Politicians plot ways to bypass voters (gas tax, Kicker, tolls)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

The 2025 Legislature just started, and many of the bills deal with finding ways to bypass voters or eliminate voter approval of taxes.

• SB 687 — Bypass voters over gas tax: SB 687 would strike down a rule requiring voter approval of local gas taxes.  Right now, politicians want to pass a 35-cent gas tax, but face stiff voter resistance.  With SB 687, politicians could have dozens of local governments pass their own gas taxes or gas tax increases to back-fill ODOT projects.   ODOT has also laid out a plan to increase auto registration/title fees as a backdoor way to raise new taxes.

• Bypassing voters on people’s Income Tax Kicker Refund: Oregon State Senator Jeff Golden posted an editorial in the Oregonian stating that lawmakers could vote on their-own to steal the Kicker Refund by using an emergency-style 66% threshold vote of lawmakers.  Senator Golden says “We can do this in Salem with a two-thirds vote – 40 of 60 representatives, 20 of 30 senators. No easy feat, because some legislators say they don’t want to touch the kicker for any reason.”   This would allow lawmakers to effectively subvert the Constitution without voter approval or voter say.

• Kicker bypass #2: Another way lawmakers this Legislative Session are looking to bypass the kicker is by adjusting how economic forecasts are performed.  If the State Economist makes more risky, positive economic forecasts, then the over-collected revenue will be much smaller and, at times, there will be no Kicker refund to send back to taxpayers.   This comes with extreme risks, because it means the state is basing their two year budget on an overly-optimistic forecast.   If the forecast fails, then lawmakers over-spent and over-promised and then must start cutting backwards.  The Oregonian ran an article on this called “Goodbye to record-breaking Kicker rebates?”

• Tolling may restart in 2026: Facing backlash, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek in 2023, pledged to pause tolling until 2026.   We are one year away, and there has been almost no public involvement on the tolling plan.  This means Kotek wishes to enact tolling on her own, without a vote of the people.

• HJR 6 raises a statewide property  tax: HJR 6 would amend the Constitution by creating a statewide property tax.  HJR 6 is indeed a referral to voters, but the trick is after the tax is enacted in the Constituion.  Read the bill and you will notice very little detail to the measure.  The details of the measure will be put into another bill which could pass with a simple 51% majority.  This means, once the statewide tax is approved, politicians could easily adjust the tax later or add to the tax.   HJR 6 is a property tax Trojan horse.

*** This trend to bypass voters is alarming.  Please share this list of 7 voter-bypass schemes by emailing, Tweeting, Liking this article ***

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