What is Kate Brown’s transportation vision?
(Photo: ODOT)

This post comes from BikePortland subscriber and contributor Kiel Johnson. He previously wrote about his grassroots effort to garner neighborhood support for the Lloyd to Woodlawn Neighborhood Greenway project.

In the latest Oregon Governor’s race poll Kate Brown is ahead by 4% with a margin of error of 5%. There have been alarms going off that Governor Brown is in trouble and many commentators are pointing to a lack of a compelling vision. Last year she helped push through HB 2017, one of the largest transportation budgets in Oregon’s history. Yet this additional money is not doing her many favors for saving her job. She has hardly mentioned her victory on the campaign trail. As people who spend time reading about the importance of transportation, it is crucial for us to figure out why transportation is not a topic of interest in this race.

I encourage you to leave your ideas in the comments below. Here are a few of my thoughts:

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Finn on his bike in 2008 and at Commissioner Saltzman’s side in 2010.
(Photos: J. Maus)

Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s chief of staff has been hired by Oregon Governor Kate Brown. Brendan Finn, who’s worked with Saltzman since 1999, will be Brown’s new transportation policy advisor.
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We did it!

You raised your voices. Oregon Governor Kate Brown heard them. And she has changed her mind.

The Governor just announced she will not go through with her threatened veto of over $2 million in funding for the SW Capitol Highway project. The project will build a crucial biking and walking connection between Multnomah Village and Taylors Ferry Road that the neighborhood has worked for since 1991.

Here’s the official word via a letter from the Governor’s office (full PDF of the letter here):
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Pressure on Oregon Governor Kate Brown to reverse a threatened veto on the SW Capitol Highway Project has increased significantly over the past week.

As we await word on her final decision, here’s a recap of what’s happened since we first reported the story six days ago:

➤ Stats from an email we sent to BikePortland supporters (paid subscribers and donors) show that over 60 people have clicked over to Governor Brown’s feedback page so far. That’s in addition to many people who’ve told us — via Facebook, Twitter, and on the BP blog — that they took action and made their voice heard. Thank you for all your support!

➤ Respected nonprofit organizations like Oregon Walks, The Street Trust, and the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association have all boosted our campaign by linking to our action alert and stories.
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Pressure is building on Oregon Governor Brown to reverse her threat to veto a long-awaited infrastructure project in southwest Portland. In the past two days readers of BikePortland have helped spur dozens of phone calls and emails to her office. Our community’s voices are helping buoy efforts by legislators who are urging the Governor to reconsider.

Here’s where things stand…[Read more…]

Don’t do it Governor!

A threat by Governor Kate Brown to veto a highly anticipated project in southwest Portland has been met with shock and bewilderment by advocates and legislators. Now with little time to spare before Brown acts on her stated intentions, an effort has begun to persuade her to change her mind.

Neighborhood advocates have been urging the City of Portland to make Southwest Capitol Highway safer 26 years. The City of Portland has raised about $10 million for a project that would finally build sidewalks, bikeways and make other updates to the street between Multnomah Village and Taylors Ferry Road. Thanks to the passage of House Bill 5006 last month, everyone expected an additional $2 million for a final, key segment of the project. Governor Brown’s inexplicable veto threat puts that funding in jeopardy.

Asked for comment this afternoon, Brown’s Communications Director Chris Pair offered no additional rationale for the threat beyond what was shared in a statement yesterday — that they felt the project should go through more vetting and evaluation and that it should have been included in the larger transportation package.

But that explanation doesn’t sit well with Senator Ginny Burdick, whose district is directly adjacent to the project. [Read more…]

The state funding would have helped connect an existing PBOT project on Capitol Highway between Huber and Taylors Ferry Road through a complicated set of intersections known as “West Portland Crossroads.”

With one swipe of her pen, Oregon Governor Kate Brown can take away the final piece of funding for a southwest Portland transportation project that’s been a dream for neighborhood advocates for over 20 years.
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Matt Garrett has led ODOT since 2005.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

A few weeks after left-leaning former Metro president David Bragdon all but called for the firing of Oregon’s top transportation official, legislative Republicans are calling for it explicitly.

Oregon Department of Transportation Director Matt Garrett is facing criticism from both sides over the incident, earlier this year, when his office and Gov. Kate Brown’s temporarily claimed that tens of millions of dollars in freeway investments would be part of reducing long-run carbon emissions in Oregon by more than 2 million metric tons.

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Governor Brown is not afraid
to say the “b” word.

Given the sad state of cycling in our local politics, I was eager to hear if the issue was on the radar screen of Oregon’s new governor, Kate Brown.

Brown’s first State of the State address on April 17th was a great opportunity to plant a flag in the ground and let everyone know that when she thinks of transportation she can see beyond the status quo.

And guess what? I was not disappointed. Governor Brown mentioned bikes — not once but twice! It was just what I needed to allay my lingering disappointment from when Portland Mayor Charlie Hales — who was a Portland commissioner in bicycling’s heyday in the 1990s and rode into office in part for his progressive transportation bona fides — didn’t mention bikes at all in his State of the City address back in January.
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Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown at a
2011 fundraiser for the Portland Society Fund, which
supports “emerging leaders in active transportation.”
(Photo: M.Andersen)

Oregon’s next governor rides a tandem.

While we’ve been hurrying around Southwest Portland this week, we’ve been keeping half an eye on the drama unfolding in Salem. In the wake of Willamette Week’s report Thursday that Gov. John Kitzhaber unsuccessfully tried to get state employees to block release of thousands of his emails amid a criminal investigation of the overlaps between his public role and his fiance’s business, the governor has resigned and Secretary of State Kate Brown will be moving into the job.

According to her 2012 election registration, Brown lives with her husband in a 1914 home in Southeast Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood.

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