Legislators start statewide tour on transportation needs and funding.

(PORTLAND TRIBUNE) -- As legislators begin to consider Oregon’s next multibillion-dollar transportation funding plan, how road maintenance and driver services are funded may overshadow what highway, bridge and other projects are included.

Members of the Joint Committee on Transportation heard plenty of comments on both aspects during the first of 12 planned hearings across the state over the next four months. The first one was June 4 at the Cascades campus of Portland Community College. The final hearings are Sept. 26 in Happy Valley and Sept. 27 in Hillsboro.

Lawmakers hope to replicate their process from eight years ago, when similar hearings helped them achieve a 2017 plan that funded not only road and bridge work but also public transit and other transportation modes.

But Kris Strickler, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, said Oregon no longer can rely on simply increasing the state’s historic mainstays of fuel taxes, weight-mile taxes on trucks, and driver and vehicle fees to pay for road work and licensing and registration services. Oregon voters decided back in 1980 to earmark those sources for road and bridge work

But ODOT had to turn to the Legislature for $19 million from the tax-supported general fund just to pay for highway maintenance this past winter. Fuel taxes still generate a lot of money at 40 cents per gallon, but fuel efficiency of newer cars and trucks has resulted in declining returns.

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