Editorial: Sooner is better than later on ODOT money

Published 1:30 pm Tuesday, February 10, 2026

By Staff report

Construction crews place water pipes underneath Highway 26 in the summer of 2025. The notorious hump at the site of a slow-motion landslide east of Seaside is the sort of problem for which state transportation funding is used. (Photo courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation)

It’s better to know sooner rather than later how much funding the Oregon Department of Transportation can expect.
And for that reason, we do like the move by the Democratic legislative leadership to switch the date of the referendum on Oregon transportation funding from November to May.
Legislators heard testimony on Monday on Senate Bill 1599, the bill that would make the switch.
Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, pitched the move of the election date as achieving two things.
“Voters were clear that they want to have a say on this bill, and legislators and our local partners need to know the transportation funding landscape so meaningful conversations can continue,” Wagner said in a statement. “Setting the election date for May achieves both these goals.”
Those things are both true, but the vast majority of the testimony on Monday was against the date switch.
We get that, too. There are plenty of reasons not to like the switch. People who signed the petition to put the funding on the ballot feel betrayed by shifting the date. It was not what they signed. They see the switch as an effort to usurp the power of the referendum process.
It doesn’t help that Gov. Tina Kotek delayed signing the transportation bill last year, apparently to give opponents less time to gather signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. And it doesn’t help that Kotek talked about repealing the transportation bill to render the referendum moot. It looks like switching the date is simply part of the effort to defeat the referendum.
But we believe whether the vote is in May or November, Oregonians will make every effort to vote — to say how they feel about the funding mechanisms for transportation. Switching the date may draw even more attention to the May vote. And it is better to know the outcome sooner rather than later, so ODOT and legislators can figure out what to do next.