A high-stakes battle over transportation is brewing in the northern Willamette Valley, with implications for every commuter in the Portland region.
Matt Garrett, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, has convened a group of leaders from Mulino to the Port of Portland, Hood River to Beaverton, to discuss how transportation funding is handed out in ODOT’s Region 1.
That ODOT region includes Clackamas, Hood River and Multnomah counties and most of Washington County.
It’s the only part of ODOT’s portfolio that doesn’t have an Area Commission on Transportation, a powerful board that plays a key role in deciding what projects in a given area receive state transportation money.
In Region 1, assigning that money has always been an improvised task, because there’s no Commission to choose how to spend state transportation money, primarily cash from Oregon’s State Transportation Improvement Program, or STIP.
But in the Portland metro area, Garrett’s move is being met with confusion and trepidation. Leaders express some fear that the creation of an Area Commission on Transportation will dilute the decision-making influence of metropolitan Portland, and of the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation.
“We want to be proportionally represented,” said Metro Council President Tom Hughes at a May 1 council meeting. “Looking at the committee that’s going to discuss this, I don’t see that happening”
It’s a discussion with tens of millions in transportation funding at stake. In the most recent round of STIP funding, for projects from 2015-18, more than $81 million in transportation funding was awarded for projects that expand the region’s transportation system.
But Garrett says urban Region 1 – the Portland metropolitan area – should have faith that the Area Commission on Transportation system can work for all parties.
The urban-rural divide “seems to be dealt with in Area Commissions across the state,” Garrett said in an interview Tuesday. “People don’t think they’re on the outside looking in. (In Lane County’s ACT), whether they’re from Eugene or Florence, they seem to have overcome that concern about waiting and disproportion”
A gap in the gears of Oregon’s funding machine
Oregon’s got a pretty well-oiled machine for assigning transportation funding. Broad committees called Area Commissions on Transportation, or ACTs, send recommendations to the statewide Oregon Transportation Commission. The Oregon statewide commission assigns STIP money based primarily on advice from the ACTs.
Without an ACT in Region 1, transportation money has been assigned on an ad hoc basis. Funding is made available through some capital campaigns, ODOT convenes a group to dole it out, and everyone goes home and waits for the next batch of cash to cycle through.
The last time capital money came through, the ad hoc committee consisted of four representatives from each of the four counties in Region 1. The Port of Portland, ODOT, Metro, TriMet and the Portland City Council also got seats on the ad hoc committee.
“This situation is the result of somebody’s preferred project not being funded,” Metro policy advisor Andy Cotugno said at a Metro Council work session this month. “If you have room to fund one out of 10 projects, nine of those parties are pissed off. ODOT doesn’t have the capacity to fund things that aren’t earmarked”
There’s no clear indication of whose project didn’t get funded.
But when asked who felt like they haven’t been adequately represented, Garrett pointed out that none of Clackamas County’s four representatives came from rural Clackamas County, which has about a quarter of the county’s 375,000 residents.
The Clackamas County Commission chose its representatives to the STIP committee. Commissioner Paul Savas, who represents the county at-large, joined representatives from Lake Oswego, Wilsonville and Fred Meyer Inc.
Savas declined to be interviewed for this story, citing a busy schedule ahead of next week’s primary election.
Garrett’s committee studying funding in Region 1 includes Savas and two other elected Clackamas County representatives: Mulino Hamlet board member Warren Jones and Canby Mayor Brian Hodson. Jones declined to comment on the transportation funding issue; Hodson did not return a call seeking comment.
There’s some evidence, though, that the majority of angst about the Region 1 decision-making process stems from rural Clackamas County.
Last year, Rep. Bill Kennemer, R-Canby, proposed a bill that would create a special ACT, just for rural Clackamas County. That was opposed by ODOT.
“This actually goes against the principle of why ACTs are created. If you create this little stand-alone ACT for a very small portion of a county that belongs to a greater region,” Garrett said of Kennemer’s proposal.
Garrett said detractors of the current system cite the need for a prioritized list of projects – security in knowing what project is next in line for funding.
