Republican party leaders in the Oregon Legislature have released a transportation bill that would severely limit and/or eliminate spending on rail, transit, and bicycling infrastructure and direct more revenue to the State Highway Fund. In some cases, their bill, filed as LC 4934 and expected to get its first reading on Monday, would take revenue sources currently dedicated to rail, transit, bicycle and walking-specific projects and redirect them to the State Highway Fund.
The bill would also repeal ORS 366.514, also known as the Oregon Bicycle Bill, a landmark piece of legislation passed by a Republican in 1971 that requires the transportation department to dedicate at least 1% of major road project budgets to bicycling and walking infrastructure.
The legislation is championed by House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, Senate Republican Leader Daniel Bonham and Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment Vice-Chair Shelly Boshart Davis. The 83-page bill is the formal follow-up to a framework released last month and it comes just days before the official, bipartisan transportation bill is expected to be released.
Saying their effort will “rebuild trust in ODOT” and “cut non-essential programs,” these Republicans want their bill to draw a stark contrast to the bevy of new fees and taxes that will be in the main bill that will seek to raise well over $2 billion in new revenue for a projects and programs.
Drazan, Bonham, and Davis took a fine-toothed comb through existing transportation funding policy and sought to redirect every funding source they could find to the State Highway Fund. Monies that currently flow to transit service, bike paths and rail projects, would be instead go toward highways. Oregon’s custom license plates (ike the ‘Share the Road’ plate) currently share a portion of proceeds with the nonprofits Cycle Oregon and The Street Trust. Republicans would take that away and give it to the State Highway Fund.
Their bill also seeks to raid the bike path funding created by revenue from the $15 bicycle excise tax and give that to the highway fund as well. Nothing is safe from their attempt to encourage more of the most expensive, least efficient form of transportation under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
In a statement released Thursday, Republicans boast that their bill would redirect $134 million from “non-essential functions” that include: climate mitigation efforts, off-street biking and walking paths, ODOT’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Program, passenger rail service investments, EV subsidies, and more.
Their proposal would also eliminate ODOT’s Emerging Small Business Program, that, “serves to help Oregon’s small business community overcome barriers to participation in the state’s multi-billion dollar public contracting process,” and redirect its funding to — yes, you guessed it — the state highway fund!
Once they’ve added all this funding to the State Highway Fund, the Republican plan is to create a new Office of Major Projects to oversee any highway project with a budget over $99 million. This office would be overseen by an advisory committee made up of lawmakers and nine other people appointed by the governor from the typical players that make up the existing highway industrial complex. The advisory committee would exclude people who represent bicycling, walking, transit, or rail interests.
It’s very unlikely that any of these provisions will make it into the final transportation bill, but at least these Republicans have put their cards on the table and it’s clear to all Oregonians where they stand.
A work session on the main transportation bill will take place at the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment on Monday morning at 10:00 am.
Thanks for reading.
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Oh look, the evil people continue to do evil things. News at 11.
I don’t agree with their bill but “evil people”? Come on, does emitting vitriol like this really get us anywhere?
I guess my first attempt at a response didn’t make it through, so I’ll try this-
Perhaps you might want to have a better understanding of what “evil” is so it’s not just yet another word used to paint political opponents with negative connotations?
Us good, them evil.
I don’t know about you, but in my book killing people so that a bunch of rich people can save a few percentage points on their taxes is pretty evil. And that’s what’s happening here; the Republicans are basically saying that in order to plug the holes in the ODOT budget, they need to cut spending on various non-automobile oriented programs, which will kill people, rather than raise additional revenue, which would largely impact the wealthy and privileged. Ipso facto evil.
Raising revenue, the Democrat euphemism of the day, means raising taxes on YOU.
Its too hard to get tax money from the rich and there’s not enough of them.
Rich people generally live off money that is taxed as capital gains even BEFORE Reagan’s tax reform which largely affected income (work) tax.
Rich people, as I’m sure you will agree, don’t work and just pop pills all day in Maui while discussing their long term held dividends (taxed as capital gains, even before Reagan) with their financial advisors.
Welfare state countries like Germany/UK tax YOU. They try taxing the rich but its just not enough. So they tax YOU and your 30,000 per year salary 50 percent. (the median salary in Europe).
With aging populations and regimes that have discouraged business formation for decades, resulting in a taxbase that only makes 30k per year, they are no longer able to afford the welfare state and no longer serve a a useful model. The DSA is going to have to come up with a better model.
