With less than six months until the start of Oregon’s 2027 legislative session, state leaders are hoping to leave the transportation funding failures of 2025 in the rearview mirror.

Seven lawmakers met with Gov. Tina Kotek’s Rebuilding Our Transportation Vision workgroup on Tuesday to discuss what they need to successfully pass a funding bill.

For one, legislators need to prioritize “getting the damn bill out much, much, much earlier,” so negotiations can begin, said Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie.

The text of the main 2025 bill, which collapsed in the final days of the session, was released with less than a month of the six-month legislative session remaining. Democratic leaders announced a framework in April, despite hinting at the release of one as early as February.

Those ideas followed months of meetings with transportation stakeholders throughout the state. But the plan ultimately came too late, said Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis.

He expressed concern that the group’s timeline of holding a final meeting in November would lead to a repeat of 2025. Lawmakers don’t have time to wait “like excited children for Christmas” to hear their findings, he said.

“We’re going to be going into session mere weeks after that and we need the time to take your ideas and make sure that there is a consensus, a bipartisan consensus of support, to move this forward to some kind of success,” Gomberg said.

He asked the group, which contains no current lawmakers, to keep them updated.

The workgroup’s final report will be delivered to Kotek. The report is meant to “provide a framework of viable and sensitive solutions” the legislature can build on, Kotek’s transportation advisor, Kelly Brooks, said.

Whatever is proposed will have to be sensitive to voters’ distaste for new costs.

Lawmakers ultimately passed a pared-down funding bill in a 2025 special session along party lines. That stopped looming job cuts at the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The collection of signatures to refer to voters the plans that included a 6-cent-per-gallon increase to the gas tax began almost immediately.

Voters overwhelmingly opposed the new costs in May, but significant cuts and layoffs at the agency were mitigated by a revenue rebalance that lawmakers passed months earlier in anticipation of the defeat.

This time, legislators will be looking to fund ODOT with at least $200 million for the upcoming two-year budget cycle, which begins in July 2027. That money would maintain current service levels but result in a smaller agency than in years past.

Getting Oregonians to understand the funding needed to keep the state’s roads and bridges operating is “literally the most important thing,” Gamba said.

While the full proposal may be months away, Oregonians shouldn’t be surprised if it contains some sort of widespread charge tied to vehicle miles traveled or road usage.

Lawmakers of both parties support expanding such a program, said Rep. Susan McLain, D-Hillsboro.

Oregon has an existing opt-in program for electric and some fuel-efficient vehicles. Under the 2025 special session bill, the program was broadened and by the end of 2028 all drivers of electric or hybrid vehicles will be participants or pay an annual fee instead.

Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, the lone Republican legislator on the panel and one of the chief petitioners for the referendum effort, said he was encouraged by the other lawmakers’ comments and echoed the need for bipartisanship.

Gomberg and Starr both referenced a proposal from former Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Welches, to split the agency in two as a bigger potential change. One would focus on road maintenance and safety while the other would take on large projects.

To truly be successful, ODOT needs to focus on its core mission, and it needs a permanent director, Starr said.

“To think that we’re gonna have solved this problem without having a permanent director who will bring confidence, both in the public and in the legislature, is, I think, a fool’s errand,” he said.

The agency’s former director, Kris Strickler, left his post early this year. Kotek appointed Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Director Lisa Sumption to serve in the interim, then picked her chief of staff, Chris Warner, for the temporary role. Warner started July 1.

The transportation system is one of the most important things Oregonians own and that connects them with the state, said Sen. Anthony Broadman, D-Bend.

“You go about your daily life, you don’t confront or meet the state where they are unless you go to the DMV or you’re on a road,” Broadman said. “For us in the legislature, this is how we interface with the people who we work for.”

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The post Group aims to avoid another transportation funding failure appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The members of Gov. Tina Kotek’s new transportation group have their work cut out for them.

The 12-member Rebuilding Our Transportation Vision Workgroup is tasked with creating a framework that can solve Oregon Department of Transportation budget woes and gain lawmakers’ approval during the 2027 legislative session.

Kotek has convened the group months in advance, no doubt to try and avoid the repeated transportation planning failures that have plagued the state for the past year. They have until the end of 2026 to present her with recommendations.

To take on future transportation planning, the group needs to understand what has and hasn’t worked in recent years, Kelly Brooks, Kotek’s transportation advisor, told members at their first meeting on May 1. The group, Brooks said in March, follows a model like one created by then-Gov. Kate Brown in 2016.

That led to the implementation of the legislature’s transportation funding bill, House Bill 2017. The Statesman Journal uncovered issues with the implementation of that bill in 2025.

The bill’s funds are strictly limited to where they can be directed, leading to a shortage of money for road maintenance and several ongoing large projects. Going into 2024, the agency found Oregon needed more than $2 billion per year to put the transportation system in good repair, Brooks said.

