Oregon Democrats’ major road-funding bill is heading toward its first floor vote, but the path forward for House Bill 2025 is less certain than ever.

The bill to raise a wide range of taxes and fees – totaling $14.6 billion over the next decade – passed out of a legislative committee in a sometimes testy hearing Friday evening. It now heads to the House.

The question is whether it can find the necessary three-fifths majority support once it gets there.

With Republicans opposed, Democrats may need to vote in lockstep to pass a bill that would eventually hike taxes by nearly $2 billion a year. But the party showed anything but unanimity in the run-up to the committee vote.

In order to ensure the bill passed out of the Joint Transportation Reinvestment Committee, Senate President Rob Wagner preemptively removed a skeptical member of his party from the committee. Wagner swapped himself in for Sen. Mark Meek, D-Gladstone, who said earlier in the week he would not support the bill.

The maneuver angered some other Democrats who, like Meek, represent swing districts.

“We are here to elevate the voices of our constituents and we are saying NO to insane tax increases!! And this is what happens! Shame,” state Rep. Annessa Hartman, D-Gladstone, wrote in an Instagram post criticizing Wagner’s decision.

It was not clear whether Hartman was intending to speak for other lawmakers with the post, but she was one of at least six House Democrats who came to watch Friday’s work session.

Alongside Hartman, Reps. Ricki Ruiz of Portland, Emerson Levy of Bend, April Dobson of Happy Valley, John Lively of Springfield and Daniel Nguyen of Portland were all on hand for all or part of the committee hearing.

With Meek removed, HB 2025’s passage out of committee seemed assured. But that didn’t make it simple.

Lawmakers in both parties drafted dozens of amendments to HB 2025 since it first emerged early last week. Republican lawmakers on the committee attempted repeatedly to advance their own proposals featuring far lower tax increases – or none at all – without success.

In the end, Democrats voted together to change some proposed fee increases and make a broad array of other changes to the 102-page bill. But lawmakers kept major tax increases and planned uses for new money in the bill essentially the same.

Among HB 2025’s many provisions, it would:

• Raise the state’s 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax by 15 cents.
• Index the gas tax to rise with inflation.
• Hike a broad array of vehicle registration, title and licensing fees.
• Create a 2% tax on sales of new cars and a 1% tax on sales of used cars worth more than $10,000.
• Require electric vehicle and hybrid owners to sign up for OreGo, the state’s decade-old program that charges drivers for miles driven, as opposed to fuel consumption.
• Institute a new per-mile charge for some commercial delivery vehicles.
• Simplify taxation on heavy vehicles and diesel fuel.
• Set aside money for a pair of uncompleted highway megaprojects in the Portland metro area.
• Mandate more frequent audits of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Friday’s vote and surprise committee dismissal were the latest moments in a process that dates back nearly a year.

Lawmakers spent months last year touring the state, holding listening sessions about what Oregonians wanted to see in a new transportation funding package.

Democrats have insisted their proposal presents a legislative vision for the concerns they heard. And, crucially, they argue the bill will set Oregon on a path to enduring transportation funding at a time roads in many places are crumbling, and existing money goes less and less far.

But few lawmakers expressed pleasure with a process that didn’t see an actual bill emerge until the 11th hour.

State Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, pointed out that estimates of what the bill would raise over a decade came out only after public hearings on the bill were finished.

“The public has not been able to weigh in since we’ve gotten any sort of revenue impact on what this bill will actually do,” Boshart Davis said.

Sen. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, said she would support the bill – despite what she called a flawed process – because the stakes of inaction were too high. ODOT has said it would have to eliminate nearly 1,000 positions without at least $350 million more in the next budget, and cities and counties have repeatedly warned that they cannot pay for mounting road projects.

“It is not easy to vote for higher taxes, but I am skeptical that Oregonians pocketbooks are really better off if we continue to let our roads crumble,” said Pham, suggesting people could miss work because of reduced access to transit.

Others argued the Legislature should be doing more.

“I am getting hundreds of emails from people who say this package does nothing to reduce the 35% of the greenhouse gas load that the transportation is in this state,” said state Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie, who proposed additional tax hikes even further to fund priorities like vehicle electrification infrastructure.

Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, who was a key GOP negotiator on the package, said prior to the party-line vote, that the process had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I was really hopeful that we would be here today with a product that was a product of negotiation,” said Starr, who helped hammer out transportation spending with Democrats during a previous stint in the Legislature. “Unfortunately, that’s not where we’re at today and for me, that’s frustrating and sad.”

Starr called the package “ a massive, massive tax increase on Oregonians.”

Among the last to speak was Meek, who sat in on the meeting despite being removed from committee. He said he was open to voting on a tax bill to help fund ODOT – but that HB 2025 went too far.

“It’s not affordable to Oregonians,” he said, vowing to oppose the bill on the Senate floor. “We are facing dire economic times… and yet we’re looking at this new tax solution.”

Democrats hold three-fifths supermajorities in both chambers. But with Republicans showing blanket opposition to the transportation bill, the party may need to muster all its members in order to get HB 2025 across the finish line.

Meanwhile, opponents of the bill are already vowing to send it to voters if it does pass. That could doom the proposal’s chances – Oregonians have shot down past statewide gas tax hikes.

But Democrats took a step on Friday toward giving their law a better shot at passing at the ballot. House Bill 3390, which passed the House by a bare majority vote, would allow majority Democrats to craft the ballot title for a referral – potentially pivotal in shaping voters’ perception of their law. That bill now heads to the Senate.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/20/oregon-transportation-bill-moves-vote-splits-democrats/