FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2016
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion / Local
— Guest Opinion —
ODOT’s
fiscal cliff
By Sen. Doug Whitsett
Oregon has been spent into a monumental, multi-agen-
cy, multi-billion dollar budgetary hole during the past
several legislative sessions.
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is
among the state agencies facing the worst financial chal-
lenges for the 2017-19 biennium and beyond. Most of the
agency’s financial woes are the result of legislative and
agency management decisions made over the past dozen
years.
The lion’s share of ODOT’s state highway division
funding is raised by the fuel and weight-per-mile taxes, as
well as certain vehicle license and registration fees. That
highway fund revenue is constitutionally dedicated to the
maintenance, preservation and construction of Oregon
highways and bridges.
ODOT’s budget has traditionally been done on a
pay-as-you-go basis. Prior to 2002, the agency was not
authorized to spend more revenue than it collected during
each budget cycle.
That all changed during the administrations of former
Governor’s John Kitzhaber and Ted Kulongoski. An
undeniably large backlog of much-needed highway and
bridge improvements had accumulated.
At the time, the amount of money needed to pay for
those deferred highway construction projects would have
required very significant increases in fuel and weight-
per-mile taxes. Rather than taking potentially unpopular
actions to raise the necessary revenue, legislators began
approving a series of laws authorizing borrowing the
money to pay for the needed highway projects.
Legislators were told the agency would be able to im-
mediately spend about six dollars, on highway and bridge
construction projects, for each dollar borrowed and
bonded against future income from newly enacted high-
way taxes and fees. The principle and interest on the new
highway revenue bonds would be paid by future revenue
raised from the new taxes and fees.
A super-majority of the Legislative Assembly allowed
themselves to be repeatedly convinced this was good
fiscal policy. They enacted smaller tax and fee increases,
and bonded a lot of the future revenue from those in-
creases, to get a much greater “bang for the buck.”
Beginning in 2003, the Legislative Assembly enacted a
series of Oregon Transportation Investment Acts as well
as the 2009 Oregon Jobs and Transportation Act to help
address the backlog of bridge repairs and the expan-
sion of Oregon highway capacity. The preponderance of
the new highway and bridge construction projects were
funded by issuing highway revenue bonds.
The new laws required the debt to be repaid with
fuel and weight-per-mile tax receipts collected over the
next 25 years. I voted against these bills because I was
concerned they would diminish the state highway fund
and negatively affect ODOT’s future ability to maintain
highways throughout Oregon.
The Legislative Assembly also authorized borrowing
several hundred million dollar in lottery revenue bonds
to fund a series of Connect Oregon bills. Originally, the
funding was to be used for needed multimodal freight
and public transit projects. Most of those projects have
already been completed.
They will be paid for out of the state’s share of future
lottery earnings over the next 25 years. I voted for these
bills because they did not negatively impact the capacity
of the state highway fund.
The ODOT highway division has been spending nearly
half a billion dollars of this borrowed money during
each two-year budget cycle for more than a decade. The
projects funded with borrowed money did pay for im-
provements to bridges and other key aspects of our state
highway, transit and freight infrastructure. However, the
debt accrued to fund all that work is now jeopardizing the
agency’s entire budget.
As previously stated, the principle and interest on all
highway revenue bonds must be paid out of future state
highway funds. The debt service on currently outstanding
highway revenue bonds will cost nearly half a billion dol-
lars per budget cycle until the year 2034.
Additionally, the principle and interest on lottery rev-
enue bonds must be paid from the state’s share of future
lottery earnings.
ODOT has already spent all but about $100 million of
the bonded money. Between four and a half billion and
five billion dollars of future highway fund and lottery
revenue will be required to pay the total principle and
interest on all of that borrowed money.
Not a single dollar of that enormous amount of money
will be available to maintain, preserve or build Oregon
highways until after the year 2034.
In short, a future generation will be forced to pay for
the roads and bridges and other facilities constructed with
the proceeds from these highway and lottery revenue
bonds. That infrastructure will largely be deteriorated by
the time the debt is repaid.
The story being told to Oregonians is that revenues
derived from the fuel taxes are declining and are now
inadequate to meet the agency’s needs. Further, the al-
leged revenue reduction is supposedly due to increasing
fuel efficiency and the advent of more electric and hybrid
vehicles.
These allegations simply are not accurate. Both fuel tax
and weight per mile tax revenues coming into Oregon
state highway fund coffers have continued to increase
each biennium in an almost linear fashion. Receipts from
vehicle license and registration fees have continued to
grow in a similar manner.
