NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | May 6, 2016 | PAGE 9
Portland labor group supports temporary 10-cent gas tax
If you live in Portland, vote for
the temporary 10 cent gas tax.
Just don’t expect it to solve the
City’s serious street maintenance
problem.
The four-year 10-cent-a-gal-
lon gas tax is on the May 17 bal-
lot as Measure 26-173. Backed
by the Northwest Oregon Labor
Council, the measure would
raise about $16 million a year.
Of that, about $9 million a year
will pay for street maintenance,
and about $7 million a year will
pay for safety improvements like
sidewalks, lighting, bike routes,
and safety improvements around
schools. The trouble is, $9 mil-
lion a year is a drop in the
bucket: A 2013 audit said it
would take more than $70 mil-
lion a year for 10 years to deal
with the City’s street mainte-
nance backlog, thanks to
decades of underfunding by the
city.
Why isn’t the City aiming for
a complete fix?
“Because we didn’t think we
could get a dollar-a-gallon gas
tax passed,” says Steve Novick,
the City Commissioner in charge
of the Portland Bureau of Trans-
portation (PBOT). “Getting a
“At the end of the day, if
the roads are crumbling
and your car is getting
torn up, or kids can’t
safely walk down the
street or cross the street,
you have to suck it up.
It’s got to be paid for.”
— NW Oregon Labor Council
Executive Secretary
Bob Tackett
piece of the pie is better than
nothing.”
Last year, Novick and Mayor
Charlie Hales considered push-
ing a street fee that would be as-
sessed on property owners, but
they backed off in face of oppo-
sition from the public and other
members of City Council.
The 2013 audit blamed City
Council for spending money on
other priorities — like streetcar
operations, downtown market-
ing, and transit mall upkeep —
that should have gone to street
maintenance. It wasn’t the first
time: The City Auditor’s office
warned in 2006 and again in
2008 that deferring street main-
tenance would result in higher
costs later on.
Novick admits that the main-
tenance backlog is a product of
decades of City Council deci-
sions, but says the current Port-
land City Council tried to show
good faith last year by adding
$20 million to the street mainte-
nance budget from the City’s
general fund — the first time
since 1985 that’s happened. And
Commissioner Amanda Fritz
earlier this year got a policy
passed that says at least half of
unspent budget funds and other
one-time revenue must be spent
on maintaining infrastructure.
The proposed gas tax misses
two groups of road users,
Novick acknowledges: electric
vehicles, because they don’t use
gas, and heavy trucks. Heavy
trucks are responsible for 13 per-
cent of road use, but they were
exempted from the tax for prac-
tical reasons, because they
mostly refuel outside of Port-
land. Novick says he plans to
add a surcharge to the weight-
Northwest Oregon
Labor Council Recommends:
Amanda Schroeder
for
Multnomah County
Commission
District 4
4
Authorized and paid for by Northwest Oregon Labor Council COPE
mile tax assessed on trucks.
Gas is cheap right now, but
roads continue to be expensive,
and are only going to get more
so. Cars are more fuel efficient
than they used to be, and that’s a
good thing, except that it means
less dedicated revenue to main-
tain roads.
As many as 20 other Oregon
cities have a local gas tax,
though the highest one else-
where is 5 cents a gallon. The
State of Oregon also has a gas
tax of 30 cents per gallon that it
shares with cities and counties to
pay for roads, and Multnomah
County has a 3-cent-a-gallon gas
tax. [The federal gas tax —
which has been 18.4 cents per
gallon since 1993 — pays for
federal highways.]
In 2015, the Oregon Legisla-
ture was expecting to pass in-
creased road funding via a
statewide gas tax increase, but
the effort failed when Republi-
can legislators blocked the pack-
age to protest passage of a clean
fuels mandate. Oregon State
Building Trades Council Execu-
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