Lawmakers tried to pass another multibillion-dollar package in 2025 but failed to garner enough support from Democrats and any from Republicans.

Kotek then called legislators into a special session, ultimately culminating in a bill estimated to bring in $4.3 billion over 10 years.

Anti-tax opponents referred most of the changes to get that new revenue to the ballot, where voters are expected to vote them down on May 19.

To prevent layoffs and overcome the expected funding shortfall, lawmakers patched a short-term fix by moving funds within ODOT’s budget meant for programs and projects.

The work group’s task is to come up with ideas that could go into a bill for the 2027 legislative session.

The group’s membership includes no current lawmakers, whose support will be needed for the proposals to advance. Its leaders are Bruce Hanna, a former Roseburg Republican who served as co-speaker of the House when it was evenly divided by party, and Grace Crunican, a former ODOT director who most recently ran the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. The group’s remaining members have backgrounds in business, transportation, the environment and government.

Kotek told the members they must do more than just point out issues.

Past funding proposals that have been successful, Kotek said, were bipartisan, broad and laid out specific priorities.

Oregon’s transportation system with its current funding levels “is unsustainable and frankly unacceptable for Oregonians,” and the group is charged with finding legitimate solutions, she said. Failing to create a successful framework for the legislative session would likely mean more canceled projects and programming cuts.

“If there’s one more winter that we head into and we’re talking about whether or not we can hire snowplow drivers, that will be a failure,” Brooks said.

Six subgroups will work on topic-specific recommendations for the work group’s members to discuss. The subgroups will focus on maintenance, preservation and emergency response, community livability and safety, major project funding and delivery, transit, freight mobility and funding tools and financial scenarios.

The members have not yet been finalized, but each will have a chair and a member of the vision group.

In addition to the main group and all the subgroups’ members, the state is working with two consultant groups who will work on things like meeting summaries and public engagement. Those contract amounts were not immediately available.

The work group is scheduled to hold six more meetings before producing a report of recommendations in December. The next meeting is set for June 1.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The post Oregon group now addressing state transportation funding appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A group of transportation experts will work on solutions to fund Oregon’s transportation system in 2027 and beyond, Gov. Tina Kotek announced last week.

The Rebuilding Our Transportation Vision Workgroup is tasked with reviewing current and projected transportation spending and needs as well as creating an outline for potential legislation ahead of the 2027 legislative session.

“Oregonians want and deserve a safe, accessible, and reliable transportation system,” Kotek stated. “Despite political division, we all need to come back to the table to identify our basic transportation needs in a way that will sufficiently and sustainably provide a system that meets the current and future goals of our state.”

Lawmakers plan to tackle transportation funding again in 2027.

Kotek called a special session in 2025 after Democrats failed to push through two transportation packages during the long legislative session. Opponents of the proposed higher costs quickly gathered enough signatures to refer much of the bill, which was expected to generate $4.3 billion in revenue through a gas tax, to the November ballot.

Democrats pushed through legislation during the 2026 short session to move that election to May, prompting several lawsuits. Lawmakers expect voters to reject the increased taxes and fees, with Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, saying, “everybody knows that it’s going to fail.”

The work group will address solutions for transportation funding statewide.

The Oregon Department of Transportation has long been warning about its impending budget issues. Gas tax revenues are declining with an increase in use of electric and hybrid vehicles, inflation has hurt construction work, and many of the agency’s reserves are limited in where they can be spent because of prior legislation, ODOT has said.

The bipartisan group will be tasked with finding a way to mitigate those issues without prompting another referendum effort.

Legislators used vacancy savings and redirected other funds during the 2026 short session to unlock $288 million for ODOT and keep the department afloat as a sustainable solution is sought.

“We need to launch a long-term, bipartisan conversation about what comes next,” Kotek told reporters after the legislative session ended March 6. “And there’s more to come on that.”

Susan Peithman, director of ODOT’s climate office, will lead the group “from a staff perspective,” a Kotek spokesperson said.

Grace Crunician and Bruce Hanna will serve as co-chairs.

Crunician retired from her role as general manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District in 2019. She was ODOT’s director from 1996 to 2001.

Hanna retired from the Oregon Legislature in 2014 after serving five terms as a representative for Roseburg. Hanna, a Republican, served with former Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, as co-Speaker of the House for a time when Oregon’s House of Representatives was evenly split.

“We are in a new place now given what’s happening on the ballot and elsewhere, where we have to take a new approach to solutions,” said Kelly Brooks, Kotek’s transportation policy advisor.

Brooks told the commission the work group will perform similar duties as that of a panel convened by then-Gov. Kate Brown in 2016. That group produced a report that aided in the creation of the 2017 transportation package.

The new work group’s first meeting will be in April and be open to the public. The group will draft a report by the end of the year.

The group’s members, other than Crunician and Hanna, were not announced last week.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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