Transportation bill released: Here’s what you need to know

The Oregon Legislature finally released the transportation bill this morning and it only took about two hours for the rhetorical sparks to start flying.

House Bill 2025, also known as the Transportation Reinvestment Package (TRIP) was made public around 8:00 am and the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment held a meeting about it at 10:00 am. That’s where several Republican members voted no on a procedural motion that became a proxy for their opposition.

The 102-page bill would raise well over $2 billion (haven’t figured out total amount yet) with a bevy of increases in taxes and fees. New revenue would fund major highway projects, as well as public transit, cycling, and pedestrian needs. To help the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) win back some of the public trust they’ve squandered over the years, the bill calls for biannual performance audits, and a once-per-year audit of major capital projects.

Bills are tricky to read and I’m still deciphering all the details, but scroll down to learn the basics and get a sense of what lawmakers and advocates are thinking about it…

Where the money comes from

On the revenue side, the bill would raise the payroll tax that currently funds public transit via the Statewide Transportation Improvement Fund (STIF). Currently set at 0.1%, HB 2025 would raise that to 0.3% in a staggered increase between now and 2030. This is a significant increase from the 0.18% Democrats first proposed back in April, but it’s short of the 0.5% figure a progressive wing of the party proposed last week.

HB 2025 would also raise the gas tax a bit more than Democrats first hinted at in their “starting point” framework back in April. The bill seeks to raise Oregon’s current 34 cent per-gallon gas tax to 50 cents per gallon in 2026 and 2027. They’d add another 5 cents in 2028 to make it 55 cents per gallon. And then in 2029, the OTC would index the gas tax to inflation.

Another big source of new revenue would be increases to various vehicle fees and taxes. The registration fee for a new car would go from $43 to $113. The cost to take a driver’s skill test at the DMV would go from $45 to $111. The cost of a new license plate would nearly triple — from $12 to $33. There are over two dozen increases to vehicle-related fees.

The initial framework for this bill included a major increase to the bicycle tax; but that appears to have been dropped. HB 2025 will maintain the existing $15 tax on new bicycles.

New cars will be subject to a 2% “transfer tax” based on retail price and used cars will be levied a 1% tax.

Where the money will go

Using revenue raised by user fees and taxes, the bill would set aside $125 million per year into a new “Anchor Project Account” — a set of projects the state committed to in 2017 but has yet to complete. This account would spend first on the I-5 Rose Quarter project, and then the Abernethy Bridge project. The bill would then give the OTC the power to prioritize order of spending on three other named “anchor projects”: I-205 widening, Newberg-Dundee Bypass freeway project, and the Highway 22/Center Street Bridge project in Salem.

This $125 million for prior commitments, is half of what was proposed back in April when lawmakers proposed a $250 million set-aside.

After that money is spent, the remaining funds will be distributed in the traditional 50/30/20 formula with ODOT getting 50%, counties sharing 30% and cities getting 20%.

HB 2025 would use money raised from the transfer taxes to bolster spending on orphan highway updates, safer streets near schools, and wildlife collision mitigation.

The bill would fund ODOT’s Great Streets program to the tune of $125 million per year. Transportation safety advocates will be very excited about this provision. Great Streets is a pot of funding that seeks to tame the state’s legacy “orphan highways” that run through many Oregon towns and cities and retrofit them with safer crossings, bike facilities, road diets, and so on. This $125 million would be a major increase to the program’s budget, which has had just $122 million in total funding in the last three years. And to think it wasn’t even mentioned in the framework proposal back in April!

$25 million per year would be set aside for the state’s Safe Routes to Schools Program. This is another big relief for transportation advocates, because the previous framework left this program out. It’s also $10 million more per year than HB 2017 allocated to Safe Routes.

The final set-aside from this revenue is $5 million per year for what lawmakers are calling the Wildlife-Vehicle Collision Reduction Fund.

Other provisions in the bill include: a new, $20 per-mile road usage charge on all vehicles in corporate delivery fleets; a revision of the weight-mile tax system, and a new, mandatory road usage fee for electric vehicle owners starting July 1, 2026.

One small but important thing

In what appears to be a bold move from forces inside ODOT that have been pushing against narrow lane widths for years, HB 2025 seeks to make it ironclad law statewide that all vehicle lanes on identified freight routes must be at least 12 feet wide. This has been a controversial issue for a while, as bicycle and pedestrian planners often clashed with other engineering staff and freight advocates over the need for 12-foot lanes. There was a committee set up to look into this through ODOT’s Mobility Advisory Committee, and they appear to have decided it needed to be state law and have snuck it into the last page of the bill. More to come on this one.

Reactions from advocates and lawmakers

Senate Bruce Starr, arguably the leading Republican when it comes to transportation given his long career in Salem and involvement on the topic for many years, claimed the bill failed to take non-Democratic views into consideration. Starr was one of a few Republicans who worked with Democrats in recent months to negotiate the bill; but those talks broke down. Starr championed a cap-and-trade plan that would have sent millions to highway megaprojects. The idea was panned and is no longer part of the bill.

And Starr’s Republican colleagues didn’t help his dream of bipartisanship when they floated a proposal last week that was dead on arrival in a statehouse with a Democratic majority.

Today Sen. Starr called HB 2025 a, “partisan tax increase” and said he was “disappointed” with the final product. He also threatened a referral to voters if it passed when he said, “At the end of the day, it’s Oregonians who we all serve, and who very well may have the last last look at this.”

JCT Co Vice-chair and House Representative Shelly Boshart-Davis, who’s been working with Republican party leaders to cut all “non-essential” ODOT spending on public transit and cycling infrastructure, said HB 2025 was, “Born in the basement and in secret.” She’s voting no before even having time to read the bill.

On the other hand, Democratic Senator Khanh Pham said from what she’s read so far, HB 2025, “Appears to be moving in a direction that acknowledges the voices that we heard from across the state,” referring to a series of public town halls she attended with other members of the JCT to garner feedback on transportation needs.

And House Rep. Mark Gamba, the Democrats leading transportation policy advocate who crafted the SMART Framework released last week, also seemed pleased with the bill. “I think this is moving us in the right direction,” he said at this morning’s meeting. “I think it also begins to bend the curve a little bit on safety and keeping people alive, and I think it is incumbent on us as a state to behave responsibly and begin to invest in solutions to those problems. And I think this bill does that.”

Move Oregon Forward, a coalition of transportation and environmental nonprofits, had mixed reviews of the bill. In a statement released this afternoon, they lauded some of the bill’s investments, but then added, “More is needed to modernize and electrify our transportation system, trails have been left out of the bill, and there remains a large gap in accountability.”

What happens next

There’s another JCT meeting tonight at 5:00 pm, then there are three public hearings planned this week, starting Tuesday at 5:00 pm. There are less than three weeks left in the session, so expect a flurry of activity until the end of the month.