“The need far outstrips the revenue, so there has to be a maturity to make sure there’s a queue that is engaged, and people understand that their project may be second in the queue,” he said. “There’s a discipline that is demanded, to look at the whole chess board and make sure you’re promoting the best project”
But the chess board is expanding, and flexible rooks and queens are being replaced by weaker pawns. The primary funding source for transportation projects, the gas tax, isn’t pegged to inflation. Revenue is falling as inflation goes up and cars get better mileage; costs for construction are rising, so there’s less money to build things.
That has some at Garrett’s table wondering whether the conversation shouldn’t just be about who’s deciding how transportation money is spent.
Hales calls for more revenue
Where Garrett sees a need for coordination and prioritization, leaders within the Metro region see a different problem – it’s not that there aren’t enough slices of the funding pie being handed out, it’s that the pie just isn’t big enough.
At the May 5 kickoff meeting for Garrett’s task force, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales was adamant that he wanted to see the group come up with a plan for more transportation funding.
“If we think we can solve this problem by moving the furniture around on the ship, I’m getting a lifeboat,” Hales said. If the group says “there’s nothing we can do about the money, but we better carve it up differently, that just makes me tired”
Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette, at the same May 5 meeting, agreed with Hales.
“The big issue here is not whether or not you get a say in how much your community gets, but that there is not enough money period,” she said.
Hales said the conversation about transportation funding needs to be explicit, citing the push in his city for a transportation fee – one that will charge the poor the same as the wealthy.
“We’re going to start charging poor people to pave their streets because we have to. And it’s regressive, and I’m sorry it’s regressive,” Hales said. “You have to be that explicit, and that clear, or people will stay in denial and we’ll be having these euphemistic conversations with multi-syllabic words, instead of saying ‘Our streets are falling apart we need to fix them now.’
“We have to be that clear with people because it’s so much easier to stay in denial and hope we can go another couple years without having to raise taxes,” Hales said.
But Oregon Trucking Association President Debra Dunn said she simply wants to see a more collaborative process assigning transportation funding.
“With the money we have, it’s still constrained. We’ve got to be more strategic than we’ve ever been,” she said.
More collaboration will at least help stakeholders feel like they’ve had a voice, Dunn said.
“My folks in eastern Oregon are trying to get onions through,” Dunn said. “I regularly hear they don’t see how those (transportation) funds are being used in their communities. But at least they get a chance to go to the table and talk about it”
Robust discussion through the rest of the year
One thing is for sure in this debate – there will be more talking. Garrett’s task force is scheduled to work through the end of the year. The group, which includes representatives from a timber company, a truck manufacturer, 1000 Friends of Oregon and a rural transit board, could expand – there have been calls for Garrett to add an advocate from active transportation interests to the board.
At the May 5 meeting, he said he wouldn’t do that, saying he felt bicycle and pedestrian advocacy was already well-represented on the group. But on Tuesday, he said that might change if the absence of active transportation at the table becomes a distraction.
“We’ve got bigger things to discuss in terms of the potential for an architecture (in Region 1) that allows all those voices to be heard,” he said.
The timeline is tight. It’s clear Garrett wants the convened group to have a proposal ready in time to send something to the 2015 Legislature – in theory, to codify what the committee proposes.
He said the group doesn’t have to agree to make a Region 1 ACT. “I won’t pre-ordain an outcome,” he said. But he does want to see a structure in place that can fairly assign capital funding across Region 1.
“We’ve had this conversation three or four times and it’s gone nowhere,” Garrett said. “My hope is that we find a pathway that gets us to … the appropriate architecture in place to ensure having a robust discussion and forward solid recommendations to the (Oregon Transportation) Commission to make an investment”
Transportation task force
The Oregon Consensus transportation task force has 20 members:
- Avison Lumber president Bill Avison
- Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette
- Daimler Trucks North America GM David Trebing
- Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle
- Oregon Trucking Association president Deb Dunn
- Portland Mayor Charlie Hales
- Canby Mayor Brian Hodson
- Mulino Hamlet board member Warren Jones
- Hood River County Commissioner Karen Joplin
- Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel
- 1000 Friends of Oregon attorney Mary Kyle McCurdy
- Washington County Commissioner Roy Rogers
- Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas
- Sandy Transit manager Julie Stephens
- East Metro Economic Alliance director Travis Stovall
- ODOT Region 1 Manager Jason Tell
- TriMet board chair Bruce Warner
- Hood River city manager Steve Wheeler
- Port of Portland director Bill Wyatt