused work on the Regional Mobility Pricing Project. That plan that would have added tolls to freeways in the Urban Mobility Strategy that would pay for the projects and for continued operation of the Urban Mobility Office (UMO) itself. The lack of funding from ODOT and other sources to complete the projects has put the UMO in difficult straits.
Prior to leading the UMO, Finn was a transportation policy advisory for former Governor Kate Brown and previous to that he was a chief of staff for former Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman.
ODOT has yet to name a replacement for Finn. Stay tuned to see how his departure might impact the UMO and it’s projects going forward.
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Finn was put in his position by higher-ups who clearly mis-read the room. Agency Director Strickler and the OTC were convinced that traffic congestion in Portland was a societal problem of such magnitude that the public would support tolls and overlook project negatives. So the fall guy falls and the out-of-touch leadership reign on.
Job hoping from one failed job to the next. Sounds about right for top level bureaucrats in Portland. Amazed paid $222K for only 37 people and probably 1/3 of those were supervisors/managers.
Would I take a deep pay cut in order to have a job with less stress and more doability? Sure. Especially if both jobs are paying six figures.
In India government workers are openly on the take, they bribe to get the job and then take bribes until they retire.
But my leftist background (thanks Dad) told me Oregonian government workers were different–they cared.
But like fat lazy cats, so many of them take a pay check and a pension, delivering results or not as the case may be, and its not like anyone cares or is even looking.
Part of this disdain is jealousy of that 300+k lifestyle in a cutsey craftsman, but I’ll take my up and down career where my labors resulted major improvements in people’s lives that I was right there to witness.
I just can’t even with the government in Oregon anymore. Their pay goes up, they never get fired, the roads get worse, more people die on the roads, and more people are attacked in the street.
C’mon, donel – I’m usually the pessimistic one here. But your pessimism dwarfs even mine.
A couple things:
I’d recommend you save your anger and disdain for the coming s**tstorm from DC. We’re all gonna need a lot of energy to fight that.
How much does a bike blogger take home?
Riches beyond your imagination.
After nearly 20 years working on BikePortland I make $48,000 a year. That really isn’t enough money in my opinion! I’d really like to make more but I love doing this and feel like it’s a special thing I would regret walking away from even though it’s not fair to my family that I’ve given so many prime years to this work.
And the hired help probably makes more per hour, but is not superhuman enough to put in even a minuscule fraction of the time JM does.
And we appreciate that you do it! – in spite of all of the crap you take from commenters like me (but we do it cuz we also care).
Emmy
In the U.S. that is a rude and intrusive question. Unless you are a subscriber to this blog, it is not the spending of your money that funds a bike blogger, making his earnings none of your business. $48K per year to support a family is pretty thin. If you do subscribe you appreciate and subsidize the bike blogger’s value. If you don’t, you don’t. J. M.’s response was more gracious than the question.
A larger look into the dysfunction and turnover at the misnamed UMO, with public records requests, would be amazing. Fantasizing about the days we had a vibrant fourth estate with the resources to do that.
Thanks for this coverage, Jonathan.
JaredO. We actually tried to do this a few years ago. Had a volunteer who did some records request to find out more about it but the story never came together.
Can we just talk about the fact that someone in a tax payer funded director position at ODOT is making $222,650 a year?
Sure – let’s talk about it. Mid-level operatives in many corporations make close to that salary. But I guess “the business of America is business,” so we never question those salaries.
I have no problem with high-level gov’t officials making a salary commensurate with their responsibilities. We get the gov’t we pay for. My bigger complaint is that the gov’t should not be spending this kind of money on THIS project, which has all the hallmarks of a boondoggle.
But they really don’t though, I have never met a director in any private business that makes anywhere near that salary and especially not in Portland. That is up there with sf tech bro income levels
I’m not surprised Finn is leaving. Isn’t he the guy who almost burst into tears in a Zoom meeting when questioned by local Black leaders? Selling the s**t sandwich that is I-5 widening (aka “auxiliary lane addition”) has got to be no fun at all.
If you search for “OTC” on Bike Portland you’ll get a primer on what makes ODOT tick. One privilege of Oregon’s governor is to nominate new members of the Oregon Transportation Commission. The buck stops with the Governor and it’s not too early to make the OTC an issue in the coming campaign.
“it’s not too early to make the OTC an issue in the coming campaign.”
OTC membership is a boutique issue among boutique issue. Tolling on I-5, maybe… Kotek would likely brag that she stopped ODOT’s crazy tolling plan, and might gets some votes as a result.
Boutique? Maybe. It’s also a crux of Oregon transportation policy and very much in the hands of the governor. Remember when the Rose Quarter debacle was only supposed to cost $450 million? ODOT is unable to make a budget for its aspirational highway projects and the governor’s office holds a powerful lever. What if the governor appointed an OTC member who thought a pedestrian’s life was worth ten million dollars?