OR: Oregon Republican lawmakers say they will attempt to put transportation tax hikes on next year’s ballot

Two Oregon Republican lawmakers said Wednesday they will attempt to refer the transportation tax hikes recently approved by the Legislature to next year’s ballot, a move that would require an intense fundraising effort in the coming months.

Senate Republican Leader Bruce Starr of Dundee and Rep. Ed Diehl of Scio will lead the effort to give voters the final say on the tax hikes that lawmakers recently passed during a month-long special session, Diehl told The Oregonian/OregonLive Wednesday.

“When you try and ram down legislation that Oregonians are adamantly opposed to, this is their last option to have their voice heard,” Diehl said, adding that he is confident voters would defeat the tax increases.

But it’s unclear whether Diehl and his co-petitioners can quickly raise enough money to collect the high threshold of signatures needed to approve the referendum. Leaders of the referendum effort have less than three months to collect the roughly 78,000 signatures required by state law, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

The Democrat-backed transportation package, which passed both legislative chambers on tight margins this month, will raise taxes and fees to prevent widespread breakdowns across Oregon’s road network and avert severe cuts to public transit services.

The proposal will increase the state’s 40 cents per gallon gas tax by 6 cents in January, significantly hike title and registration fees, require electric vehicle users to soon pay a fee per mile driven and double the state’s 0.1% payroll tax for transit for two years.

Gov. Tina Kotek is expected to sign the legislation but has not yet received it, according to Roxy Mayer, spokesperson for the governor. Diehl and his co-petitioners cannot officially file their paperwork for the referendum until Kotek signs the bill into law.

This year’s process to craft a transportation package involved no shortage of partisanship and political theater. While some Republicans have claimed that their perspectives were ignored during that process, Democrats have argued that the bill contains several provisions favored by both parties, such as increased oversight of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Also, the final proposal is significantly less ambitious and contains lower tax increases than Democrats had initially hoped to pass. To amass enough support from their own party — and to get enough Republicans simply to show up to the special session to hold a vote — Democrats made a series of concessions and lowered or omitted most of the proposed tax hikes.

During a press conference Monday, Kotek said she was moving forward with the assumption that the tax hikes were final. Most of the new revenue generated from the bill will be split between the state transportation agency and local governments for basic road maintenance and operations. Without more revenue, the agency said it would have to lay off hundreds of workers in the coming months.

“Frankly, I would urge Oregonians to think about signing on to a referral that will take away our basic ability as Oregonians to keep our roads operating,” Kotek said. “We’re going to move forward with the assumption we have this and we have to move forward for the state and we’ll see what happens.”

Under state law, Diehl and his co-petitioners have 90 days after the legislative session, which ended Wednesday, to collect signatures. Kotek has 30 days to sign the bill, meaning the petitioners will have less than three months to raise money and gather signatures.

Amassing signatures for a referendum or initiative petition typically requires significant financial backing from at least one major donor. In 2022, for instance, labor unions spent more than $1.5 million to gather enough signatures over more than three months to put a measure on the ballot to punish lawmakers who are absent 10 or more days of floor sessions without permission. But that measure required nearly twice as many signatures as a legislative referral, 149,360.

Diehl said he’s not expecting any large organizations or businesses to donate massive sums to the transportation tax referendum effort. If he’s right, it will lower the odds that the referendum will materialize.

Diehl said he’s confident that the campaign will be able to raise enough money from individuals to collect the signatures required.

“We’re pretty confident that between the grassroots efforts that we have and some potential donors we’ve identified, that we’ll be able to raise enough money to accomplish what we want to do,” he said.

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