The number of electric and hybrid cars registered in
Oregon is hardly a rounding error compared to the total
number of automobiles registered in the state. Their
cumulative effect on either highway wear and tear or
highway fund revenue is insignificant and is likely to
remain negligible into the foreseeable future.
The real reasons for ODOT’s budget shortfall are sig-
nificantly more complex. The monumental budget deficit
is caused by a combination of the agency’s growing and
prolonged debt payments, the reality that there is no more
borrowed money to spend, the impending huge com-
pensation increases for its approximately 2,500 highway
division employees and its propensity for spending too
much highway fund revenue for “highway-related”
purposes. The state’s own graphics demonstrate both the
causes and the immense size of that fiscal cliff.
ODOT spends an enormous amount of highway fund
money on agency administration, land use and environ-
mental mitigation planning, as well as other non-highway
motor vehicle services, including certain funding for
public transit, highway and bridge art, extensive land-
scaping, facilities for bicycle and pedestrians, solar
installations and electric vehicle charging stations. Much
of this spending could, and I believe should, be refocused
on the actual preservation, maintenance and construction
of highways and bridges.
ODOT leadership and some legislators appear to be
promoting the enactment of a vehicle mileage tax (VMT)
to raise the money needed to continue funding its opera-
tions. According to this recent article in the Oregonian,
the VMT may be among the options considered by law-
makers in the upcoming 2017 session to help ODOT fill
its ever-growing budget gap.
Make no mistake, simple math demonstrates the pro-
posed 1.5 cent per mile VMT is anything but a “revenue
neutral” shift in how Oregonians are charged to use their
highways. It would create a massive tax increase for ve-
hicles that are designed to comply with the federal Corpo-
rate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards.
Oregon currently charges a 30 cent per gallon tax on
motor fuel. An automobile making 20 miles per gal-
lon (MPG) would break even at the proposed level of
taxation and vehicles making less than 20 MPG could
actually pay less.
However, for vehicles designed to comply with CAFE
standards, the proposed VMT will amount to a 50 percent
increase for cars making 30 MPG, a 100 percent increase
for cars making 40 MPG and a 200 percent increase for
cars making 60 MPG.
Trucks currently pay a commensurate weight-per-mile
Library book sale planned
Give your summer
reading a boost! Come to
the Miners Jubilee Friends
of the Library Book Sale,
held at the Baker County
Library, 2400 Resort
Street.
The sale offers nearly
new, used, and special
collectible books and
audiovisual materials, and
all proceeds benefit our
wonderful County Library,
as well as its six branches.
The Book Sale opens
Friday morning, July 15th,
and continues for two full
weekends, plus the week in
between.
New books will be put
out daily.
Dates and times of the
Book Sale are as follows:
Friday July 15th, 9 a.m.
to 6 p.m.; Saturday July
16th, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.;
Sunday July 17th, 10 a.m.
to 4 p.m.; Monday through
Thursday July 18th
through 21st, 9 a.m. to 7
p.m.; Friday July 22nd,
9 am to 6 p.m.; Saturday
July 23rd, 10 am to 4 p.m.;
Sunday July 24th, 12 noon
to 4 p.m.
opened for 30 minutes
beginning at 10 a.m. and
again at 2 p.m. to allow
traffic to pass.
Flaggers will be on the
road to assist with traffic
Letter to the Editor Policy: The Baker County Press
reserves the right not to publish letters containing factu-
al falsehoods or incoherent narrative. Letters promoting
or detracting from specific for-profit businesses will not
be published. Word limit is 375 words per letter. Letters
are limited to one every other week per author. Letters
should be submitted to Editor@TheBakerCountyPress.
com.
Advertising and Opinion Page Disclaimer:
Opinions submitted as Guest Opinions or Letters to
— Contact Us —
YOUR ELECTED
OFFICIALS
The Baker County Press
President Barack Obama
PO Box 567
Baker City, Ore. 97814
202.456.2461 fax
Open Monday-Thursday for calls
9 AM - 4 PM
Open 24/7 for emails
202.456.1414
Whitehouse.gov/contact
US Sen. Jeff Merkley
503.326.3386
503.326.2900 fax
Merkley.Senate.gov
Phone: 541.519.0572
TheBakerCountyPress.com
US Sen. Ron Wyden
541.962.7691
Wyden.Senate.gov
Hells Canyon road closed
The road will be closed
on top of Hells Canyon
Dam on Wednesday, July
6, through Friday, July 8,
from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
MDT. The road will be
tax based on their calcu-
lated share of wear and tear
they cause to Oregon roads.
