Checking in on the transportation bill with advocate Cassie Wilson

The latest from Salem about the transportation funding bill is that there’s yet another delay. Tuesday afternoon reports confirmed that Democrats have opted to delay a vote in the Senate (initially scheduled for this morning) two weeks so one of their members can recover from a medical issue and cast their vote in the capital building.

The move is just the latest twist in a long road of surprises that have defined Democrats’ efforts to fund Oregon’s transportation system. It also underscores how Democrats need every single vote from their party in order to achieve the three-fifths majority required to pass a tax hike (and how Republicans are so determined to see them fail).

Right before this delay was confirmed in the media yesterday, I talked with an advocate who’s done with all the surprises. 1000 Friends of Oregon Transportation Policy Manager Cassie Wilson has worked for over a year as a leader with the Move Oregon Forward coalition in hopes of passing a transportation bill that goes beyond freeway expansion megaprojects and continues the march toward better transit, bicycling, and walking conditions statewide.

Wilson is frustrated about how far the bill has been whittled down by Democrats — to the point where she and her fellow advocates can only show tepid support — while Republicans rejoice and use the bill to rile up their base right before the 2026 elections. “A lot of Democrats were put in a position to have to vote for a version of the bill that none of us wanted to see,” Wilson shared with me in an interview yesterday. And it’s one thing for the bill to be so compromised many members of the Move Oregon Coalition came out as neutral on it, but another thing for Democrats to not make much of a fuss about the last-second amendments that made the bill even weaker on things the coalition has prioritized since Day One.

“I was pretty disappointed watching the House floor yesterday to not see many legislators talk about the investments that are still needed, or even mentioning the transit funding sunset. This isn’t the answer, and it just it makes a bad situation feel worse, because it feels like they’re glossing over it,” Wilson shared.

The transit funding sunset was the main bargaining chip Republicans used to give Democrats the quorum they needed to pass a bill during the special session that began on Friday. Instead of a doubling of the payroll tax (from 0.1% to 0.2%) to pay for transit into perpetuity, Democrats agreed to sunset the tax at the end of 2027. When transit faces another fiscal cliff at that time, Wilson worries Democrats might not have any power to preserve its funding.

“We have no guarantees that we’ll have a supermajority again, or a Democratic governor. There’s no guarantees of anything,” Wilson continued.

And now, with a highly compromised bill that’s essentially a stop-gap measure to keep ODOT and city and county road agencies afloat, Wilson worries that if it gets referred to voters, its supporters won’t exactly be eager to defend it. “You have to leave the bill intact enough with good stuff to give up a reason to defend it,” she explained.

As Wilson endures what feels like a never-ending legislative session, she’s clinging to one major positive that has come from all of this. The last year or so of organizing has helped Wilson and the Move Oregon Forward coalition, “Built a cohort of legislators who really care about and understand this issue,” she said. It’s a coalition she’s eager to put to work in future legislative sessions. “This is the biggest movement of people advocating around transportation in a very long time, or maybe ever, in terms of statewide organized efforts. We have over 50 organizations in the coalition with statewide representation and that’s not going away. We have a lot to build on.”

— You can listen and watch our full conversation in the players above, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.