Gov. Tina Kotek warns people around the state will feel those cuts, especially in winter

By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle

Hundreds who work for the Oregon Department of Transportation got notice that they’re being laid off in what Gov. Tina Kotek called a preventable emergency and the largest round of layoffs in the state government’s history.

The 483 Oregon Department of Transportation employees who received layoff notices on Monday will be employed until July 31, according to a news release and FAQ from Kotek’s office. They constitute the first of what Kotek said would be two rounds of layoffs, and they include road maintenance crews, technical support staff and operations staff.

Kotek said Oregonians across the state will feel the impact of those cuts, especially in the winter and especially in rural Oregon, where smaller road crews will be sent to cover larger areas in need of snow plowing, deicing and road clearing after storms.

“Consequences to essential transportation services are imminent across the state. This is not business as usual,” Kotek said. “These layoffs constitute an emergency in Oregon’s transportation system that will hurt every part of Oregon.”

The news follows the Oregon Legislature’s failure last month to pass a funding bill the Transportation Department needed to maintain staff and close a more than $300 million shortfall.

“This emergency was preventable, and we still have time to intervene,” Kotek said, hinting for the second time in recent weeks that she’ll call lawmakers to Salem for an emergency session to work out details of a funding plan. “Come winter, without a shared commitment to solve this crisis from partners and lawmakers, Oregonians will be left out in the cold — literally,” she said.

Over 100 more employees could lose their jobs in a second round of layoffs expected to take place in early 2026, absent legislative action and any unpredictable weather that makes it impossible to lose road crews, according to the news release. The agency is also eliminating 449 vacant positions. In total more than 900 positions at the state transportation agency will be gone.

Scaling back

The number of employees and positions to be cut were determined by Oregon Department of Transportation Director Kristopher Strickler, along with Betsy Imholt, director of the Oregon Department of Administrative services and the state’s chief operating officer, and Kate Nass, the state’s chief financial officer.

Strickler in a midnight email to staff June 28, sent just hours after House Republicans voted not to move on a funding bill for the agency, wrote that the Legislature’s inability to pass a transportation package to keep the Transportation Department solvent was “shocking, scary and frustrating,” and that he’d be forced to lay off up to 700 people.

Strickler wrote to staff that the email was “the hardest message I’ve ever had to send in my career.”

He and agency leaders are also planning to scale back purchases of materials and replacing aging agency vehicles, delaying some road repairs, maintenance and road striping projects, and reducing the amount of roadside vegetation management they’d planned, leading to higher wildfire risks, the governor’s news release explained. Planned and existing infrastructure projects will be canceled or delayed.

Finding a way to fund an agency that relies on gas taxes in a world of growing vehicle electrification, and finding a way to pay for overdue and underfunded road, bridge and public transit projects for the next decade were key priorities for Kotek and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers going into the 2025 session.

Democrats proposed House Bill 2025 on June 9 as a solution, with less than three weeks from the June 29 constitutional deadline to end the legislative session. To raise revenue, it would have increased state gas and payroll taxes, hiked vehicle licensing and registration fees, and created new taxes on car sales to generate nearly $14.6 billion for the Oregon Department of Transportation and local governments over 10 years. But by the last day of the session, lawmakers failed even to pass a watered-down version that would’ve raised $2 billion over the next decade only for the state Transportation Department, by raising the state gas tax 3 cents and increasing licensing and registration fees.

Republican lawmakers who stopped a vote on the gas-tax proposal from going forward said they did so because they opposed new taxes that would make it more expensive to live in the state. They also accused Democrats of engaging in a secretive, behind-the-scenes process that left Republicans out of critical discussions on the transportation agency’s needs, resulting in bloated proposals shared too late to be considered in the six-month Legislative session.

Alex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. This story first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.