In their first meeting since Oregon voters rejected a gas and payroll tax increase to pay for roads and transit services, Gov. Tina Kotek’s transportation workgroup seemed less focused on finding new funding mechanisms for the state’s beleaguered transportation agency than the agency’s perceived marketing failures.
The 12 member workgroup first met in May and is tasked ahead of the 2027 legislative session with vetting and recommending ideas to fund the Oregon Department of Transportation and the local transportation districts it shares revenue with. The group is scheduled to meet monthly through November and present its recommendations to Kotek by the end of the year.
At a roughly three-hour meeting Monday, members and invited guests blamed poor public perception of the state transportation agency, and a lack of public awareness around what it and local districts provide, for the failure to pass a gas and payroll tax via ballot measure last month. More than 80% of voters in the May primary rejected the proposal to raise gas prices by 6 cents, double the transit payroll tax from 0.1% of a worker’s paycheck to 0.2% and increase registration and title fees..
“People don’t realize how little they spend on transportation compared to other utilities, right?” asked member Chris Hagerbaumer, executive director of the Portland-based environmental tech nonprofit OpenAQ.
“I think one of the problems we’ve had recently is not explaining or telling the public what it is they’re buying,” said Lee Beyer, former Democratic lawmaker from Springfield and a member of the Oregon Transportation Commission.
Among the challenges posed by committee members was too much negative attention on the agency missing rather than making deadlines on some projects, and not enough attention on projects that come in on or under budget. No major examples were offered.
“Oregonians are not seeing the value of what these districts do,” one member said, or “how we tell the story,” another added. Much time was spent discussing how the transportation department could do a better job with “presenting a vision” and with public engagement.
No ‘sacred cows’
Group members bounced around a few funding ideas they had been mulling over, including congestion pricing during peak traffic times on high volume interstates, a mileage tax on electric vehicles that don’t pay gas taxes, and raising or diverting parts of the transient lodging tax on hotels and vacation rentals to local transit districts.
Tammy Baney, a former Deschutes County commissioner who now directs the nonprofit Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, urged the workgroup to consider investment in educating the public on what the statewide transportation system does, what people are paying for and to avoid “having sacred cows.”
This, she explained, meant picking the projects that “need to be shot,” and focusing for a while only on large capital projects that fall under the category of safety.
At least 50 sets of eyes and ears streamed the meeting via YouTube, where one viewer commented: “Disappointing that this morning has been entirely framed as ‘getting the clueless public to understand our endless, righteous need,’as if the issue is marketing and messaging, not math.”
Throughout the 2025 legislative session, as Oregon lawmakers negotiated a tax revenue package to keep the transportation department solvent, Republicans and fiscal watchdogs criticized the agency for its spending on several major road and bridge projects where budgets ballooned and deadlines were missed. Among the provisions in the package was a directive to more frequently audit the agency.
Grace Crunican, co-chair of the group and former director of the Oregon transportation department, as well as transportation departments in San Francisco and Seattle, said there was enough funding from redirecting some ODOT spending and keeping 130 jobs at the agency vacant to make it through the year without creating too much lasting damage to roads or the agency.
But, she said, the future of the agency and Oregon’s transportation system will be predicated on what the group can come up with that could pass in the Oregon Legislature in 2027.
“If we don’t make an investment in it this time around, it’s going to be hard as hell to pull it out and have it be economically palatable to fix in the future,” she said.
But it was unclear following Monday’s meeting what types of long-term department spending shifts, if any, the committee was considering on top of finding new revenue.
‘This is serious stuff’
It’s been nearly a decade since the state updated its core transportation funding streams, which include a 40-cent tax on each gallon of gas sold in the state, heavy trucking fees and vehicle registration and title fees.
Since then, inflation has driven up the cost of materials and labor needed to fix the state’s roads, while revenue has remained the same or declined. The workgroup spent almost no time on discussions of vehicle electrification and the growing number of Oregon drivers and Amazon delivery trucks paying no gas tax.
Baney alone suggested that there would need to be some sort of mileage tracking system installed in electric vehicles to collect pay for road use. The state for years has offered a voluntary program, OReGO, that allows electric vehicle drivers to save on DMV fees by using tracking programs or odometer photos to pay by mile.
“We are so fearful as a society to have Big Brother traveling around with us in the car, which, they’re already there. I mean, Big Brother’s cousin and his neighbors are there too,” Baney said.
About half of the revenue generated from vehicle registration and title fees and gas taxes goes into the State Highway Fund, which pays for maintenance on state roads, bridges and highways. The rest is split between counties and cities to support their own transportation infrastructure needs.
Oregon relies heavily on road user fees, unlike most other states that fund their transportation systems with additional revenue from vehicle sales taxes, general sales taxes, tolling or taxes based on a vehicle’s value upon registration.
Crunican wrapped the meeting by reiterating that the real deadline for ideas would be in late summer, before the group would spend months refining them and looking into how they could leverage federal funds to match state funds.
“August is just around the corner. Hope you’re not planning any vacations. This is serious stuff, we’re counting on you,” she told her colleagues.
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