Tax bill dead; legislature adjourns

Petulant children rejoice

Gov. Tina Kotek looks on as State Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis testifies in opposing to transportation tax hike in a committee hearing late yesterday. (Screen grab courtesy Julie Parrish).

Democrats’ massive transportation tax hike bill, their must-pass magnum opus of the 2025 session, died yesterday without a floor vote and a stripped-down, last-ditch substitute of a three-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase never got traction despite Governor Tina Kotek’s personal appeal to legislators that they must hike taxes to avoid layoffs from the Oregon Department of Transportation. The legislature adjourned, ending its 2025 session without the infusion of billions of new taxes and fees for which Democrats and their allies had spent over a year preparing.

I’m short on time this morning, so I’ll rely on Oregon Capital Chronicle’s description of Kotek’s testimony before the Rules Committee late yesterday in support of the stripped-down hike:

Testifying on the bill just after 6 p.m. on Friday, Gov. Tina Kotek said she understood how difficult it is to accept that a bill months in the making won’t succeed. But right now, she said, the most important thing is to make sure the Oregon Department of Transportation has the money it needs to avoid 600 to 700 layoffs. If the Legislature fails to pass the amendment, Kotek said she will begin to let workers go by as soon as Monday.

The boss of the state’s most influential public employee union also weighed in to highlight the necessity of saving her members’ jobs, according to the Chronicle:

Melissa Unger, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Local 503 that represents many transportation department employees, said her members supported everything advocates of the earlier bill wanted. With time running out before the Legislature must adjourn by Sunday, Unger said they needed some assurance that workers won’t lose their jobs.

“We ask that you either pass this or do something so that people in the next two weeks across our state and in every county do not receive layoff notices,” she said.

Republicans celebrated the demise of the tax hike. State Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis (R-Albany), who spearheaded opposition to the bill and was yelled at by committee co-chair Chris Gorsek (D-Gresham) for her efforts, said in a press release,

Born in the basement, this bill would have doubled down on the failures of the past, upended the bipartisan history of transportation in Oregon, raised costs for every business and family, and failed to deliver the accountability and core road maintenance Oregonians expect.

The demise of this bill is a very big deal. I’ll have more thoughts on how it failed and what it means in the coming weeks, but for now, some initial thoughts:

1. Kotek’s and Unger’s last-ditch appeals focused on preserving union jobs in state government confirm the most essential thing, for Democrats, about the tax hike was not fixing roads, but keeping the taxpayer to state to union to Democrat campaign coffer money machine whirring.

2. Legislative Republicans, who in their long time in the political desert have at times justifiably earned a reputation for ineffectiveness, deserve credit for adeptly combining messaging and legislative procedure to help kill the bill.

3. Petulant children won the day. Testimony in opposition to the tax hike bill flooded the committee, making it impossible for moderate Democrats to ignore the deep unpopularity of a massive regressive tax hike to reward a floundering state agency with a huge raise.

We’ll have more about this in Oregon Roundup. Stay tuned, and stay petulant.