Please, please, PLEASE raise taxes and fees on me. I’m well off and comfortable, and tired of living in a society where (among my many other complaints) we subsidize the most inefficient, ecologically damaging, and unhealthy mode of transportation to the expense and detriment of all other modes. It should be financially unfeasible for 60% of people living in the city to own and operate a personal automobile, and alternative modes should be so effective, safe, and efficient that another 20% who could buy a car don’t bother to.
Yes, I recognize that’s an unpopular position, and yes, I recognize the issues of equity and justice that would need to be navigated in any transition from today to my ideal tomorrow. But just because something is difficult does not mean that we should give up entirely.
I hope you have time to expound on the logic tree that brings you to your conclusion of..
“they need to cut spending on various non-automobile oriented programs, which will kill people”
It seems by following your logic it would make the Democratic Party liable for all the transportation deaths of the last (at least) ten years in Portland because it has been democratic policies that have controlled the city. Actual deaths versus might happen deaths? Does that make the Dems evil?
Does ascribing morality to political parties work if the spotlight shines on both parties?
Well, no matter how bad it gets at least we’re not them!
I don’t really have a ton of time to back up a pithy hot take comment on a blog with a political treatise, no. Suffice it to say that:
a) I didn’t bring up Democrats, you did, so get your whataboutism outta here. I’ll be the first in line to cop to that fact that evil political actors are a bipartisan affliction.
b) I did not say that the Oregon Republican caucus is evil solely because of their bad transportation policy platform, only that their bad transportation policy platform is reinforcing evidence that they are, in fact, evil.
You’re using your rhetorical gotcha questions to ascribe words and beliefs to me that I did not utter and do not hold. You’re doing this to pick a fight with a straw man in some kind of weird and vain attempt to create a false equivalence between the two parties that hold any kind of power or influence at the local, state, and national level. Do something more productive and effective with your life. I’ve certainly already spent far too much time entertaining this back and forth, and the same is likely true for you as well.
Comment of the week.
Yuck. Fortunately they have as much chance of getting what they want as I do of finding a mint condition Nishiki Alien on Portland Craigslist.
Bummer, I used to have one, in large…
Seriously? Like it’s the repubs fault that the state is facing a transportation crisis when they’ve been out of power for, like, awhile?
It seems like a distraction to say that “they” are doing bad things when they don’t actually have the power to do any of it. All the problems are driven (no pun intended) by democratic representatives who were voted for by the urban centers.
it’s been the democrats showing where they stand for several decades and most of you just shrug it off due to political tribalism.
Remind me again who keeps voting for the IBR to continue and the freeway widening to continue and who isn’t funding active and public transportation?
Is this some form of “both parties are bad so you should favor neither”? One party is demonstrably worse and there is no reality where neither party is in power.
No, just saying that I’m frustrated that transportation has become a political identity in modern Oregon. Transportation is pretty messed up and the blue side has no impetus to fix it because the majority will vote blue no matter what.
Would you vote red if the repubs wanted to fully fund human powered transportation and ban any personally owned vehicle over 1800lbs? I doubt you would so there is no incentive for them to do the right thing either.
Yeah, I probably would. I don’t care about party affiliation. About 38% of people in Oregon have no party affiliation, so it’s not rare.
Your frustration with a two party system where one party is nearly always dominant is very valid. A non parliamentary system gets you that (although Germany and the UK also have their problems). It leads to “swing states” where most of the electorate can be ignored. So yes Jake9 everyone probably agrees that it sucks we’re very often dominated by one of two parties regardless of state.
Except if you read above, voting republican (locally) would likely mean a repeal of the bike bill (allows walking/biking infra on new roads sometimes) and scouring of all funding for transit, walking and biking. However bad the many of representatives are (democrat and republican), it would be exponentially worse if we had people in charge who like to use the euphemism “Go back to basics,” i.e., only fund roads for cars.
Nationally, right now the US has two parties, one that in Germany, France or the UK would be Center-Right, and one that would be considered Far-right (e.g., AFD in Germany, NR in France, Fratelli d’Italia in Italy). I’ll let you guess which party is which. Even the far-right parties in Europe (aside from Orban) avoid associating with most US republicans, because they’ve seen authoritarianism (which is the direction the US is quickly heading). However bad the stagnation and gridlock is in a two-party system like the US, the alternative where the rule of law no longer applies is exponentially worse.
Oh yes I would! Please, throw me into that briar patch!
Right?!? I’d be right behind you!
