Marion County Judge to rule this week on Oregon gas tax vote change

A Marion County judge will decide this week whether to block state lawmakers from changing the date of a vote on tax and fee increases — a move opponents say is a heavy-handed attempt to alter the will of voters.

But as he heard arguments Tuesday, Marion County Senior Judge David Leith acknowledged a higher court would almost certainly have the final say on appeal.

“I understand I’m not the last word here,” Leith said at the tail end of an hour-long hearing. “Whatever happens is probably going to need to go somewhere else.”

The lawsuit, filed last week, will help determine whether Oregon voters decide in May or November whether to approve a six-cent increase to the state’s gas tax, steep increases to vehicle registration and titling fees and a temporary doubling of a payroll tax that funds public transit.

Gov. Tina Kotek and Democratic state lawmakers approved those increases last fall, but a grassroots campaign led by Republicans quickly collected around 250,000 signatures — far more than necessary — to give voters the final say on the November 2026 ballot.

Democrats didn’t like that date, and muscled through a bill in the recent legislative session moving the gas tax vote to the May primary election. The court challenge — filed against Secretary of State Tobias Read by two Republican state lawmakers and dozens of others who referred the tax hike to voters — argues the election date change was illegal.

The plaintiffs in the case make two chief arguments.

One is that lawmakers don’t have the ability to alter the date of a referendum election once it’s already been approved for a specific election date.

“Our plaintiffs operated in good faith. They followed the law,” Julie Parrish, an attorney and former Republican state representative who is representing the plaintiffs in the suit, said in court. “When they qualified, they acquired a vested right to complete the referendum on the terms in which it qualified.”

The second argument is that the rushed timeline of moving the vote up cuts citizens out of landing statements in the May voters’ pamphlet. Under Oregon law, anyone wishing to file a statement for or against a ballot measure can either submit 500 valid voter signatures or pay $1,200.

Parrish and her clients say that the March 2 passage of Senate Bill 1599, the bill moving the election date, didn’t give enough time before the March 12 deadline to submit statements for free by collecting signatures. That disproportionately impacts people of limited means, who don’t have $1,200 to spend, they say.

“When all of these processes are truncated, the net impact impacts those in the grassroots,” Parrish said.

She added that one woman who opposes the tax and fee hikes was able to collect 500 signatures over the weekend. But Parrish said that effort required 40 volunteers, and it was unclear whether the Secretary of State’s Office would be able to validate the signatures by this Thursday’s deadline.

Meanwhile, she said, an “explanatory statement” in the voters’ pamphlet that is typically created with citizen input is instead being crafted by lawmakers, a step Parrish argued further cuts citizens out.

As a lawmaker, Parrish helped lead an unsuccessful 2018 referendum campaign to overturn a tax-and-fee package designed to fund health care. “I get what the rules are,” she said. “This is unheard of.”

The state’s arguments, meanwhile, were relatively simple. Oregon’s Constitution says referendum votes are to be held during general elections “unless otherwise ordered by the Legislative Assembly.”

Thomas Castelli, a senior assistant attorney general representing Read, said that provision speaks for itself.

“The power exists to set this special date of the referendum on the day the Legislature sees fit,” he said. “This was a power specifically reserved to the Legislature.”

Leith seemed most interested in whether the Legislature could move an election once voters had qualified a measure for a specific date — a question that has not been answered in previous cases. He asked Castelli whether there was any limit to how much lawmakers could disrupt an election by changing the timing.

“You can’t do something that would completely defeat the actual power of the referendum,” Castelli replied. SB 1599, he said, did not do that.

Read, a Democrat who is both the secretary of state and a defendant in the case, did not attend Tuesday’s hearing. Senate Minority Leader Bruce Starr, a Dundee Republican who helped file the suit, was in the courtroom.

Leith did not hint which way he would rule, but said a decision should land by Wednesday.

“I view this issue as novel, interesting,” he said. “I view it as, frankly, difficult.”

Neither Republicans nor Democrats expect voters to approve the gas tax increase — regardless of when the election occurs.

Democrats say they’re keen to get that verdict sooner rather than later. Republicans say the true motivation is moving an unpopular tax off of a ballot where Kotek and other Democrats are seeking reelection.