Opinion: Oregon faces dead end if Republicans lead transportation conversation

A group led by Oregon Republicans wants to claw back new revenue for transportation recently passed by the legislature. Operating under the banner of No Tax Oregon, volunteers have already collected over half the 75,000 or so signatures they need to put key elements of House Bill 3991 on the ballot. The pitch is easy: Sign here if you don’t want to pay more taxes.

While signing is easy, operating the Oregon Department of Transportation without the additional $430 million the bill is expected to raise each year, might not be. ODOT says the $4.3 billion the bill raises over 10 years is everything and nothing. It’s everything they have to keep the agency afloat, but it’s nothing more than a stop-gap measure to stave off massive layoffs and do the minimum amount of road maintenance necessary to keep roads clear and people alive. 

Republicans don’t believe that. They think ODOT can manage its 8,000 miles of roads and 3,000 bridges with existing revenues if the agency cuts everything that’s not a “core function.” The problem is, reasonable people disagree what a “core function” is. For example, Democrats believe transit and safe routes to school are a core function of ODOT. Republicans do not.

During this past session, Republicans put forward a bill that would have made radical shifts in state transportation policy. The Republican’s proposal would have required ODOT to completely ignore transportation’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions (despite transportation being the top contributor to them) and its impacts on Oregonians who’ve been historically left out of transportation conversations and harmed the most by the product of them. Their bill would have zeroed-out state funding for bicycle infrastructure, rail maintenance and construction, the Safe Routes to School program, transit service and expansion, and more. The bill even went so far as to repeal Oregon’s vaunted “Bicycle Bill” that was signed in 1971 and is known as the country’s first-ever complete streets law because of how it mandates a minimum investment in bicycling and walking facilities.

The radical Republican proposal would have rolled back the clock at ODOT to the 1960s and turned it into an even more outdated, freeway-first agency. It’s almost impossible to work across the aisle on such a politically toxic and tone deaf proposal — one that ultimately failed to make it out of committee because it was considered a non-starter by Democrats and everyone else who lives in the real world and understands transportation policy.

Even if you agree ODOT should focus solely on maintenance of existing roads and projects that benefit only car drivers, it’s unthinkable that revenue would stay frozen while inflation and project costs have risen dramatically since 2017, which was the last time Oregon updated its transportation law. Many of the Republicans leading the anti-ODOT, anti-tax crusade live and work in agriculture-based districts, where costs of basics like labor, fertilizer and land have risen about 40% since 2017. Do they really think transportation costs are magically immune to similar increases?

Based on Republicans’ actions during the session and their push to repeal HB 3991, it’s clear their stance on transportation policy isn’t about policy at all. It’s about politics and power. Democrats have it, Republicans want it.

Republican Senator Bruce Starr and House Representative Ed Diehl are spearheading the effort to repeal the funding elements of HB 3991. They claim Democrats “rammed through” the transportation bill without working across the aisle and they believe Oregonians should not have to pay for transportation services. Starr, Diehl, and other leading Republicans see the transportation legislation — and the process it took to pass it — as an illustration of everything that’s wrong with how Democrats govern; but it also says a lot about them.

Beyond not wanting to pay their fair share to use roads and bridges, a central allegation of “No Tax” petition backers is that Democrats didn’t collaborate with Republicans during the session. But similar to their policy and funding proposals, the claim doesn’t hold up. Democrats likely spent too much time currying favor with Republicans. Public hearings and legislative committee debates didn’t even begin until five weeks left in the session.

Why the hold up? Because Democrat party leaders were in (not so) secret meetings with Republicans trying to hash out a bipartisan package. And Sen. Starr, who now shamelessly laments the lack of bipartisanship on social media and media interviews, was one of the people in the room. Not only was Starr involved in early policy negotiations, but he was named by Democratic party leaders as point person on an important ODOT accountability initiative.

Republicans want Oregonians to believe that Governor Kotek and the Democrats are acting like dictators. They’ve even adopted a “No Queens” battle cry. But beyond the aforementioned facts about how Republicans were intimately involved in early negotiations, the clearest example of Republican party influence is HB 3991 itself. Far from the behemoth it’s being made out to be, the bill is an anemic, heavily-compromised, bare-bones package of tax and fee increases that will cost the average Oregonian about $144 more per year than they pay today. HB 3991 also raises just 35% of the revenue Democrats initially sought.

The bill is so small in fact, that Democrats lost significant support from the large coalition of progressive transportation advocacy groups they typically count on. In the end, because Democratic party leaders mistakenly assumed Republicans would negotiate in good faith, the only Oregonians who love the transportation bill are the ones whose jobs it saved. On the flip side, Republicans have launched a massive, misleading PR campaign to excite their base in advance of next year’s general election — a campaign that blames complicated problems on a progressive government bogeyman they would rather destroy than debate.

If early returns are any indication, No Tax Oregon will likely succeed in their signature-gathering effort and ODOT’s future will be on the ballot next November. If we don’t see more Democrats and other progressive leaders stand up, shape the narrative in their favor, and expose bad-faith Republicans, Oregon’s transportation future will be a dead end.