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.

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