The 2025 legislative session has come to an end and lawmakers have failed to pass any transportation legislation.
After years of work, a statewide listening tour, dozens of committee meetings and public hearings, Democrats who led the process failed to bring a bill over the finish line. It’s a massive political defeat of historic proportions that comes with consequences likely to be felt in every corner of the state.
After the main transportation bill died, a last ditch effort to pass a plan-B bill, House Bill 3402-3 (the “-3” refers to the amendment that was adopted by committee) was slated for a vote on the House floor late Friday night, but Democrats needed help from Republicans to clear time-sensitive procedural hurdles and they didn’t get it.
Democrats — despite having a supermajority in the House, Senate and holding the Governor’s office — were unable to keep all their Senators in line and ultimately lost the game to the minority party.
House Bill 2025-28; an $11.6 billion package that would have saved transit systems, given the Oregon Department of Transportation a boost to maintenance and operations, funded highway expansion megaprojects, and invested in major safety projects, died earlier in the day on Friday because Democratic Senator Mark Meek wouldn’t vote for it. Meek had shared frustration about the rushed timeline of the bill for weeks and — while he was open to some tax increases — wasn’t comfortable with the size of the bill. Before the final committee vote he shared disinformation on social media, telling his followers that the bill included tolling when in fact that is blatantly false.
The bill passed committee 8-4 and there were smiles as it had some bipartisan momentum (thanks to a “yes” vote from Republican House Rep. Kevin Mannix) heading to the House floor. It was likely going to pass the House, but it was the Senate that doomed Democrats.
Democrats hold 18 of the 30 seats in the Senate and they needed every one of those votes to hold onto the three-fifths majority required to pass a tax bill. Senator Meek, a Democrat, remained a very stubborn “no” and Senate President Rob Wagner failed to persuade a single Republican to take Meek’s place in the “aye” column.
With HB 2025-28 dead, lawmakers scrambled to fill a placeholder bill, HB 3402-3, with bare bones legislation that would be an interim measure to keep ODOT afloat and prevent massive layoffs at the agency. The bill was heard in the House Rules Committee Friday evening where lawmakers heard massive, diverse, nearly unanimous opposition — from city and county leaders, unions, advocacy groups, and individual Oregonians.
The only two voices in support of the bill came from Governor Tina Kotek — who said in her committee testimony she would lay off 600-700 ODOT workers on Monday morning if the bill didn’t pass (about 14% of their total workforce) — and from ODOT leadership, who said it was vital to keep the lights on and perform a basic level of service until more money could be found.
“I know it is disappointing when you get to this point in session and such a big bill with so much work is not going to move forward,” Kotek said in her testimony. “The path forward today is to ensure that ODOT-provided essential services continue… It will solve an immediate need, but it’s not going to solve all our problems… But nonetheless, we have to move forward.”
HB 3402-3 would have raised around $2 billion over 10 years (less than half the amount of the 2017 transportation bill and $10 billion less than HB 2025) via a three-cent gas tax increase and increases to vehicle title and registration fees. Beyond this relatively tiny revenue bump, opposition to the bill was fierce because the bill stipulated that all new revenue would go to ODOT. That provision was a huge slap in the face to counties and cities who have traditionally received 30% and 20% of State Highway Fund revenue respectively (with ODOT keeping 50%).
HB 3402-3 had no funding for transit, and no funding for key programs Oregonians are clamoring for like the Great Streets program, Safe Routes to School, Community Paths, and so on. It also had no set-aside funding for key highway expansion megaprojects that many lawmakers voted for in 2017 like the I-5 Rose Quarter, I-205 widening, and Abernethy Bridge widening.
Despite this opposition, HB 3402-3 passed the Rules Committee 4-3 on a party-line vote.
It headed to the House floor and was in the queue for a vote late last night, but time ran out because Republicans refused to help the Democrats suspend some procedural rules to get it over the finish line. (For an excellent breakdown of how this process played out, check this Bluesky thread from Oregon Capitol Chronicle reporter Julia Shumway.)
With nothing to show for years of work and negotiations, it remains to be seen what the fallout will be from this immense debacle. Governor Kotek threatened to layoff 600-700 ODOT workers on Monday morning. That would be a catastrophic blow to those families, to the agency and to Oregonians who rely on the state to keep the transportation system in good shape. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, representing a City of Portland budget that was counting on $11 million from the transportation bill, said he would be forced to lay off up to 60 Portland Bureau of Transportation staffers.
Republicans and their allies in the online punditry ecosystem are gleeful to see these bills die. The House Republican Caucus released a statement saying the tax increases would have, “funded a progressive left agenda that would harm Oregonians.” “Forcing families to pay one of the largest tax hikes in history when they can barely get by was a cruel policy from the start,” added House Republican Leader Christine Drazan.
From here, I’m not sure what the likelihood is of lawmakers saving transportation funding in an interim or emergency session. If they do make an attempt, Democrats will need to to get their own party fully in line. One thing made clear Friday is that Republicans would rather see ODOT burn to the ground than give them any new funding.
While some lawmakers map out next steps (and others sit back and start vacation), advocates and city leaders now find themselves in a distressing moment of uncertainty. Transit advocates and agency leaders might be the ones feeling most left out in the cold. Without an increase in transportation funding, TriMet has said they would cut 27% of transit service — which could be up to 45 of their 79 bus lines — starting in 2027.
