LOC News
Joint Transportation Committee Announces Roadshow
This week, the state’s Joint Committee on Transportation (JCT) announced the city locations for its “roadshow” to collect public input for the 2025 transportation package. This is a good sign from leadership that a transportation package will be a priority in the 2025 session. Prior to the passage of HB 2017 during the 2017 session, there were two statewide tours to identify support for a substantial investment in Oregon’s transportation infrastructure.
Fast forward to today, and the Legislature will have a difficult task in coming up with what components will be critical for a transportation package in 2025. HB 2017 had more than $5.3 billion in investments across Oregon resulting from an increase in the gas tax, registration fees, a privilege tax on new vehicle purchases and a payroll tax to expand transit and shuttle service investments across Oregon. Expanding transit and shuttle service to underserved communities and those without any service was added to the package largely because of the public input during the statewide tours.
The LOC’s Transportation Policy Committee will soon wrap up its process for determining legislative priorities. These will collectively guide the LOC and our advocacy for cities for the next two years. Once the committee has completed its work, LOC staff will help create some themes to include in cities’ local comments. The good news is that the infrastructure survey work and the soon-to-be-released street conditions survey should provide an excellent foundation of data for the LOC and for cities to build into their comments for the roadshow.
The JCT has selected 12 locations across Oregon. The specific meeting sites will be selected over the next few weeks. For more information about the transportation tour from the JCT go here.
The LOC has prepared core messages to include in your comments. Those messages can be found here.
|
Location |
Proposed Date(s) |
|
Downtown Portland |
Tuesday, June 4 |
|
Tillamook |
Tuesday, June 18 |
|
Albany |
Tuesday, July 16 |
|
Eugene |
Wednesday, July 17 |
|
Coos Bay |
Wednesday, August 7 |
|
Medford |
Thursday, August 8 |
|
Ontario |
Wednesday, August 28 |
|
Hermiston |
Thursday, August 29 |
|
Bend |
Thursday, September 12 |
|
The Dalles |
Friday, September 13 |
|
Happy Valley |
Thursday, September 26 |
|
Hillsboro |
Friday, September 27 |
Contact: Jim McCauley, Legislative Director - jmccauley@orcities.org
Last Updated 5/3/24