Senate Bill 1601 will officially pass on the final day of the 2026 legislative session and Oregon transportation advocacy groups are expressing dismay. A statement from Move Oregon Forward, a coalition of 45 nonprofit organizations from across the state, didn’t mice words, saying that lawmakers chose to, “plug a massive funding hole by gutting programs that protect the state’s most vulnerable residents.”
Here’s more from their statement:
The final vote, which takes place as the short session nears its deadline, redirects nearly $50 million away from safety, rail, and transit initiatives. Deep cuts will now hit Safe Routes to School ($17 million) and Oregon Community Paths ($8 million), effectively stripping 60% of the funding used to build sidewalks and crossings for children.
The state’s current budget crisis did not come from school safety programs or community paths. It stems from long-term funding shortfalls and major road project costs that outpaced new revenues. The funding issues come from road projects, yet the 30% of Oregonians who do not drive are the ones being asked to pay the price.
Zachary Lauritzen of Oregon Walks said the bill has “guttted” these key active transportation programs. “The state is failing its duty to remove barriers for kids, seniors, and people with disabilities to move safely around their communities,” he said. And Oregon Trails Coalition Executive Director Steph Noll added that, “It is unconscionable to raid bicycle excise taxes to fill a highway fund hole. By slashing this budget, the state is knowingly making neighborhoods less safe for the very people who funded these programs.”
Noll was referring to lawmakers taking money away from the Oregon Community Paths program — a program partially funded by Oregon’s $15 tax on new bicycles — and spending it on highway operations and maintenance instead. The program has been a crucial source of funding for off-street paths across the region.
On Monday, Move Oregon Forward coalition members sent a letter to Governor Tina Kotek and leading lawmakers, urging them to take a different course. Instead of raiding these popular, vital programs, they offered a different path to save the budget. Their proposal included: internal savings and “smart housekeeping” within ODOT, a reshuffling of state capital project priorities, and reallocating up to $80 million of “idle funding” tied up in megaprojects that lack a feasible funding path. If those didn’t suffice, they told lawmakers to use short-term debt financing tools.
Move Oregon Forward says their suggestions were ignored.
“Our coalition is done waiting,” said Indi Namkoong, Transportation Justice Coordinator at Verde. “Lawmakers cannot continue to collect tax dollars from working families while cutting the very services those dollars fund. This budget is a failure of leadership and a breach of trust. Now that these cuts have passed, we expect our priorities to be served first in the 2027 transportation package.”
Like everyone else in Salem, Namkoong and Move Oregon Forward are already looking ahead to the next legislative session where Democratic party leaders have promised they will once again try to move a large transportation funding package forward.
Thanks for reading.
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Unfortunately this could seen coming from a mile or 10 away.
Jonathan, thanks for reporting on this. And thanks to Move Oregon Forward for fighting the good fight.
The incompetence of our state government is breathtaking. We desperately need better leadership.
And we will never get better leadership when supposedly progressive voters keep on voting for corporate-fascist democrats.
Who would you vote for/have voted for?
I don’t think it’s incompetence, I think they just have different priorities, such as Moda Center giveaways, tax breaks for data centers, and highway expansion money pits.
“The incompetence of our state government is breathtaking.”
Didn’t forget to vote Kotek!
Does it seem more and more that the transportation advocates and corporate democratic party in Oregon have an abusive relationship? Where else can an advocate proclaim with a straight face “Our coalition is done waiting,” and then do precisely that.
Oh well, I know this is futile to mention, but primaries are coming and they count.
It’s fascinating how loyal all these progressive/labor/climate-justice dems are to the machine. It’s almost as if they prioritize waiting for their turn on the party list over their values.
lol, sadly, probably the case.
That said, what should this coalition of organizations do now? They don’t have the kind of money that truckers, AAA, road builders, and labor unions have to influence politicians.
Genuine question: Is it really to try and find folks who would primary the status quo D’s? The chances to find quality candidates to do that are so so slim.
I think finding decent, enthusiastic people to primary the entrenched corporatists is the best bet the transportation advocates have. Win or lose, they need to demonstrate that there are consequences for crossing them. The transportation community has a lot of smart, enthusiastic people that could do great campaigning and even legislating should they win. Problem of course is it’s hard to get good people to run, which is one reason we wind up with so many bad ones in office.