There’s a lot more I want to share about all this, but that’s the basics of what happened yesterday and where we stand this morning. Stay tuned for more coverage.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
I am curious about Rep. Meek’s opposition to the bill on Friday. What were the sticking points for him? In my opinion, an increase in the gas tax to account for inflation is way overdue, and the tax should be annually adjusted for inflation.
Smarter, more informed people than I will no doubt have keener insights, but I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that Meek was captured by car-driving-obsessed suburbanites from the district he represents – people who have no appetite to pay for the transportation infrastructure they have come to expect.
He is the one who posted the false information that the bill included a toll on the 205. It is hard to tell if he opposed the bill or what MAGA republicans told him was in their imaginary version of the bill. Hopefully in the future Meek will actually read the bills he is voting on.
“Meek was captured by car-driving-obsessed suburbanites from the district he represents”
Meaning he was “captured by” (i.e. representing) the people who voted him into office.
This is fair, but the sentiment can be taken too far. Populism is not leadership.
Populism is reductive leadership, sold to people who want to believe that they live on islands while being surrounded by the rest of society — AND who want someone to lead them to that dream-state of self-sufficiency.
It’s essentially performative anarchy.
What in the world is “performative anarchy”? How does that have anything to do with people wanting to create illusory islands of separation from the rest of society? Do you know of what you speak, or do I finally need to get a college degree at the age of 53 so I can understand this sort of jargon? Sorry for not getting it. I believe that Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) and Ursula LeGuin are your friends here… “Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.”
Cars actually pay 100% of their total cost through user fees like gas tax, registration fees, .tires and many other excise fees.PBOT is totally financed by such money filtered down from the state & Feds.
The air you’re breathing is also the free conduit for disposal of the waste generated by cars.
It’s also the free conduit for disposal of waste generated by your stove, your heating system, you, your fireplace, your dog, every factory in the metro area, and really anything that involves combustion, evaporation, or any other reaction with gases in the atmosphere.
The most immediately dangerous pollutants in Portland’s air are those released by fireplaces, wood stoves, and diesel engines (trucks, trains, TriMet). Most cars have catalytic converters, so are much less of a threat, though we should work hard to electrify them as quickly as possible for climate purposes.
Airborne car pollution is essentially a solved problem — catalytic converters brought us a long way, and EVs will take us much further by eliminating combustion and greatly reducing brake dust. EVs still emit tire particles, but those are a bigger hazard in the context of water than air.
I would not say that the problem of car emissions is solved. Just the act of putting gas in a car has the potential for consideral release of unburned fuel vapor, and now anybody can top off their tank in Oregon.
By “solved” I meant we know the solution, have developed the technology, and are actively rolling it out. Yes, people still run gas cars, but electric cars are here to stay and they’re displacing gas cars everyday.
Which is exactly why the State of Oregon has committed $1B in General Obligation Bonds to the IBR project. Nothing says “cars paying 100% of their cost” like issuing bonds insured by the full funding and backing of the entire state of Oregon.
Incidentally, PBOT is also funded through some programs which are not wholly funded by user fees. It receives some amount of general fund money from the City of Portland, to give an obvious example. This may or may not be allocated to “cars” in the public mind, but that’s also not an internal distinction that PBOT would make
The IBR project is NOT A CAR PROJECT – it ADDS ZERO increased capacity.
It is actually a light rail project. That’s what an Oregon Supreme Court Judge wrote. From the Willamette Week:
“: The massive Interstate 5 bridge and freeway project is a “political necessity” to persuade Clark County residents to accept something they previously didn’t want—a MAX light-rail line from Portland to Vancouver. (To read the Feb. 16, 2012 Oregon Supreme Court decision regarding the Columbia River Crossing Project, click here (PDF, 18 pages)):
https://www.wweek.com/portland/article-18881-the-2-5-billion-bribe.html
So these renderings which have an additional lane in each direction are just fake or what? A huge amount of the projects budget is going to redesign interchanges and add “auxiliary lanes” connecting the new interchanges together. Even if you buy the bogus arguments that these lanes somehow don’t count, they still are unambiguously providing car capacity, and are clearly “for cars”. Adding auxiliary lanes connecting interchanges is still adding car capacity, even if the intention is to serve a very specific subset of car journeys.
In terms of the politics of the bridge, it’s probably best to think of Portland as not accepting it without the MAX, and Vancouver not accepting it with it. That much has stayed relatively constant throughout the process, even dating back to the 2012 CRC days (which you are linking for some reason rather than using more recent sources).
Are we actually paying those bonds from the general fund?
Yes, that’s what a general obligation bond is. It’s a bond issued with the backing of the general fund. Here’s a brief overview of different types of bonds issued by the state of Oregon.
That’s not true direct user fees cover about half of ODOTs budget. The rest of their revenue is generated from sources that everyone pays into regardless of how much or if they drive. Federal money for the highway trust fund has also been funded by general tax dollars for over a decade now.
AND the highway trust fund also funds transit.
here are several studies that backup my statement:
http://www.debunkingportland.com/Autos.html#subsidies
The highway trust fund’s 80/20 auto/transit split is not entirely relevant when considering if non-auto revenue sources are used to pay for auto related projects. The question isn’t “do gas taxes get fully allocated to road projects?”, the question is “do non-gas/auto taxes get used to pay for road projects?”. The answer to both is pretty unambiguously “yes”.
