“… the need for new infrastructure and ongoing maintenance outpaces available transportation revenue at the state and local levels.”
— From City of Portland’s 213 State Legislative Agenda
2013 is shaping up to be the year of transportation funding. For years now, everyone has known way we fund transportation is broken, but no one ever wanted to talk about it. Now, so many threads of the funding discussion are coming together that it’s not a stretch to think that by the end of this year we’ll have some major breakthroughs.
While ODOT continues to lead the nation in a push toward a mileage-based tax (instead of the gas tax), the City of Portland is doing some pushing of its own. Case in point is the City’s 2013 State Legislative Agenda that was released today. The agenda is a 48-page document — signed by Mayor Charlie Hales — that outlines the specific policy issues the City’s government relations staffers will lobby for down in Salem. Among the top priorities this year is infrastructure spending.
