Oregon Governor Tina Kotek is working to deny Oregonians an up or down vote on a $4.3 billion tax and fee hike she and her Democratic allies narrowly squeezed through a marathon special legislative session last month as two Republican legislators who opposed the bill gear up to gather signatures to subject the tax hike to a voter referendum.
According to The Oregonian, Kotek said last week:
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. 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.
Now, go back and read it again. It’s a shockingly anti-democratic, elitist thing for an elected official to say aloud. Even more for a sitting governor who’s gearing up for a re-election campaign.
Once you strip away the weird pronoun obfuscation, the first sentence says Oregonians cannot be trusted with deciding what Oregonians want or don’t want their state government to do because Kotek knows they’ll vote not to do something she very much wants to do.
To confirm she did not mispeak, Kotek confirms her dismal view of the will of the people in the second sentence: “We have to move forward for the state[.]” The people who live in the state should not get to decide whether to move forward, or what forward even means. Tina Kotek, her Democratic allies and the Service Employee International Union (“we”) made those decisions already, thank you very much.
Procedural games
It’s not just rhetoric. Oregon law starts the 90-day clock to gather the approximately 78,000 signatures to get a tax hike repeal on the ballot on the day the special session adjourned: October 1, 2025. However, referendum petitioners are not allowed to actually begin collecting signatures until the governor signs the bill into law.
The tax bill finally made it to the governor’s desk for signature yesterday, having languished at Senate President Rob Wagner’s desk for six days after Speaker Julie Fahey signed it October 2. Having earlier passed the House, the bill passed the Senate September 29.
Those six days drained nearly seven percent of the total time petitioners have to gather signatures. Kotek now has 30 working days (weekends excluded) to sign the bill into law. She could sign it today. Every day she waits helps her deny Oregonians a vote on the tax bill.
Procedural brinksmanship and “petulant children”
The tax hike’s path to Kotek’s desk was the most tortured in recent memory precisely because Oregonians don’t like it. That’s why it took supermajority-wielding Democrats two legislative sessions, including the longest special session in state history. Willamette Week reported a June 2025 poll conducted by a business group showed “voters strongly oppose” what was then a proposed 10-cent per gallon hike (the bill the legislature eventually passed last month included a six-cent hike).
The poll showed Oregonians didn’t buy Democrats’ argument for the urgent necessity of raising taxes, with 65% of respondents classifying the condition of state highways as “good,” and putting “roads and traffic” at the bottom of a list of priorities on which homelessness, government mismanagement and housing affordability predominated, according to Willamette Week.
The original tax bill was crafted in secret by Democrats and their allies during the first 2025 legislative session, made public just prior to committee hearings on it. Nonetheless, during hearings in both 2025 sessions, Oregonians turned out in droves to urge legislators not to pass the original tax hike bill and, later, the scaled back version that now sits on Kotek’s desk.
The unpopularity of the tax bill forced Democrats to haul two ailing members into the legislature this year. During the first 2025 session, Rep. Hoa Nguyen (D-Portland) made an appearance on the House floor in an attempt to show she would be able to vote on the measure, which was in doubt due to her ongoing treatment for cancer. Nguyen voted for the bill in the special session September 1. Nguyen passed away from cancer yesterday.
The one-month gap between House passage and Senate passage resulted from Sen. Chris Gorsek (D-Gresham) having suffered serious complications from surgery just prior to the special session. Democrats knew Gorsek would be unable to vote right away, but had the House vote anyway, announced Gorsek’s condition, and prolonged the special session until Gorsek was finally able to leave the hospital and show up in the Senate to vote yes.
During the first 2025 session, Rep. Mark Gamba (D-Milwaukie) sponsored a bill to deprive Oregonians of the right to vote on city and county gas tax hikes, explaining he considered Oregonians who voted against tax hikes “petulant children.” Every time the state gas tax hike has been exposed to public view, the children have indeed been petulant. Democrats voted against a Republican amendment to force a popular vote on the bill.
Now, Kotek knows petulant Oregon voters will reject her tax hike if given the chance, so she is trying to deny them the chance.
That’s democracy, Oregon style.
This article originally appeared in the Oregon Roundup.