State Rep. Mark Gamba (D-Milwaukie) said Oregon voters who oppose tax hikes to fund departments responsible for streets and other infrastructure act like “petulant children,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, just as Gamba’s fellow Democrats on the Joint Committee on Transportation position for an additional $1.75 billion per biennium in tax and fee increases for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Gamba elaborated, according to OPB:
“Every year, cities and counties get poorer and poorer and their infrastructure gets older and older,” said state Rep. Mark Gamba, a Democratic sponsor of the bill and the former mayor of Milwaukie. “That’s a recipe for bad things.”
Gamba served as mayor of Milwaukie from 2015 to 2023. In 2015, the City of Milwaukie, population 21,500, received $36,887,028 in revenue; In 2023, it projected receiving over $100 million in revenue.
Gamba made those comments in relation to his cosponsorship of a bill, SB 687, that would remove from Oregon law the requirement that local voters must approve city or county gas tax increases. The legislature adopted that requirement in 2009 as a concession to (potentially petulant) taxpayers nervous about a state-mandated 6-cent-per-gallon gas tax hike. Legislative Democrats, who hold a supermajority in both houses, can increase taxes and fees without any Republican votes, and without a vote of the people.
This year, the Democrat supermajority-controlled Oregon legislature, led by Gamba’s Joint Transportation Committee, hopes to persuade Oregonians to go in for another big transportation funding package, the first since 2009. The committee received a report recently that laid out no fewer than 12 tax and fee increase proposals to generate the $1.75 billion every two years ODOT insists it needs to maintain roads. Options under consideration include a 79-cent-per-gallon increase in the state gas tax, currently 40 cents-per-gallon, rental car fees, increased licensing fees, and even electric vehicle charging fees.
Oregon currently has the 10th highest gas tax in the U.S. ODOT’s funding has continued to increase over time, but it says its cost of doing business has increased as well, including around $553 million per biennium in debt service for previous projects. ODOT’s pleas for more money intensified after it was forced to abandon an unpopular proposal to charge Portland area drivers a toll for using highways.
Just last week, the Transportation Committee received input from ODOT on its quest for more funds.
I did not receive by publication time an email asking Rep. Gamba’s office to confirm OPB’s characterization of his comments.
Jeff Eager writes the Oregon Roundup about things that going on in Oregon from a conservative or classical liberal perspective while avoiding partisanship. oregonroundup.substack.com