AG note: Kotek can’t block gas tax vote

Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

After the referendum secured a quarter million signatures on the gas tax petition, it then Constitutionally qualified for the November 2026 ballot.  Governor Kotek saw this election trainwreck and declared that she would use the upcoming February Legislative Session to repeal the gas tax right now and spare any humiliation at the ballot.

As Willamette Week reports, the Oregon Attorney General has discovered an Oregon 1935 Attorney General Opinion that dealt with such a case.  The legal opinion said, “The right of the people to a referendum vote on a statute enacted by the Legislature can not be defeated by a subsequent repeal of the act referred,” (read more from Willamette Week here).   This means the Legislature cannot easily undo

Humorously, this marks the third time Kotek has tried to block a public vote on her $4.3 billion gas tax bill.  She denied the public the right to vote on it as she rammed the bill through the Legislature.  Then Kotek delayed signing the bill to deprive people of enough time to gather signatures, but it didn’t work.  Now she wants to pull it off the ballot.

This is a complicated issue, but this is what you get when politicians go to extremes to block citizen involvement.  If Kotek wants better ideas to fixing this mess, she should involve the lawmakers she left out of the process.

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