And “here are several studies backing up my statement” being “here are some blog posts I’ve written about this topic” is a bit much. On the one hand, there’s no need for “studies” to back up the statement that the statement that the highway trust fund is spent on transit – that’s just a factual statement. On the other hand, the various studies linked are (seemingly) just your analysis of various public facing statistics about road usage, budgets, and public outlay. That’s a part of the story for transportation funding, but it’s also fairly obviously incomplete – as its limited to federal, public spending on transportation. Not to mention the limitations of using per passenger mile metrics. Roads and cars look good by this metric in no small part because they induce land use patterns which create additional demand for long trips.
100% is not accurate, but “vast majority” is.
In this chart, the amount of general fund money spent by the trust fund is the white space between the blue and yellow lines. Half of Oregon’s highway money comes from the trust fund, so the amount of federal general fund money that Oregon is using for highways is half that gap.
It’s not zero, but it’s a small portion, though it will grow gradually over time unless Congress raises the gas tax or something else changes.
It’s worth saying that this is only at the Federal level. Oregon’s specific method of funding roadway projects is generally reliant on the state gas tax, but not wholly.
At the state level: ODOT spends about 90% of it’s budget on roadway related expenditures (inferred from page 4, allocating each admin/debt category in kind with the ratio of transit to roadway spending). That’s about on par with the amount of state funding allocated from transportation related taxes at ~87% (page 147).
At the local level: PBOT is harder to tease out. I would guesstimate ~85% to 90% (your guess is as good as mine – see pages 50 to 60), with the primary non-auto related fees being developer charges and general fund transfers.
On net, I think 90% is probably a fair number, but this is just the net public outlay. There are other costs associated with maintaining our roadway network, many of which are simply offloaded onto households in the form of car ownership. Evidently, not everyone would do the accounting this way, but if we are going to reconsider the ways in which we all get around, it’s worth factoring in the household cost savings that could be associated with transit (and cycling).
I don’t know about his initial opposition, but my read on the situation is that he was pissed off at being booted from the committee by Wagner and tanked everything in revenge.
But then Wagner is surely at fault for not knowing in advance that Meek would vote against the bill in committee and keep it from going to the floor. Meek is to blame but Wagner is surely also at fault. Hope he’ll say in coming days what he was thinking.
Oh yeah, the fact that they unveiled this package without even having the committee on board is inexcusable. And it wasn’t just Meek; one of the *co-chairs*, Sen. Gorsek, wasn’t a yes, either. They were both booted, with Pham becoming the new co- chair from the senate (not at all a bad thing in my mind). It probably would have been better to simply announce that the bigger package was taking more time than the session allowed, and that they were going to offer a short term stopgap in the meantime while they continued negotiating. Then once you have the package and a complete whip count with no surprises, you bring everyone back for a week to vote on it.
Ah I wasn’t aware of this until now but it certainly explains why Meek might have been going around lying about the bill if his goal was just to torpedo it because he was throwing a tantrum. Awesome that we may lose 30% of our trimet service because one senator is emotionally a 3 year old.
Hey…but we must keep on voting for the democratic “supermajority”* and the democratic governor…right?
Right???
*LOL
Yes – we must, for as long as Rs want to bring The Handmaid’s Tale to Oregon.
I know social policy isn’t supposed to affect transportation, but it really does.
Lesser-eviling into self-reinforcing dysfunction is capitulation to fascism.
A better world is possible.
We have to succeed in the two-party system we have, not the system we wish we had.
Tell that to the Democrats.
They haven’t gotten that memo and now they’re eating each other.
I’d love to see an alternative that actually had some decent transportation ideas. The last time there was a well funded third party opposition candidate for governor they were worse than the republican candidate.
There have been plenty of lefty or green candidates that have primaried corporate democrats but the many “urbanists” whinging about this comical failure did not vote for them because they did not want to “waste”their vote (what a ****ing joke). If someone wants a better world some political risk is required. Are you desperate enough to risk a democrat loss? If not, then it’s likely you will never see any semblance of political power.
Your “some risk” SHOULD NOT include measures that have failed EVERY time they were tried, but progressives keep thinking they will work next time – rent control (kills new construction) – min wage(gets low skilled people fired) – government run businesses (look at the USA solar, and green battery manufacturers) – socialism.
Until the corporate-owned democrat party feels a legitimate sense of threat from progressives/lefties they will continue to sabotage any attempt to bring about badly needed change (e.g. real rent control+legalization of dense rental housing everywhere+social housing; decarbonization).
This fantasy world where Democrats respond to electoral losses by moving to the left and not just cozying up to fascists sounds like a nice place. Too bad it’s not real.
No, we should vote for the person or party that will be able to enact legislation to create effective transportation options for all Oregonians at a cost we can afford?
yes, LOL
No, you should vote in such a way that the people you elect can’t take your vote for granted.
Only then will you have any power.
Therefore we have Trump & co., who are calling into question whether we’ll ever vote again.
At the local level? Really?
Not voting for an incumbent is equal in your mind to voting for the end of elections in Oregon? With the plethora of voting options you’re spoiled with locally?
Thats some serious fearmongering you’ve absorbed from your preferred political party.