The proposed new tax
would “equitably” increase
the weight-per-mile tax to
maintain that balance of
shared cost.
Moreover, the VMT will
unfairly tax rural Or-
egonians who must drive
further for virtually every
daily activity. For instance,
Submitted Photo
a five-mile round trip to the
Sen. Doug Whitsett
grocery store would tax an
represents Oregon’s
urban dweller seven and a
Senate District 28.
half cents, while each 70-
mile round trip to town will
tax the rural Oregonian $1.05, regardless of vehicle fuel
mileage.
As is often the case in Oregon, ODOT officials began
their attempts to implement a VMT through voluntary
means. A pilot project, OreGO, was launched in the hopes
of demonstrating Oregon’s success in being the first state
in the nation to fund its highway division with a VMT.
ODOT spent more than $6 million attempting to con-
vince a minimum of 5,000 Oregonians to volunteer to
sign up for the pilot program. Agency expenses included
extensive travel to other states and nations to convince
their governments to enact similar taxes. Thus far, no
other jurisdiction within the United States has enacted a
VMT.
The lack of public support among Oregonians for either
the VMT or the pilot program is also apparent. To date,
fewer than 900 Oregonians have volunteered for the
demonstration project. The bleak, less than 20 percent
participation rate, was achieved only after the agency’s
staff mounted a statewide promotional campaign and
ODOT paid a public relations firm more than half a mil-
lion dollars over two years to promote the pilot project.
In order to bolster those dismal volunteer numbers,
the aforementioned Oregonian article states that ODOT
appears to have leveraged the inclusion of about 50 more
vehicles from the fleets of four private firms that contract
with the agency’s highway construction division. Still,
basic math shows how this social engineering experiment
has cost taxpayers nearly $7,000 per vehicle registered in
the program.
The use of borrowed money, and other budgetary ploys,
is far too often instrumental in the legislative process.
The gimmicks are routinely used for building political
and public support for programs that would not otherwise
pass scrutiny or gain approval.
The long-term consequences of such approaches are
proving to be both prohibitively expensive to the public
and severely limiting to the ability of our public agencies
to function effectively. Oregon voters should expect, and
demand, better use of their tax money.
Political leadership assumes that someone is actually
following. Oregon’s elected and bureaucratic elite have
a long history of attempting to be first, regardless of
precedent, fiscal confidence or widespread public support.
Ironically, we were the first state in the nation to imple-
ment a gas tax!
Another good example of this includes our statewide,
comprehensive land use system that we started in the
1970s that no other state has emulated to date. More
recent examples include our “motor voter” automatic
voter registration program, a three-tiered minimum wage
that perpetuates income inequality based on geography
and an anti-coal bill that will nearly double Oregonians’
utility bills, do very little to reduce global greenhouse
gas emissions and, at best, subsidize green energy jobs in
other states.
Too often, these well intended “we know better than the
voting public” schemes have been enacted at the expense
of their constituents. In my opinion, it is time for ODOT
management and legislators alike to abandon their VMT
concept that virtually no one else appears to like or want.
Please remember—if we do not stand up for rural Or-
egon, no one will.
control. Drivers should ex-
pect delays and plan their
crossings accordingly.
Crews will use a crane to
install stoplogs on the up-
stream side of the dam.
the Editor express the opinions of their authors, and
have not been authored by and are not necessarily
the opinions of The Baker County Press, any of our staff,
management, independent contractors or affiliates.
Advertisements placed by political groups, candidates,
businesses, etc., are printed as a paid service, which
does not constitute an endorsement of or fulfillment ob-
ligation by this newspaper for the products or services
advertised.
Kerry McQuisten, Publisher
Editor@TheBakerCountyPress.com
US Rep. Greg Walden
Wendee Morrissey, Advertising and Sales
Wendee@TheBakerCountyPress.com
541.624.2402 fax
David Conn, Advertising and Sales
David@TheBakerCountyPress.com
Published weekly every Friday.
Subscription rates per year are $29.95 all areas,
e-mail delivery. $39.95 print issue, home delivery,
Baker City city limits only. $49.95 print issue,
mail delivery, outside Baker City city limits only.
Payment in advance.
A division of
Black Lyon Publishing, LLC
541.624.2400
Walden.House.gov
Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown
503.378.3111
Governor.Oregon.gov
State Rep. Cliff Bentz
503.986.1460
State Sen. Ted Ferrioli
541.490.6528
Baker County
Commissioners Bill Harvey;
Mark Bennett; Tim Kerns
541.523.8200
Copyright © 2014 -2016
541.523.8201