Does anyone in Oregon think Measure 120, sustaining last year’s legislation on transportation taxes and fees, will pass? Anyone?
Anyone who does seems to be well hidden, just like any supporters of the measure, the substance of which passed just last year with majority support in the legislature and signature by the governor.
The state’s Democratic political leadership appears to have abandoned it completely. And the Oregon Department of Transportation, where most of the money raised is intended to go, likely isn’t one of the most popular in state government.
The only electoral curiosity left seems to be how few voters will opt to uphold the transportation funding package.
This month’s election will not end the story, of course. It already is beginning anew.
The real question now is whether Oregon leaders will try their same policy development process yet again, or approach transportation funding in a different way that might generate more public support.
Actually, passage of Measure 120 wouldn’t end the story either. During the 2025 session, this complicated round of transportation funding started with this base point (from Democrats at least): $14.6 billion over 10 years is what was needed to meet the state’s transportation needs. The eventual passed legislation (now in the form of Measure 120), provided less than a third of that, $4.3 billion over 10 years. That scale down doesn’t seem to be a result of revised estimates of need, but only of what number could clear the legislature (as that one did only barely). So Measure 120, even if passed, would be far from a panacea.
The question remains what should be done now, without even the recent funding bandaid in place.
The essential problem underlying all this is not hard to understand. Inflation has hit road construction, maintenance and repair hard, and that has combined with a squeeze on the top source of revenue for the work: gas taxes, which are under downward pressure from higher-mileage and new electric vehicles and (especially recently) overall higher gas prices.
On April 30, a group called by Gov. Tina Kotek met to start considering what to do next. The committee is expected to meet monthly until around the end of the year.
At its first session, it heard reports from a variety of transportation professionals. An ODOT speaker warned that soon, without more funding, the agency may be reduced to paving interstate routes and not much else. An Association of Oregon Counties speaker said that, “Without new revenue over about the next five years, more than 4,500 miles of county roads will go without critical maintenance work and then will quickly deteriorate beyond repair.”
Presumably, the group will come up with a new set of numbers — some new collection of taxes and fees — for delivery to the 2027 legislative session. Its mission appears to include finding a new funding model for Oregon transportation, which means shifting but also increasing the state’s taxes, fees or other money sources.
At that point, once such a recommendation surfaces, the legislature presumably will try to do what it did in the last (special) session. After that, some groups of people in Oregon — especially those who might wind up paying more, as someone would have to — will mobilize against it.
That easily could result in another referendum in two years leading to another dead transportation package. And Oregon’s transportation system will continue to deteriorate.
The best route to an answer – and the working group could help lead this – could be to first clearly and specifically, in detail, describe the problem and what will happen without more funding, and initially holding off on the solution.
It’s counterintuitive: The usual and often the best approach for governments — and for columnists too, for that matter — is to link the problem and the solution, lest the problem seem unsolvable.
The deterioration of Oregon’s roads may be an exception, because all of the funding solutions in view seem vulnerable to the same criticisms likely to doom Measure 120.
What if the transportation group were to focus exclusively, at the beginning, on defining the nature of the problem, and at first putting stabs at a solution on a back burner?
And then suppose they took that discussion around the state, from region to region, bringing the receipts: Here is what is likely to happen locally, over the next five or ten years, to roadways in this area if funding isn’t somehow increased significantly. Central to making this work would be conducting these efforts as high-profile and broadly inclusive, as possible, with local voices heard at length. The quarter-million petition signers who put Measure 120 on the ballot should be specifically invited.
Then — and only then — the group should pose the question: Given this situation, what do you want to do? Is it your choice to drive on deteriorating roads? If not, then how do you propose to fix them? Where should the money come from?
If the public (and Republicans) were more broadly and openly brought into this process, legislative candidates – during the upcoming campaign season – might be pressured to weigh in with answers as well. Out of all this, something approaching a solution with public buy-in just might emerge.
It’s worth a try. For now, well-meaning efforts developed from the top down and through committees all seem doomed to failure. Leadership of a different sort seems to be called for here.
Randy Stapilus has researched and written about Northwest politics and issues since 1976 for a long list of newspapers and other publications. This guest commentary is from news partner Oregon Capital Chronicle, and it may or may not reflect the views of The Corvallis Advocate, or its management, staff, supporters and advertisers.
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