Sure just vote for the party that wants to throw anyone not like them under the bus instead.
Some choice, hateful morons, or incompetent pseudo liberals who still don’t actually care enough about future generations to do the right thing.
Maybe a silver lining is that it will force Democrats to finally confront the reality that the freeway expansion projects from 2017 are extremely fiscally irresponsible and should not be priorities at this moment.
I’m feeling that same thing Grant S. They really made the bed they are forced to lie in now when they tied their hands to those massive projects.
Also interesting to me that some of the same rural Republican lawmakers and lobbyists who pushed very hard for the I-5 Rose Quarter as an economic engine for their communities testified this week that their communities cannot afford any new taxes. Republicans and some Dems live in an alternate reality where they think they can simply force ODOT to be more “accountable” and suddenly a bunch of new money will appear. It’s very DOGE-like and I believe many Republican leaders are impressed by and inspired by that DOGE-type of thinking and approach.
I mean, several high profile Republicans like Sen Bruce Starr and Christine Drazan went on the DOGE Oregon podcast railing against ODOT and transportation spending in general in the weeks leading up to these bill negoations!
The rational solution, to me, would to cut out the worthless projects that have proven records of failure and others that serve only tiny minority of people. And do thpse with far fewer employees.
Good idea, let’s stop pouring money into highways which have a proven record of failure to move the majority of people safely and economically and invest in efficient public transportation instead.
I’ve been developing a line of thinking about the only possible method behind the Dems’ madness: how it also denies Rs what THEY want, which is freeway expansion, wider roads to drive on, etc. In other words, if Rs won’t accept some progressive priorities (expanded transit, MUPs etc), then they will get NOTHING toward the stuff they want.
The failure of the bill means NO ONE gets anything, so drivers will grumble more loudly as potholes break their axles and they sit in longer and longer traffic jams. Dems can throw their hands up in the air and say, “Sorry but we tried! The Rs and Meek (the new Betsy Johnson) are the reason you can’t have Nice Things.”
The larger question is whether voters will punish Dems by voting them out.
I think there’s going to be an even deeper reckoning with the cost of transportation infrastructure. We’re all about to find out how fiscally unsustainable the road network we’ve built over the last century is.
We might be better off if we cede a large portion of the state to Idaho.
This is a great angle to pursue. Perhaps the time is finally right? Who knew that roads would be the pathway??
The roads – hell, our society – were affordable before the Reagan administration upended the tax system to benefit corporations and the wealthy. You can let the roads crumble back to dust, or tax the .05 percent like in Johnson’s era.
Get used to crumbly roads.
Nah, they weren’t any more affordable or sustainable 40 years ago; we were just still in the “get rich quick” part of the ponzi scheme. The loan against our future we took by building the least efficient, most expensive form of cities possible is finally coming due, and we’re just now realizing that we’ve bankrupted ourselves with the payday loan interest.
Plus the ramification that the USDoT under the MAGA party will cut a lot of funded state projects. States cannot manage both – internal state and federal induced – budgetary implosions at once …without some very radical rethinking of 3Fs: fees, facilities and fairness.
For fiscal planning states will need to step back into the budgetary era before the Ike’s defense interstate act shifted all most all of the construction costs to the feds…or take a page out of blue states (Texas etc.) that do P3 / private public highways and bridges with direct user fees. Then there is maintenance…
If there is no transportation bill, what is the status of the state match for the RQ and Columbia Bridge projects?
Great question! They’re even more screwed than they were before. With Trump uncertainty and now this, I could see major projects being paused or cancelled, but I can’t confirm anything yet. I’m sure a lot of folks are asking this same question.
The best way to get the Trump administration to cancel the bridge project would be if all us Portland lefties acted like we wanted the bridge. Trump would cancel it for sure.
I think at best Trump might be able to delay a Congressionally-funded project, but why bother? Oregon legislators are more that capable of making fools of themselves without Trump’s assistance.
Federal grant money is conditioned in a bunch of different ways. Failing to meet a funding obligation by a certain time will give the FHA all the excuse they need to pull the plug on the projects.
So here’s my take on all this: By not passing a state transportation bill, the cities in Oregon will win big time, which will help with street maintenance and bike/ped projects in those communities that want them (Portland in particular). Not only will less money be allocated for freeways and the county/city funding ratios restored, but by not meeting the state’s obligations for the grant match, the megaprojects will then get cancelled and around $200 million annually will be freed up for local projects on state stroads, such as on Barbur, Powell, Lombard, and so on, for light rail and barrier-protected bike lanes.
Maybe in the long term, sure, but in the short term municipal governments are also looking at big holes in their transportation budgets that they were banking on being filled by the state. Examples include PBOT now planning to lay off 80 people and Trimet cutting back something like a third of its service.
I’m hoping it means they are dead in the water (pun intended).
Wow! This is a striking display of the impotence and incompetence of OR dems. I can’t imagine how they could perform their legislative duties less effectively. JFC.
Pretty bleak that the Dems couldn’t get anything passed. On a technical note, why did everything have to be packaged into one bill? Why not vote on each item in HB 2025 in turn and tweak them accordingly? I feel like a transit tax increase wasn’t all that contentious relative to the other measures (or maybe it just was flying under the radar)
Also, I feel like this process shows how terrible the structure of the Oregon political system is. Why on earth does the legislature stay in session for such a short amount of time? It’s baffling and stupid, and invites bad actors to sabotage proceedings.
