The place is the state transportation package deal?
With simply three full weeks left within the legislative session, panic is setting in amongst advocacy teams and lawmakers alike as Democratic social gathering leaders proceed to barter behind closed doorways on a long-awaited transportation funding package deal.
As a substitute of sitting on their palms, a notable group of Democrats — together with Portland Senator Khanh Pham and Joint Committee on Transportation Co-Chair Chris Gorsek — attended a press convention on the Capitol steps in Salem this morning to unveil their imaginative and prescient for the package deal. It contains $665 million greater than the $1.9 billion funding framework launched by social gathering leaders again in April.
This new proposal is from a gaggle of Democrats which might be decidedly extra progressive than social gathering leaders in relation to transportation coverage. Their imaginative and prescient, which they name the SMART (Protected, Trendy, Inexpensive & Accountable, Dependable Transportation) Framework is predicated on a memo despatched again in April to members of the Joint Committee on Transportation by Home Consultant Mark Gamba, a Democrat who represents Milwaukie.
Gamba and Pham are members of the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment, a brand new model of the Joint Committee on Transportation (JCT) shaped to supervise the brand new invoice. They’re each freeway enlargement skeptics and have been stable voices for main transportation reform for years. Becoming a member of them in assist of the SMART Framework are: Senators Gorsek, Lisa Reynolds, Courtney Neron Misslin, Jeff Golden, and Kathleen Taylor; and Representatives Rob Nosse, Thuy Tran, Willy Chotzen, Travis Nelson, Farrah Chaichi, Sarah Finger McDonald, Tom Andersen, and Lisa Fragala.
Their SMART Framework seems to be to lift about $2.5 billion and marks a really sturdy distinction to the austere proposal shared by a conservative wing of Republicans in early Might. Pham, Gamba, and the proposal’s different supporters say the time is now for Oregon to extend funding for transit and guarantee strong providers statewide — whereas additionally making streets safer round faculties, investing in ODOT’s city highways that proceed to plague cities with their unsafe designs, and make investments extra in bikeways, rail, and electrical car rebates for bikes and vehicles.
Becoming a member of lawmakers at this morning’s occasion had been representatives from AARP, a faculty board, a transit employee’s union, and a transit company.
Democrats take pleasure in a slim supermajority in Salem, however are reportedly working with a choose group of Republicans to hammer out a invoice. Once they launched an replace on their package deal late final month, some transportation and environmental advocacy teams panned the plan’s provisions — which embrace a cap-and-trade scheme that will fund freeway expansions — as “cap and pave.”
In comparison with the Joint Committee’s framework launched in April, the SMART Framework contains: a better fuel tax enhance; a 2% gross sales tax on new automotive purchases and 1% on used vehicles, as a substitute of a 1% person price (with gross sales taxes not being tied to the Freeway Belief Fund, thus permitting lawmakers extra flexibility in how the income might be spent); and a bigger enhance to the payroll tax that funds transit which might end in no cuts in service. One other distinction from the JCT’s framework is one thing I hinted at again in April: a unique strategy to the bike tax. Democratic social gathering leaders need to enhance Oregon’s present bike tax from $15 to $24.50; the SMART Framework would as a substitute set up a brand new, Bicycle Privilege Tax of 0.8%. This progressive strategy would exchange the regressive, flat-fee construction of the present tax.
These income sources would permit the SMART Framework to lift $39 million extra per biennium for off-highway bike and strolling paths than the JCT’s preliminary framework, fund Gamba’s $6 million e-bike rebate plan, and extra.
The provisions in SMART reply to the kind of investments advocacy teams have known as for with a view to focus extra of ODOT’s spending on protected streets, upkeep, and non-driving modes; as a substitute of the standard concentrate on freeway and freeway megaprojects.
“The SMART Framework is accountable to the Oregonians who’ve spoken up by stopping cuts to transit service, totally funding our Protected Routes program to get youngsters to high school safely, and by offering the assets mandatory for cities and counties throughout the state to repair their native streets,” stated Sen. Pham in a press release.
And Rep. Gamba added that now just isn’t a time for transportation austerity. “Now we have underfunded our transportation system for many years now, and that persevering with to do this will end in bridge closures and freeway deaths,” he stated. “Kicking the can additional down the street will make it even that rather more painful to get better. Now we have a possibility to do the accountable factor and make our streets safer within the course of.”
Whether or not or not Democratic social gathering leaders heed this recommendation is difficult to inform. However as soon as they do launch a invoice, they received’t have a lot time to haggle over it and there are sure to be compromises to get one thing handed earlier than the top of session on June twenty ninth.
Obtain the SMART Framework one-pager for extra particulars:
