Once again Oregon refuses to tax businesses or meaningfully shift the burden onto the heavy trucking industries which are demonstrated to cause considerably more damage to roads per mile than passenger cars.
Blue state indeed...
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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Their implementation of tolling was backassward and regressive: fine those forced to commute and no planned public transportation and infrastructure improvmeents to support moving away from car economy.
That said, removing reference to tolling? Why? The shit implementation was the problem, not because most people think those who use something should pay for it.
Such a goddamn money pit and killing ourselves and the planet in the meantime.
IMO Kotek has been mostly a lame duck, but these proposals aren't bad. I would invert the 50-30-20 revenue split between state, county, and city because it's almost always cities or counties that are creating and maintaining bike and transit infrastructure, while today the state's largest initiatives are still highway expansions. Highways are so very money-hungry.
I don't like that they are planning to have both a electric vehicle fee and a per miles charge fee later on. Like it should be one or the other, not both. Otherwise they just need to make the 30$ fee for all vehicles.
Yeah adding a $30 fee specifically to electrics seems asinine, to the point that I'm hoping that is a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. I don't mind new fees, but new fees added to electrics that don't get added to combustions seems regressive.
As for the per-mile charge, I like that and think it should apply to all vehicles. Flat fees don't sufficiently or accurately compensate for road use, but a mileage charge does. People who are on the road all day should be paying more than people who only drive to get groceries, even if it's for their job, because they put equivalently more wear on the system.
Another state actively disincentivising electric vehicle adoption by charging extra. It is an incredibly stupid policy. All else being equal, electric cars are less bad than gas cars.
Motor vehicles should be taxed based on mileage and weight. If drivers can save money on their taxes by driving a car that is less bad for the environment, that a good thing, and a sign of effective policy.
Motor vehicles should be taxed based on mileage and weight.
Aye, and make the weight x mileage tax proportional to the amount of wear put on the roads due to said weight. My little scooter should only cost 1/1000 of the freaking big rigs.
Big rigs are commercial vehicles. Driving is the work, not the commute. So they are wearing down the roads 8 hours a day, instead of the hour or so of a passenger car.
Long haul trucking only exists because of massive subsidies. Truck registration, tolls, and all other fees should be thousands of times higher than small cars, to be fair and equitable.
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How about a surcharge on giant fuck-off pickup trucks? $5000 for plates.
One thing id recommend is factoring vehicle weight into the registration, as weight is one of the big factors that contributes to roadway wear.
This has the added bonus of making Cybertruck owners cry.
It's disappointing that this funding is coming from regressive sources (gas tax, registration fees, payroll taxes) rather than from the state income tax, since I doubt most working poor in Oregon have the luxury of choosing a car-free work situation (can't work near public transit or can't live near public transit or both or perhaps it is possible but the commute is not useful for shift work). But at least they didn't have to cut funding for other state services I guess?
The greatest trick ever pulled by oil industry PR was to convince leftists that the gas tax is regressive.
A gas tax makes sense because it directly pressures consumer behavior towards using less gas and producing less emissions, but it's still technically regressive because poor people are more obligated to drive and gas costs are a larger proportion of their budget. The way to make it not regressive would be to redistribute the revenue.
Technically (as in, as a term of art), it is not regressive. Rather, the gas tax is a flat tax. A regressive tax is one whereby the tax rate decreases as the taxed amount increases. A flat tax is one whereby the tax rate remains the same regardless of the taxed amount.
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Indeed, if we want to call the gas tax regressive, then by that standard, the need to own a car to get anywhere is horribly regressive. If we're actually concerned about low-income people, we should be worrying about how much they're forced to pay for the gas itself, not the tax on it.
These taxes are also regressive because the cost of shipping goods is likely to be passed along onto the consumer too
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While I understand they’re paranoid about losing the gas tax when we transition to EVs, it really grinds my gears that I’ve never once seen one of these proposals to fairly tax all vehicles by means other than gas tax. EVs should not be treated as special and certainly shouldn’t be discouraged with higher taxes
It should be based off the vehicle weight. if the premise is that the tax pays for road repairs, ev or gas doesn’t matter, heavier vehicles do more road damage.
"per-mile charge for electric vehicles" means GPS/license plate tracking of all cars. That's the only way to determine the number of miles driven in state. Of course they could simply charge you for all miles if your car is registered in Oregon but then cars not registered in Oregon wouldn't pay anything even if they drove exclusively in Oregon.
That's not necessarily true. In the UK we have a yearly roadworthiness test for almost all vehicles called and MoT test. Part of this process is recording the mileage of the vehicle. There's no need to GPS track every vehicle to get their mileage
Many US states also have annual inspections, although I don’t know about Oregon. They could uneasily record annual Miles here, although the objection is that is overall miles, not miles on state roads, and it only works for cars registered in the state.
While a small number of people may cheat by driving out of state cars, I think this is highly discouraged by insurance civerage
EVs should be exempt from emissions test
As someone who lives in Oregon, and ignoring the community I’m in for a moment: Overall, good.
For context: ODOT is laying off people who maintain or improve roads due to budget constraints which will only tighten as the federal government either tightens its belt for everyone or just those for blue states. Funding has to come from somewhere, Trump isn’t going to share, and we must still have roads.
Oregon, generally, has well-maintained roads which are repaired comparatively quickly when damaged, and most road improvements in cities I see make a point to try to provide equitable and safe access ways for pedestrians and cyclists. Keeping road infrastructure is important in any future, and I’ll gladly support more road/travel improvements which reduce the incentive for cars and at worst, reduce the amount of time whatever car remain sit around idling.
EDIT: Noticed the OP edit the post, and I agree with those points as well.
seems like they already penalize EVs more. 500 gallons per year is an extra $30. $230 total. EV increases are $72 + a future mileage charge. There's already $196/year extra EV charge. Close to existing gas tax on 500 gallons ($200).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the payroll tax would apply equally to all workers while funding transit, yes? In this case, it functions as an incentive for all people to take transit, since they have already paid for it.
On the whole, this looks like a great step in the right direction. Sure, it could be better - but dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Payroll taxes are notoriously regressive. The wealthy can easily dodge salary as capital gains. Even then payroll taxes usually have a cap at some value so the most you could collect from a person getting a 7 figure salary is .02% of the first 100k or whatever the cap is at.
The stiff working at autozone will pay .02% of his gross paycheck.
A fair point. If presented as a package, I would still support these propositions, though. Like, ideally I want everything funded via land value and pigouvian taxes - but I'll take my wins where I can get them.
I think increasing the payroll tax is a mistake
It says that it is for transit. If that includes public transit, it makes sense to me. I lack overall context on the bill/terminology/state, though.
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A lot of the payroll transit tax goes to public transit funding. Source: Work in Oregon public transit, we are looking layoffs if this doesn't pass. That said... Yup... Anything but taxing the rich.
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