Bleak that a supermajority means basically nothing in practice, disappointed that nothing got done on critical issues I care about, hoping someone primaries my ineffective state Senator.
Many legislatures were formed at a time when members had agriculture-related lives and needed to be elsewhere; also before air-conditioning and central heat, and in many cases a desire to not have a permanent class of politicians who could afford to just have that job. Also, to limit the amount of time pinhead politicans could do damage…
Yep – same reason the school year still runs from Sep to June.
I guess I’m aware of why it’s like that, but am more asking why it’s still like that. The OR leg does not lead agriculture related lives, and transportation to Salem is not onerous anymore (by 19th century standards).
I understand this desire, but it also means that to be a politician requires some kind of wealth, ensuring that there’s a permanent class divide in who becomes a legislator. I see no reason to not revisit how frequently the legislature meets for, nor do I think it makes sense to essentially require that wealthy people are legislators (I know that some less wealthy legislators make it work now, but it still seems less than ideal).
Inertia, the constitution, and the fact that they’ve managed to take care of most business pretty well under the existing system, so there’s not much perceived need for change. Special sessions are always an option, and you’ll note that we problems cropped up recently we actually did amend the constitution to allow for annual, rather than biennial sessions.
It’s not how I’d like it to be either, but the fact is that the problems created by the system aren’t large enough to overcome the friction of changing the system.
It’s probably the same reason schools have they year they do; everyone is used to it and it works kind of well enough that no one is willing to invest the effort to change it.
I think we need year-round schools, but try getting the teacher’s union to agree. Hell, the union tacitly endorsed teachers faking illness for the extra week of classes needed to make up the time they were on strike.
In Oregon, kids come second. Maybe third.
While the school comparison is natural, I think it’s also a bit silly. Most people don’t really care about the cadence of when the legislature convenes, while just about everyone has fond memories of summer vacation. Is a heavily summer vacation oriented school system outmoded? Maybe, but it makes intuitive sense to me that people would resist that change.
I suppose that the cadence and frequency of meeting is only one aspect of the systemic dysfunction in Salem, but I feel like there’s fairly broad agreement that things are at least a bit too wonky. I mean we passed a ballot measure (I think it passed at least) preventing legislators with too many absences from running again – and at least part of the leverage the Republicans have with regards to walk outs is downstream of the shortened schedule and biennium budgeting.
I think that Oregon requires that any new revenue raised has to have a set of projects lined up with the money being spent, that the state doesn’t allow surplus pools of cash for rainy days (reserves), that everything needs to be allocated to something.
Everything needed to be packaged in a single bill because it only survived (or failed) as a single compromise. That’s just the nature of parliamentary legislating. E.g, I’ll swallow your Rose Quarter project if you fund my transit expansion.
I can’t imagine Kotek will just let this go another year. Seems to me that passing nothing almost mandates a special session.
Agreed. The Gov needs to insist lawmakers do their jobs and set out a clear vision for what’s in and out. This will necessarily mean stepping up and taking responsibility for whether her party succeeds at fulfilling the mandate.
I see this a little differently. The Dems didn’t “lose the game to the minority party”. They lost because they failed to convince members of their own coalition.
From where I sit, a lot of that failure stems from the dems inability to articulate a vision for transportation that goes beyond just avoiding an apocalypse. Yes the need is great, and yes meeting the need will be expensive – but that alone does NOT mean voters will support you. I think this is particularly challenging right now, not just because of the economic uncertainty people face, but because of the general lack of positive stories and messengers. So much of politics right now is simply about how we must do hard thing X to avoid terribly thing Y.
It’s not like Democrats were handed this problem and are now trying to fix it. This happened on their watch, and they need to start by clearly explaining how we let this happen. Then they need to articulate a plan for transformation, not just avoiding apocalypse.
Yes good points William. I agree and wanted to be sensitive to that point that it was a Dem lawmaker whose vote killed this—- however at the end, the Dems relied on cooperation from the Rs to help move 3402 to a vote and the Rs didn’t give it to them.
Right, but can you really blame them? It’s sorta like the Dems asking the Reps out the night before prom after their first choice date felt through. Given the size of the rift between parties, passing any sort of bipartisan bill would have been an amazing effort. If they wanted to pursue this strategy, they needed to start a long time ago.
That part was a fools errand.
The R’s were NEVER going to help. Every single thing like this is a huge win for them no matter how destructive it is to both sides. They will cut off their nose to spite their face at all costs to burn the Dems.
Then later they will use it again to blame crush them more no matter how much it affects both sides.
That requires accountability, something the Dems in this state avoid.
Gosh! Why is car infrastructure so expensive?? And why do we have to pay for it?? Don’t our gas taxes pay for roads??
At long last, maybe car brain drivers will figure out the obvious: Freeways are not free.
I think they should be called Taxways, Costways, Moneyways, Not-freeways.
In Oregon there’s no limit on the profit a company can make on a tax payer paid project unlike other jurisdictions around the country. Padding the “cost” of a car infrastructure project to maximize profit is not unheard of. Depending on the project, companies have raked in close to 20% profit on public works in Oregon.
I don’t think this is true. As an environmental consultant, most municipalities cap the multiplier my employer can charge them on my time.