If Republicans aligned with more of my policy stances than Democrats then, yes, I would vote red. But they don’t (by an absolutely overwhelming margin) and I would rather get 60% of what I want than 0% of what I want.
republicans are the reason for this. As JM pointed out, a republican passed the Bike bill. republicans have gone off the deep end and made every single thing a political identity. They used to be somewhat coherent and rational on some topics like the environment and transportation, but they’ve lost all those people to the middle-ground and left because they don’t want to be associated with the racist/fascist GOP. All thats left in the GOP is the dregs.
“Would you vote for a party if they had a completely different set of beliefs” is such a pointless exercise.
People don’t hate republicans because of tribalism. They hate republicans because they are fascist monsters.
“They hate republicans because they are fascist monsters.“
In Oregon? That seems a bit harsh, as does painting your fellow Oregonians who live outside of the urban centers and by necessity have a different lifestyle as “dregs”.
To be fair though, it’s not every gas station one stops at that has Army manuals on Counter Insurgency and Asymmetrical Warfare for sale in the magazine section (looking at you, Baker City).
How can you say that neither party is in power? Democrats have held a majority in the Oregon Legislature for approximately 13 consecutive years, from 2012 to the present and they have held the governorship as well.
I didn’t say that. I said ‘there is no reality where neither party is in power’.
“I said ‘there is no reality where neither party is in power’.”
There is a reality where the parties share power.
Umm, that would be worse. Carter is alluding to a third party. I.e. not some BS enlightened centrism between far right and center right.
The article isn’t about what republicans have done or what they are to blame for. It is about what they want to do now.
Yes, many democrats have sucked on transportation, and they have had a majority. But, republicans have had influence on policy, sit on committees and have used tactics, like hiding across state lines, to block legislation. The solution isn’t to not vote for democrats. The solution is to vote for democrats that don’t capitulate to republicans or behave like republicans. And it is actually the democrats in urban centers that have been the closest to getting it right, while other, more centrist democrats, have been lost.
“It is about what they want to do now.”
It’s about what they say they want to do when they have no power to do anything besides attracting attention by differentiating themselves from Democrats as starkly as possible in ways they think they can peel off some Democratic voters.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were hell-bent on repealing Obamacare, then spent two years in control of the house, senate, and presidency not repealing Obamacare.
I think you’re forgetting that everything but a flipped coin is on a continuum. Republicans are ENTIRELY car brained. Democrats* are MOSTLY car brained. Then there are some (many who read this blog) or are varying degrees car/transit/bike/walk brained.
I certainly accept your premises the Dems have royally messed up our transportation system, but it’s less royally messed up than if Republicans like these were in charge.
*Don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. A number of state level democrats have their heads screwed on straight: Sen Pham, Reps Gamba, Chaichi, Chotzen, Anderson, etc. Rep Tran just spoke on the house floor saying we should stop pursuing megaprojects. House majority leader Bowman pretty solid. These folks are far better on the just-dubbed car brained continuum (CBC)
“but it’s less royally messed up than if Republicans like these were in charge.”
That is not Jake’s point. He’s asking if it’s less royally messed up than if Democrats were afraid Republicans would be in charge if they didn’t get their act together.
Can you take another shot at explaining Jake’s point? That sentence didn’t make sense, either because it didn’t make sense or because I’m not smart enough to decipher what you wrote.
Sure. He’s saying that if the Democrats fear that screwing up will cost them power, they’ll do a better job than if they know they’ll retain power regardless of what they do.
In other words, he’s not necessarily arguing that Republicans would govern better than Democrats, but rather that Democrats would govern better if the Republicans posed a credible threat.
“In other words, he’s not necessarily arguing that Republicans would govern better than Democrats,”
And I’m not. Thank you for noticing that!
Im saying there is no incentive for blue politicians to make transportation (locally, in Oregon) better cause they know the transportation activists will vote blue regardless. The Transportation vote is taken for granted. Likewise, there is little incentive by the reds to appeal to transportation activists because they will vote blue regardless so you get bills like this that completely ignore human powered and public transportation.
Roger that. Thanks for the clarification (and to Watts)
There is not a single Republican voting against freeway widening, and the Dems have a better package to offer right now. The IBR is a bipartisan affair, with Rs tending to move to make the project highway only, with the Ds tending to make the project highway + MAX. I’d prefer no project to both of those options, but if it’s going to be built I’d prefer the MAX to be extended to Vancouver.
