Oregon Republicans who’d spent weeks negotiating a transportation funding proposal with majority Democrats came out forcefully against the bill Monday.
“This Republican is not going to just be a stamp of approval on a partisan tax increase without additional collaboration,” said Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, one of four GOP lawmakers who had been hashing out the particulars of a transportation bill. Starr said he was hopeful that “we can get back around the table.”
Starr wasn’t the only Republican negotiator disenchanted with a Democratic proposal that would raise gas taxes and roughly 10 other taxes and fees, simplify how heavy trucks are taxed, create more oversight of the Oregon Department of Transportation, and more.
Each one of the four Republicans who’d worked to negotiate a package with Democrats — sometimes earning the ire of their party members — voted Monday against introducing that bill in the Joint Transportation Reinvestment Committee. All voiced concerns similar to Starr’s.
“Oregonians deserve bipartisan work,” said state Rep. Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River. “It shouldn’t be partisan when it comes to transportation.”
The Republican objections were largely symbolic. Democrats on the committee unanimously voted to introduce the massive transportation bill. Some of them highlighted a massive funding need they say the state has ignored for too long.
“There’s math that remains to be done,” said state Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie, “but early looks appear that we are finally reversing two decades of disinvestment in our transportation system writ large.”
The transportation bill, House Bill 2025, is slated to get four separate hearings this week, each with a different focus. Democrats have sold the bill in recent days as a product of extensive collaboration.
“Every conversation we’ve had has helped make this bill stronger,” Sen. Chris Gorsek, a Gresham Democrat and key author of the bill, said in a statement Monday. “We’ve sought input from legislators across the political spectrum, and from people on the front lines: county leaders, transit providers, road crews, and Oregon families.”
But the Republican opposition — including from those members who theoretically would be most inclined to support the proposal — raises questions about the bill’s path forward. Reaction from the party to the bill has so far been universally critical.
“This bill was born in the basement and in secret,” state Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, said in Monday morning’s hearing. “Not only does this policy stink, the process is one that I think all Oregonians should truly be concerned about.”
Democrats hold three-fifths supermajorities in both chambers, enough to pass tax hikes on their own. But the party is one member short in the House, where state Rep. Hoa Nguyen, D-Portland, has been absent all session as she undergoes cancer treatment. That means Democrats are at least one vote shy in the chamber.
There’s also no guarantee Democrats will vote in lockstep on the proposal, meaning Republican votes could be a necessity in the Senate, too.
The package Democrats have teed up would raise billions to fund road and bridge upkeep, finish a pair of highway megaprojects that have soared in price, and increase money for transit service, rail projects and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.
It would do that by hiking the state’s gas tax by 15 cents, instituting a new per-mile fee that electric and hybrid vehicles drivers must pay, creating a new tax on car sales, and raising a number of other taxes and fees. The exact cost of those increases hasn’t been made public.
Democrats say they are also serious about policing ODOT, which has seen widespread criticism for large projects such as one on Interstate 5 in Portland’s Rose Quarter that have exploded in cost, and for revenue estimates that proved wildly inaccurate.
Included in the bill unveiled Monday are provisions that would order regular audits of how the agency spends money — both on routine roadwork and on massive projects. The bill also would put selecting the head of ODOT in the hands of the governor, rather than members of the Oregon Transportation Commission. Those commissioners are already nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
Lawmakers are slated to receive an in-depth review of what’s inside the bill at a hearing Monday evening.
Those details are likely to change, however, as the Legislature sprints toward a mandatory June 29 adjournment.
“This is not going to be a linear process,” said state Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth. “It’s going to be start and stop. And I suspect the final bill will look a little different than this.”
