Kotek calls for road funding part 2 (be warned)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

It looks like Governor Kotek’s $4.3 billion gas tax package with Measure 120 is heading for defeat on the May primary ballot. Kotek has convened a workgroup entitled Rebuilding Our Transportation Vision for a May 1 meeting to come up with funding solutions. Governor Kotek aims to find billions for transportation to make up what she lost.

The workgroup will likely try to push the following:

• Increase borrowing. By increasing borrowing, the state can spend the money now and bill the taxpayers later.

• Increase hidden fees. Hidden fees are a new way to raise hundreds of millions of tax dollars. There is already the hidden gas tax under the Clean Fuels program, which forces gas suppliers to pay a credit fee.   This hidden gas tax is why Oregon and California (also has one) is always above the national average.

Lawmakers tried earlier this year to put a hidden tax on Google/Facebook by forcing them to pay into a fee set by a non-profit to pay for usage fees. Expect more hidden and nontraditional fees like this to come from Kotek’s workgroup.  Already, Portland is working on a $12 monthly road fee to be placed on people’s water utility bill.

• Reduced costs: ODOT may finally go on a diet after years of billion-dollar mistakes. This is good new.   This means the Measure 120 measure and the tax referendum petition that created it (chief petitioners Senator Bruce Starr, Rep. Ed Diehl, Jason Williams of Taxpayers Association of Oregon) have forced lawmakers to do their budget balancing job just like the other 49 states.

The workgroup is co-chaired by transportation leader Grace Crunican and former Republican lawmaker Bruce Hanna. Grace Crunican served as general manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, where the agency is $400 million in the hole. Between 2019 and 2024, employee pay grew 32%, even as transit boardings fell by 57%.

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