This is true only in the strictly partisan sense. There are exceedingly few districts in Oregon that are urban. In the House, I count 6 districts wholly or mostly within urban Portland (33, 42, 43, 44, 45, and 46 – fringe case for 47 too). Outside Portland, maybe you could call 19th in south Salem, the 8th in Eugene urban or the 54th in Bend, but those are stretches in my opinion. The only other unambiguously urban district is the 6th in Medford. That’s about at most 10 city-based districts, and I counted at least 20 suburban ones (with the remaining being either a mix of suburban and rural or entirely rural). Things are even more skewed in the senate.
The way the state legislature (and to a large extent the state population in Oregon) is structured, opposition to freeway projects and other car-first transportation infrastructure is going to be spotty at best. More Oregonians are suburbanites than urbanites, and this is reflected in our transportation policy. When policy makers have managed to move the needle there have either been strong exogenous circumstances (the 70s oil crisis) or it’s been on the backs of environmental policy (always a force in Oregon).
Anyways, I don’t think there’s a short-term solution to this kind of thing, just an observation that partisan affiliation isn’t the only factor in determining transportation policy of any given state legislator. For my money, the better urban transportation policy tends to come from Portland (as a result of its unambiguously urban nature), but we certainly don’t have a shortage of highway supporters here too and Eugene’s got the best bus line in the state.
gross.
I know it shouldn’t surprise me at this point but the Republicans *again* taking the least ethical stance they can still has me shaking my head in wonder and disbelief.
Pepperidge farm remembers when our blog host claimed that bikes were not a political wedge issue…
Whuuut??
One of the silver linings of dogma-driven comments is the times when stars align and they become pure dadaist gold.
One of the cess-pits of urbanism-driven comments are the content-less ad hominems.
Not a republican or democrat dividing line was the exact topic as I recall.
Although to be fair there is a better case for socialist/socdem vs lib/conservative dividing line globally.
There are lots of Republicans operating small businesses, I wonder what they would think of this betrayal.
They will think, “Please give me another tax break and stop having BOLI look too carefully at my labor practices.” In other words, this is a non-issue compared to what they generally care about.
All republicans are bad. Every single one of them. Thank god Drazan is only pushing performative legislation instead of directing ODOT.
Don’t vote republican, not even once.
It’s beliefs like this that have brought our federal government to a grinding halt as all energy is spent combating the “evil” on the other side on the aisle. And locally in Portland it’s brought chaos and dysfunction as we’re just going all in on left sided extremism.
This is so tribal. Such black and white thinking, and the reason more and more of us are leaving the democratic party–to go where?–where no man has gone before. Who knows where we are going but it isn’t to join a tribal cult.
How is it tribal? I’m not even a Democrat.
What enlightened centrism!!!
“All republicans are bad. Every single one of them.” is a tribal statement, even if you aren’t in the tribe called “Democrats”.
Vote Status Quo 2026, 2028, 2030, …
The status quo is significantly better than what the hell is happening in the south my dude.
I’d take our status quo over the situation in much of the rest of the world.
But I still think the status quo rut we’re stuck in is holding us back. The only way out I see is to have a more competitive political system.
The Oregon Repub party requires that you own and operate a car or truck!
That will cost you close to $12,000 per year, per the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (see graphic below).
And then, as JM pointed out, building and maintaining infrastructure for cars and trucks costs taxpayers the MOST money, unlike MUPs which are cheap in comparison.
Sounds like Repubs want to saddle consumers and taxpayers (i.e. everyone) with the highest costs.
If dems want to make transit more appealing, and get folks to lay off the single vehicle crack, they will need to make transit and riding far more appealing AND SAFE for the mom with two kids.
Until then, more money for roads will win. That’s why the republicans are seizing upon this opportunity.
But the dems wanna keep defending the abuse of these systems by allowing people to ruin these spaces. The mad men didn’t embrace that women of the 50s drive car purchases and the dems haven’t figured out quite yet women will also drive every election and will elect Donald trump if they don’t feel safe.
Raise the fuel tax and link it to inflation.
That’s what the Dems are proposing.
All this pearl clutching and hyperbole ignores the elephant in the room. The freight lobby is generous in halls of power and money talks. “Freight” spends money to make money. Examples of plutocracy are everywhere
That’s some pretty stale policy coming from the GOP. Take what little is provided for all other modes of travel, which isn’t even enough for the down payment on a mega project, and create a mega projects office. I suppose they would cut environmental regulations and public involvement next in order to get the price of the mega projects back under budget. If only they had a king to get rid of whatever else stands in the way “progress”.