Looks like some Dems jonesing to be primaried.
The 2025 legislative and 2026 short session were illuminating. I think it removed any pretense that Kotek and the state Democrats are working for the people of Oregon. They could have used these sessions to be a beacon of light for the nation in dark times, but nope.
They had a super-majority. And yet the biggest thing they could get done was a giveaway to the Blazers Billionaire and deep austerity measures for transportation. And the only reason the data center bill didn’t go through was the tidal wave of backlash from both sides. They will try to ram it through in 2027, no doubt.
People might rush to say, “it was the Republicans fault, they are putting the repeal on the ballot!” But the reality is the buck stops with the Democrats on this one. The bill that was passed was rushed, lousy, and all the funding comes from regressive taxation.
Here in Portland we have potholes everywhere and TriMet is on life support. How did we get here? It isn’t a lack of money. The amount going to the Blazers sure shows it. This session shone a stark light on who the real constituents of the Oregon Democrats are, those with deep pockets that certainly aren’t you or me.
Any of them that commit to anything less than serving the public interest need to primaried. All of them.
This bill will do terrible damage, but the one good thing it may do is help people draw a straight line between ODOT’s insatiable demand for dollars and their mega-project, freeway-widening mania. Legislators have shown that ODOT truly cannot walk and chew gum at the same time: we can’t have paths or transit or bike lanes or crosswalks or any of the human-scaled improvements we need as long as ODOT continues to gobble up every dollar of transportation funding – not just to maintain the highway system we currently have (since they aren’t doing that anyway) but to build bigger and wider highways and freeways!
Legislators should not allocate one more dollar to ODOT til this rogue agency can demonstrate that it can meet ALL of the priorities that Oregonians demand.
“Legislators should not allocate one more dollar to ODOT til this rogue agency can demonstrate that it can meet ALL of the priorities that Oregonians demand.”
Do you really mean this? There is a sizable group of people demanding, as an example, a new highway bypass around Portland to the west. Sometimes regular commenters post about it here. Should ODOT need to meet that demand, as well as other similar ones around the state to get more money? What about building the Rose Quarter and full IBR projects? Plenty of Oregonians are demanding those. ODOT should be defunded until they figure those projects out?
I don’t think requiring ODOT to meet all the demands Oregonians make will lead us to a better place. I am certain it will be an unaffordable one.
It’s hard not to notice the disconnect here. Many of the same taxpayer-funded or grant-dependent nonprofits speaking out about these cuts are silent about one of the biggest real-world barriers to active transportation in the Portland metro area: the widespread camping and open drug use on multi-use paths.
These paths are the lifeblood of everyday biking and walking—especially for families, kids, and people who don’t want to mix with traffic. Yet riders across the region routinely encounter tents, debris, and people in the grip of addiction along corridors that were built specifically to be safe alternatives to roads. If we’re serious about “removing barriers for kids, seniors, and people with disabilities,” as advocates say, then we should be honest about what those barriers actually are on the ground.
It’s also worth asking why organizations that receive large amounts of public funding are so quick to criticize how taxpayer dollars are allocated, while avoiding politically sensitive issues that directly affect the usability and safety of the infrastructure they claim to champion. When advocacy groups become heavily dependent on government funding streams, there’s a real risk that their priorities shift away from representing everyday users and toward maintaining alignment with political power.
Protecting funding for community paths is important. But protecting the ability for people to actually use those paths safely and comfortably should be just as important—and that conversation shouldn’t be off limits.
Its amazing how some people can make any problem about unhoused people.
The state government and ODOT are corrupt and taling funding away from people sized projects to build more highways and here you are focusing on the people who have the least.
Jose is right. Many of these advocacy nonprofits rely on taxpayer funding while lobbying the same government for more money. That’s a clear conflict of interest.
Too often the advocacy seems less about the public good and more about protecting and expanding their own funding streams. If these organizations believe their work is valuable, they should raise money through donations like other nonprofits.
And if the services they claim to provide are truly essential public services, then government should provide them directly with proper oversight, transparency, and accountability. The current system—where a sprawling network of nonprofits receives taxpayer money with limited accountability—needs serious reform