I can’t wait for a bridge or road to fail in Meek’s district and ODOT says, “Hmm sorry, there is no money or people to fix a problem that you voted no on.”
Who “gained” from a lack of a state transportation bill?
I’d like to take a moment to step back and appreciate the ridiculous situation we’re in. Not that the Dems fumbled the ball. Not that transportation agencies across the state are going to start layoffs and service reductions. Those are merely the consequences of the utterly asinine constitutional requirement to reach a 3/5 majority in both chambers to raise taxes. It’s easy to sit here and point and laugh at Democrats for “squandering their supermajority” or having a rushed legislative process, but the reality is that almost every Democrat was on board with the bill, and when you have that situation with supermajorities it should be super easy to gather a winning coalition. But because what, about a dozen senators out of 30 didn’t like it they got to spike the whole process? That’s a bad law that’s of course going to lead to ruinous situations, which is exactly what the Bill Sizemores and Tim Knopps of the state wanted when they led the 90s tax revolt.
A clear majority of the legislature wanted HB 2025 to pass. Hell, we may have seen an even better HB 2025 if the requirements for passage weren’t so stringent. In either case in any well-functioning democracy, that should have been enough to get it passed. But in Oregon democracy, the losers actually win while the majority begs for relief.
Rant over
You really want a simple majority able to pass taxes?
Be really careful what you wish for.
Unequivocally, yes. 34 of 50 states have no supermajority requirement for the legislature to raise taxes, including Democratic strongholds like New York, Massachusetts, and Washington where the naive political observer might expect absurd tax increases ad infinitum, and they get along just fine. The only things these supermajority requirements for simple policy questions do are absolve the governing coalition of responsibility for failure (“We’re sorry X thing failed on our watch, but it was those darn Sneetches without stars getting in the way!”) and erode public confidence in republican democracy in general (“I vote every election, and no matter who wins nothing gets better! Clearly, we just need somebody to come in and be decisive to set things straight without worrying about all these pesky rules and norms!”). Anti-majoritarian rules have their place, to be sure, but surely not to solve the problem of funding a functional transportation network!
Glad to see the largest tax hike ever proposed in Oregon didn’t make it out of the gate. The last thing we need in Portland is add fuel to the “Portland doom loop” fire with more taxes. People who pay the bills are getting tired of seeing their money wasted. This at least won’t make things worse.
That’s a bad take, Angus. The Portland HIEs I know are perfectly happy to pay more to have better transpo infra. What they can’t stomach is paying 5% when others pay nothing. And they’ll never benefit from those taxes since they don’t have young kids and they aren’t homeless.
You can laugh at their feelings of aggrievement, but feelings are what motivate people to take action. And rich people can take lots of action since money gives you a lot of options.
I know people will say boo-hoo, too bad you little Richie Rich whiners, but that doesn’t change the situation. The doom loop will continue for Multnomah County as long as HIEs pay everything and everyone else pays nothing. It’s the opposite of democracy.
Fortunately, we don’t have to use anecdotes. The data shows that people moving out of Portland have higher incomes than those replacing them. I, too, know folks who are staying here despite the second-highest top tax rate in the country, but I also know people who have left because of it.
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2025/01/16/high-taxes-are-hurting-portland-job-growth-and-prodding-wealthy-people-to-leave-report-says/
For someone claiming to not needing anecdotes, that piece of evidence is extremely shoddy. So shoddy, that I am certain I have debunked it in a previous comment on this site.
And for the millionth time, our state is uniquely positioned to be reliant on income taxes, since we have a lack of broad-based sales taxes and extreme restrictions on property taxes. It should not be surprising that Oregon has high income taxes in this context, and “second-highest top marginal tax rate in the country” is just repeated ad nauseam absent the proper overall taxation picture. In reality, Portland has a medium-high tax burden, and would likely shift slightly lower if you accounted for the discount property owners get (overall tax burden is usually a proportion of income, but wealth =/= income, so this tends to underestimate how much the “fair” tax rate for property is). Everyone is falling over themselves to talk about how high income taxes, no one is talking about how middle-income Portlanders pay less in total property taxes than middle-income Milwaukeeans, despite homes in Portland being at least twice as valuable than homes in Milwaukee (page 20).
As always, our tax burden depends how you count, and everyone seems to use a formula that happens to support their political outlook.
If you’re concerned with high-earners leaving the state, focusing on marginal income tax is not unreasonable. If you’re arguing about the tax burden on middle income folks, looking at the broader picture probably makes sense.
So, really, you’re both right and are just talking past one another.
Sure, but we should use as complete a picture as we reasonably can. The WW consistently parrots “second highest tax rate in the country” in ways that I feel are purposefully misleading. While my political outlook could probably be described as “quasi-socialist”, I am mostly concerned with having an accurate and nuanced discussion of tax policy. Maybe my choice of forum is why I always see red when the same articles get quoted over and over again.
This is still highly contextual, and in my opinion mostly irrelevant to the Portland area. The additional marginal tax rates from PSA and Metro may make a small difference, but for most earners – even very high earners – if you wanted to leave to save money in Clark County, the option was already there. At $500k in household income the extra $7.5k that goes to the “new” taxes is still very small in proportion to the $40k that goes to the state. I think it’s just that these taxes are new, and subject to consistent political debate, whereas the existing tax structure is largely not.
