News

Why 1000 Friends opposes HB 2001

UPDATED: click here to watch a video of our news conference on HB 2001

[below is our letter to legislators on the transportation package]

VOTE “NO” ON HB 2001!

OREGON NEEDS A STRONG, TARGETED “JOBS AND TRANSPORTATION ACT”

-- one that puts Oregonians to work fixing roads and bridges statewide and building transit, bike and pedestrian facilities (all of which produce as many or more jobs per tax dollar spent as new road-building).  A bill that helps transit agencies statewide add more urgently-needed service, improves transportation choice and freedom with sidewalks and bike routes in hundreds of neighborhoods, and ensures that our largest communities cut global warming pollution from transportation even as they grow.

BUT THAT’S NOT HB 2001!

This bill has been stripped of the features that we supported in the original proposal:

•    The original attacked global warming pollution by requiring the state’s six metro regions implement plans to reduce transportation greenhouse gases (which represent one-third of Oregon’s emissions).  But under HB 2001, no metro area other than Portland is required to implement regional plans—leaving Oregon as the only West Coast state not requiring regional planning to reduce these emissions in every metro area [Cal. SB 375 (2008); Wash. Gov. Gregoire Exec. Order (May 2009)].

•    In addition to $300 million that the Oregon Constitution requires be spent on highways, HB 2001 directs another $14 million to roads – money that comes from the federal government and could be spent for transit, bike, and pedestrian facilities.  The Governor had proposed that all of these federal funds—about $40 million--be spent on these other transportation facilities, but HB 2001 cuts that to $24 million.

•     The original provided necessary local authority to all transit districts to remain financially viable to provide current and future service.  But HB 2001 fails to provide anything for transit districts, and under SB 34, only TriMet and Lane Transit get additional local funding authority ( and only one-tenth of one percent increase at that), leaving transit districts across the state cutting service while demand grows. The original helped provide new transportation choices to the quarter of Oregonians do not drive, but HB 2001 rejects the minimal increase in bike and sidewalk spending (to 1.5% of total road spending) proposed by the Governor.

HB 2001 SUBSTITUTES EARMARKS FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST

The billion-dollar list of road building earmarks in this bill is an embarrassment.  No modern highway funding measure has so completely bypassed legislatively-established state and local public decision-making processes for selecting the highest-priority and most cost-effective transportation investments, in favor of legislative project-picking in order to gain the votes of wavering legislators.

The big highway expansion projects in this bill will increase long-distance automobile commuting, leading to sprawling car-dependent development and more global warming pollution.  Spending on these projects will leave needed repair and reconstruction projects under-funded — projects like Portland’s Sellwood Bridge ($30 million earmarked, $400 million needed), which today carries more daily trips than Highway 99W through Dundee, but will have to close unless local voters tax themselves for the bridge in addition to the state tax increase they’ll have to pay for suburban and rural highways.

HB 2001 IS UNFAIR TO TAXPAYERS, THE ENVIRONMENT, OUR CHILDREN, AND OUR FUTURE.