Governor delay in signing transportation bill limits GOP time for referendum, experts say

By MIA MALDONADO
Of the Oregon Capital Chronicle

Within hours of the Oregon Senate passing a transportation bill on Sept. 29 meant to keep transportation workers employed and maintain funding for cities and counties to fix their roads, Gov. Tina Kotek directed the Oregon Department of Transportation to stop layoffs and begin hiring for the winter season.

But more than two weeks later, Kotek has yet to sign the very bill she and her party called an emergency.

Under Oregon law, Kotek has 30 business days from Oct. 1 — when the special session adjourned — to sign the bill into law. While it’s not unusual for governors to take time before signing bills into law, state political experts say the governor’s delay is a strategic move to limit the time Republicans have to challenge the measure through a referendum.

After the bill’s passage, Republican lawmakers vowed to give Oregon voters the opportunity to support or reject four parts of the legislation in the November 2026 election, including a 6-cent gas tax increase, car registration fee increases, title fee increases and doubling the payroll tax used for public transit to 0.2% of a paycheck.

Rep. Ed Diehl, a Stayton Republican and a chief petitioner leading the referendum effort called “No Tax Oregon” said he expected the governor to wait before signing it.

“I think she’s rightfully concerned that people don’t like these taxes and fee increases, and she’s concerned we’re going to get the signatures,” he said. “She has until Nov. 12 to sign this, so she’s really eating into a lot of a lot of time that we could be using to gather signatures.”

People seeking to refer a law to the ballot have until 90 days after the Legislature adjourns sine die to gather 78,116 signatures — 4% of the total ballots cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. But they can’t start circulating petitions until the bill officially becomes a law, when the governor signs it or allows it to take effect without signing.

Kotek press secretary Roxy Mayer did not say why the governor has not yet signed the bill into law.

Undoing the transportation package means hundreds of transportation workers would lose their jobs and Oregon roads would have more potholes, be more prone to wildfire and have more dangerous conditions in the winter, Mayer said.

Republicans during the regular legislative session proposed an alternative package that avoided tax hikes and instead would have redirected funding from climate initiatives, public transit and passenger rail services, bicycle programs and payroll tax allocations. It had no way of generating new revenue for ODOT aside from using money from the state’s Emergency Board, a legislative group that allocates money in emergencies.

“Not only did the Republican proposal not solve the immediate crisis at hand, it would have left their own constituents out in the cold,” Mayer said. “Oregon families count on the transportation services — like ports, transit, and rail — that the Republican proposal would have defunded.”

Even with a shorter time, Diehl said he’s confident No Tax Oregon will succeed at gathering enough signatures and stopping the bill from taking effect.

“We will stop this bill from going into play, and the governor will come back to us and sit down and say, ‘Okay, how are we going to do this without raising taxes?’” he said. “And that’s the conversation we’ll have, and we’ll figure it out. Probably in another emergency session.”

Before the bill can reach the governor’s desk, the speaker of the Oregon House and Senate president must sign it. House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, signed the transportation bill on Oct. 2, three days after it passed. Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego signed it Oct. 8.

“It took a week after adjournment that they transmitted it to the governor last Thursday,” public policy expert and former state lawmaker Rick Metsger told the Capital Chronicle, noting that the transmission process takes time away from being able to gather signatures. “Realistically, they’re probably going to have between 40 and 50 days max to collect signatures, not really 90 days.”

Metsger said less time to gather signatures means No Tax Oregon will have less opportunity to succeed at making it to the ballot.

Reed College political science professor Chris Koski agreed that the delay to sign the bill is intentional.

“But it could very well be that Kotek has bigger issues, or dealing with issues related to ICE and the federal presence in Portland,” Koski said.

The number of referendums Oregon has had on the ballot has declined over the years, public opinion researcher John Horvick told the Capital Chronicle. The success of those referendums isn’t a good predictor of what will happen with the No Tax Oregon effort, he said.

When he asks people if they support gas tax increases, Horvick said the answer is almost always no.

“That’s not a surprise,” he said. “The answer is ‘no’ for a lot of tax increases. On the other hand, if we ask people what their top priorities are in terms of transportation, they tell us it’s to maintain the quality of our existing roads.”

This aligns with what gas tax proponents are pushing, he said.

Diehl said Republicans are still in the early stages of planning their referendum effort and recruiting petition captains, training volunteers and raising money to hire signature gatherers.

As of mid-October, No Tax Oregon had not filed any campaign finance filings with the Oregon Secretary of State.

“Nobody in our group wants roads to go without being so plowed and potholes to be fixed,” Diehl said. “But we view this as our last opportunity to get the governor and Democratic leadership to seriously look at other options that are more in line with what Oregonians want.”

Used with permission from Oregon Capital Chronicle. See more at www.oregoncapitalchronicle.com.