FILE: A customer pumps gas at a station in Bend, Ore., in 2024.
Kathryn Styer Martínez / OPB
Measure 120 is doomed. Ask anybody.
The only statewide ballot measure to appear on the May primary ballot poses a simple question to Oregon voters: Should hikes to the state gas tax, vehicle titling and registration fees, and other streams of cash that fund the Oregon transportation system be allowed to take effect?
Even the tax proposal’s most ardent supporters think they know the answer. No one is campaigning to rescue Measure 120.
It’s a whimpering end to one of the odder, louder political dramas in recent state history. Over the course of two legislative sessions, the question underpinning the measure — how Oregon should inject cash into its sagging transportation system — dominated attention like few others.
With voters expected to send Measure 120 to the scrap yard, here’s a rundown of the events that brought Oregon to this point.
Summer 2024
It’s been clear for years that the state needs a new way to pay for transportation. The 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax — a major source of money for both state and local road maintenance — is losing its potency. Hybrid and electric vehicles that are becoming more common on Oregon roads pay fewer gas taxes (or none at all). Meanwhile, enormous highway “megaprojects” lawmakers thought they’d paid for in a 2017 bill sit unfinished and unfunded. To address all this, a bipartisan group of legislators begin a statewide tour, with the aim of figuring out what the state needs, and generate ideas for how to pay for it.
January 2025 to June 2025
A major transportation package is a key priority for majority Democrats in the six-month legislative session. But the party doesn’t show much urgency. They wait until almost the session’s halfway point to unveil a rough sketch of their plan. And there is less than a month left in the session by the time Democrats get around to introducing an actual bill. That proposal would raise taxes by nearly $2 billion a year — the largest hike in state history — and immediately attracts criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike. When it becomes clear on the session’s final day that the plan is dead, Democrats scramble to pass a stopgap bill before adjournment. They fail.
Gov. Tina Kotek, who held the road-funding bill at arm’s length all session, immediately slams lawmakers’ failure and vows to tackle the issue herself. “I don’t care how tired you are, I don’t care what your vacation plans are,” Kotek says, “We are going to solve this. You’re going to be spending a lot more time with me.”
June 2025 to December 2025
With no new money coming, ODOT announces it is preparing to lay off nearly 10% of its employees. But Kotek tells the agency to tap the brakes, instead announcing she will call lawmakers into special session in late August to pass a stripped-down transportation funding bill.
That proposal will raise gas taxes by six cents, roughly double registration and titling fees, and also increase payroll taxes that go to fund public transit.
But the quick special session Kotek and others envision immediately veers off course. First, the House wastes nearly an entire day without enough lawmakers to conduct business. Then Kotek catches flak for calling lawmakers into the Capitol on Labor Day weekend while herself being filmed shopping in Astoria, where she is living as the governor’s mansion undergoes renovations.
Things get worse when the transportation bill passes over to the Senate. Democrats need every member of their party to support the bill, but state Sen. Chris Gorsek, D-Gresham, has serious health issues and is unable to travel to Salem. It will be 27 days until Gorsek is well enough to make the trip. In the meantime, lawmakers are still being paid. The ultimately state spends more than $270,000 to pass a single bill.
Kotek slow walks signing the transportation funding bill in an effort to waylay Republicans who have vowed to gather enough signatures to put it before voters. It doesn’t work. A campaign led by state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, and state Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, quickly collects more than 250,000 signatures. A vote is set for November 2026.
January 2026 to Present
Kotek kicks off the new calendar year by announcing that she wants to repeal the transportation bill she fought to pass months earlier, rather than allowing voters to kill it. But facing major questions about whether that would be legal, Democrats come up with a new plan: They will reschedule the vote from November to May.
Republicans cry foul, accusing Democrats of seeking to move a politically toxic measure off the same ballot in which Kotek and others are seeking reelection. Most Democrats insist the move will simply give the state clarity about road funding in May, rather than November. One exception is Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, who acknowledges to reporters that politics is part of the equation. “Is it political? For sure,” Wagner says. “I don’t think people want to see this on a November ballot.”
But the bill to move the tax vote to May faces blowback from the GOP and members of the public. Republicans in the Senate refuse to show up for floor one day, Democrats struggle to find enough people to support the bill another. Ultimately, the bill passes. Republicans sue, arguing the rushed date change blocks people from weighing in on the process, but they are not successful.
Despite dire warnings about layoffs at ODOT, legislative Democrats pass an amended budget in the 2026 session that relies on existing vacancies and slashes funding in some priority areas. No layoffs are expected.
What’s next?
No one knows for sure what the result of Measure 120 will be. It’s fair to say neither Kotek nor top lawmakers are expecting it to pass — particularly at a time when the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran has sent gas prices soaring. The governor has already begun the process of cobbling together a new funding package to pay for transportation. She pledges to move it forward in next year’s session — assuming she wins a new term in November.