For what it’s worth, I think that Portland is not competitive on price with Clark County by any metric. Taxes are just one aspect of this, and the post-Covid hybrid work status quo – particularly relevant for high earners – probably has played the decisive role in household decisions about where to live, rather than marginal changes in taxation rate (which already play a significant role in the regional distribution of people).
The best chance to get to sanity is for voters to repeal the requirement for a supermajority for tax increases.
I mean, I didn’t say there’s a good chance, just that it’s the best chance.
disappointed
The moment they tried to pass a massive bill in the last weeks of the session I knew there was going to be a huge fail. But even I didn’t think they were so stupid as to fail this massively.
There will be a lot of finger pointing, but ultimately this failure lies with the ODOT fluffers.
– The members of Metro, like Peterson, Simpson and Gonzalez who know better, but have still given a green light to ODOTs massively over budget freeway expansions.
– The dems on the transportation committee over the years like Lew “Freeway” Frederick Susan McLain who have never made an attempt to hold ODOT to reasonable standards.
– Governor Kotek, who also has not ever really challenged ODOT’s massive budgetary demands, but clearly doesn’t mind wading into budgets, as she makes very public demands of accountability from the county on the preschool tax.
Elected officials have not managed ODOT or demanded ODOT leadership to control costs and be transparent. They haven’t even been critical when ODOT lies and presents false data. This debacle is the inevitable result.
The fluffers should be called out for their part in this. The 600-700 ODOT layoffs should start with the ODOT leadership that can’t prioritize maintenance and a transportation plan that meets the moment.
COTW! I have been so frustrated by the Dems that I voted for continuing to support these ridiculous ODOT project no matter how far off the rails they get. Kotek needs to be held to account for simultaneously pushing these horrible projects and unilaterally axing tolling after it was already approved (I think some of the tolling stanchions footings may have even been poured!)
Government in Oregon generally is comically inefficient relative to the rest of the country, and the only answer leadership has is to continue to raise taxes. Even the people of Oregon, who are willing to have high taxes in exchange for robust services, are reaching their limit. I think more of you will come around to the fact over the next few years that fiscal accountability is the only way to get our governments more efficient, and that rewarding mismanagement with more money just generates more mismanagement at a higher cost. Again, compare Oregon (and Portland local governments) to peers elsewhere in the country. All these stories about not reaching goals, most expensive this or that, ridiculous cost overruns, awful outcomes (e.g. K-12, homelessness etc) are not the norm, especially with the huge public support for government that exists here. This place can do much better, but only if there’s some accountability. And, hopefully, this failure means Dems are accidentally stumbling towards accountability via incompetent governance.
I’ve been wondering about something like this for the last couple years. I’m curious, though, what people think accountability really means? What does it look like? It’s easy to say “the government needs to be more accountable,” but operationalizinf that isn’t so easy.
Road maintenance backlog reduced by 25%
5,000 temporary beds available every night
School kids must be able to read, do math, etc. at their grade level BEFORE going to the next grade
Public transit boardings are 95% paying riders
1,000 new trees planted on public lands
Those are just some “accountability” items that came to my head in a few minutes.
And what happens if the people responsible for those items fail? They are fired and someone else is found to fill their place.
I’d suggest the first is a list of goals. The second—fire “the people responsible”—is the accountability. So in the case of ODOT megaprojects, for example, who gets fired? The Urban Mobility executive? Their entire exec team? ODOT director? The entire exec team? Capital programs manager? What if they miss the goal by one month and that’s because some random supplier in Japan got hit by a monsoon? Or costs go over 15% bc Trump tariffs?
I’m not apologizing for ODOT, just pointing out there is nuance that makes accountability difficult. Plus, ODOT’s director makes about $300k for an org of many thousands. Simply not much and much less than someone with that resume could make as a consultant. There’s no guarantee firing one will result in an improvement.
AND: ODOT’s ability to do large projects is a complete and utter joke, so clearly major reforms are neeeded. What will work—not just what’s easy to say—is where I’m really curious
“What does accountability look like?”
Replacing ineffective teachers and administrators? Firing bad cops? Cancelling contracts with ineffective nonprofits? Etc.
But ultimately, we the voters have to hold our elected officials accountable by voting for different people when we’re unhappy how the current lot is managing things.
I’m curious, what “robust services” are you talking about? I got to say I live in Portland and am appalled by the services that we receive given our high taxes.
I hear you, that was more of an aspirational comment. One thing I’ll say is that the quality of parks and the amount of transit service that Portland has are pretty “robust” compared to peers as a couple examples.
Failed leadership.
Indicative of the general democratic malaise. They are need to show more conviction in addressing the future and new social and governmental reforms.
This is a very good thing;
1–Hopefully Oregon will quit getting people killed by slowing down fire and medical services with speed bumps & other “traffic calming”
2- It might even takeaway the money for more crackpot European scams like ZERO VISION which appears to have also increased traffic deaths.
3–Taking money away from light rail also saves lives as it is 2 1/2 times more deadly than cars.
4–Reducing transit will make the state richer by eliminating a major waste of money. Its’s REAL cost is several times that of cars. AND it emits MORE CO2 per passenger- mile than cars.
Heck, it might even force the DOTs to start reminding pedestrian to LOOK BOTH ways BEFORE AND WHILE crossing!!
