Portland bookstore owner Michael Powell isn't the only one caught in the crossfire between Gov. John Kitzhaber and the Republican-controlled Senate. Rural motorists can expect another winter full of potholes thanks to the tiff, which heated up earlier this month and has doomed the governor's plans to hold a special session to deal with transportation issues. Two weeks ago, the Democratic governor reappointed Powell to the Port of Portland Commission. Senate Republicans promptly shot him down, claiming that Powell's support of light rail and anti-obscenity legislation disqualified him from the post. Last Thursday, flanked by moderate Republican senators John Lim and Jeannette Hamby, Kitzhaber renominated Powell, saying they had lined up the votes to get him confirmed. Other Republicans vowed that the matter would never get to the floor for a vote. Powell may or may not resurface on the port commission, but even if he does, Kitzhaber won't have "won." That's because fireworks over Powell have illuminated a larger casualty--Kitzhaber's hope for a special session to deal with his ambitious transportation funding package. Earlier this year, the Oregon House spent nearly four months debating a confusing, multifaceted transportation package assembled by Kitzhaber that would have created or raised gas taxes, registration fees and access fees. The money was earmarked for everything from state police and senior transport to road and bridge repair. Truckers hated it, seniors loved it and most everyone else came down somewhere in between. But in the end, after months of tinkering, the House passed it overwhelmingly. Then it got to the Senate, which killed it within about three days. But the bill's death had little to do with policy. Senate Republicans were angry about the demise of a pet charter-schools bill, so they took it out on Kitzhaber's pet project, which had absorbed months of work. The result is that when the Legislature adjourned on the Fourth of July, state lawmakers had failed for the third straight session to agree on a way to pay for the state's rapidly deteriorating road system. That, however, was not the end of the story. Kitzhaber has been working behind the scenes to get Republican support for a special session to vote again on the transportation package. As a way to sweeten the pot, he issued an executive order last week asking the Department of Education to implement some of the ideas from the failed charter-schools bill. The move was seen as a way to assuage some of the Republican anger and to separate the issues of roads and charter schools, which never should have been linked to begin with. Then came the Powell debacle, which has finally killed Kitzhaber's hope for a special session. While the Powell ruckus is not directly linked to the transportation package or hope for a special session, the confirmation fight brought simmering tensions to the surface and sealed its fate. Republican and Democratic leaders now admit there will be no special session. While some GOP lawmakers have tried to defend their opposition to Powell on substantive issues, Senate Majority Leader Gene Derfler says the rejection was payback time for a package of Kitzhaber vetoes that infuriated Republicans. It's anger over those vetoes that ultimately killed the hope of a special session. "I didn't realize the animosity ran that deep over the vetoes," Derfler says. "Some of the senators felt he broke commitments with some of his vetoes." As a result, Derfler says, talk about a special session is futile. "Most of our caucus doesn't even want me to keep negotiating," Derfler says. "I don't think a special session will happen, and I've told [Kitzhaber] that." House Speaker Lynn Lundquist, who was open to the idea of a special session, says the battle between Kitzhaber and the Senate makes the idea moot. "There's a diminishing desire to come back and handle something that should have been done before," says the GOP House leader. "And if the Senate won't budge, there's no way." Kitzhaber spokesman Bob Applegate defends his boss. "There wasn't a cheap, petty veto in the package," he says. "Nobody who knows the governor should have been surprised by any of them. We made it clear on all of them where we stood. And on some, we made it clear we could have worked on them." In the meantime, it's election time and the theme is Every County for Itself. In a couple of weeks, Multnomah County voters will get a ballot in the mail asking whether they want to double their yearly $15 vehicle registration fee. The estimated $8 million to be raised from the new tax would be used to repair roads and bridges in the county. Voters in five other counties--Washington, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill and Umatilla--will ponder whether to add a registration fee and a local gas tax for roads in their neighborhoods. The measures put Kitzhaber and Oregon Department of Transportation officials in a quandary. Roads need money, but state officials think a hodgepodge of local taxes may hurt in the long run. "This is going to fractionalize the fixing of the transportation system," Applegate predicts. "We're going to end up with places with good roads and places with bad roads. If the metro areas take care of their own problems--because they sold their public--it'll take away support for a statewide solution later on, which isolates rural Oregon. The irony is that it was primarily rural legislators who killed the transportation package." |