Evidence for the above statements is on DebunkingPortland dot com
Right . . . it’s about as ridiculous as saying the current president tells the truth whenever he speaks.
This too is hogwash (well, it may be true but is useless). You have to look at TriMet’s total emissions divide that by the number of passenger miles it provides. I did this a couple of years after the pandemic and found TriMet isn’t much better for emissions than driving, even if you assume every TriMet passenger would make the same trip but in a car, which we know is not true.
The emissions case for TriMet is, shall we say, speculative.
Hogwash as well; Max trains kill cyclists (at least) at a much higher rate than cars do. Many more people die from attacks by domestic dogs than bears and alligators combined, but that doesn’t mean dogs are inherently more dangerous than a bear or alligator, or even a bear and an alligator working together.
Aw hell, I’ll go for the trifecta… I think we all agree that Vision Zero has largely been a failure in the US. You say it’s because politicians can’t (or won’t) do what’s required, which may be true, but since its success depends on politicians taking specific actions that they can’t (or won’t) take means the methodology does not work here.
So while jim karlock’s posting seemed pointless and inflammatory, your rebuttal basically made his case.
TriMet reports getting ~4 MPG on diesel buses (including “other” and biodiesel in this NTD report). For 30 people on a bus, that’s effectively 120 MPG. My “typical” bus experience is probably more like 10 to 20 riders, for a respectable 40 to 80 eMPG. There’s also a broad amount of research showing that good transit service significantly alters household transportation decisions which tends to cause more density and different kinds of trips, something which should generally count in favor of transit (for transportation efficiency metrics anyways).
This is only true if your “rate” is per MAX train or per vehicle mile. This is not a good way to measure the danger presented to a typical cyclist from the MAX versus a car in their every day life. Far more cyclists have been killed in Portland (a place with a pretty high concentration of MAX trains and generally okay drivers) by cars than MAX trains in raw terms, which is probably what we care about.
“Pointless and inflammatory” describes pretty much every post you’ve ever made about public transportation.
Typo on my part . . #4 should be that a bus CO2 is way less than 30 cars.
C’est la vie
Reducing transit will literally strand people who are too young, too old or too disabled to drive. It will harm people who work full-time yet are too poor to own and maintain a car. Is that also part of your vision?
Does this mean we get to cancel the Rose Quarter I-5 project?
Maybe we’ll just keep spending $100 million a year to not build it. Because spending that amount of money on a thing for cars is always in season.
That’s the worst part – no we don’t. The institutional momentum behind freeway expansion is so strong that legislators will just pass the buck to future taxpayers in the form of even more GO bonds, even as the cost for the project continues to climb. And with cuts to public transportation and climate programs, we will be that much more locked into paying for car dependency for the foreseeable future.
Between the self assured “Monday morning quarterbacking” and the glib condescending schadenfreude (Soren) the posts on this blog seem oblivious to the dark uncertainty that has descended on this agency of 5000 people. Which 600 will become unemployed?? It won’t be leadership and it is less likely that the educated professionals who design and build federally funded projects. Most likely it will be STATE funded maintenance staff who got into this unglamorous and dangerous work with the promise that they would have a living wage and job security.
Maybe they can lay off the employees of the megaprojects about to get cancelled because of a lack of state match?
That was a tiny bit of incandescent rage showing, not schadenfreude. Then again I can’t expect a moderate/centrist/democrat to understand the raw emotion of having a moral stance.
I clearly got the condescending part right.
Weird, just a few weeks ago Jonathan was singing the praises of Mitch Green’s proposal to let roads crumble into weeds and rubble to make them impassible to cars (and bikes and peds and mobility users too, but we won’t address that aspect objectively, lol). Now we want maintenance and repaving?
Given the general anti-car sentiment around here I’d expect all of you to cheer for a DOGE style gutting of ODOT. Just for the sake of vindictiveness alone. Sigh…
Wanting to reduce maintenance and repaving on SOME roads, but not others is a totally logical position. There’s nothing “weird” about it. unless you twist it into something more extreme, as you did.
Since that didn’t happen, it may be that your view of BikePortland commenters as a unified, “generally anti-car” block may be wrong.
This is an incredibly, seemingly purposefully, bad faith representation of the Mitch Green story from a few days ago. In that proposal, roads are specifically being repurposed to the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists. The reason roads need so much maintenance is the continual load from cars!
Kotek is the problem. She is not charismatic, not popular with the electorate, and she offended many within her own caucus with the controversies over her spouse’s job seeking. There is also a quietly creeping animus towards Portland from down valley Democrats tired of seeing spending directed at Portland problems and scraps being offered for real issues elsewhere in the state.
Will anyone within the party stand against her in 2026?
Kotek is certainly a problem (there’s at least 5 reasons I’m spitting mad at her right now), but to call her ‘the problem’ is to ignore almost everything else about the party. I have been a staunch democrat my whole political life (even if my personal politics is substantially to the left of the platforms, campaign materials, and actual government policies produced by democrats). I have never felt so much rage, hopelessness, and bewilderment as I do right now. I feel completely abandoned by the democratic party at all levels. 🙁 In every situation they screw the pooch harder than I realized was possible and then shrug their shoulders like there was no other possible outcome.
Democratic Party is just republican-light at this point. Definitely not the same, but more like two police officers playing good cop bad cop.