Viewpoint: Two lies and a fact about Oregon Transportation Finance

Results Joe Cortright has some sharp viewpoints about how Oregon highway tasks have actually gone enormously over spending plan for years and its influence on the I-5 Bridge replacement job

Joe Cortright
City Observatory

2 lies about how Oregon prepare for significant tasks are debilitating any effort at reform.

ODOT highway jobs have actually gone enormously over spending plan for years, costing the state billions.

The company remains in rejection, trying to blame others for its constant pattern of low-balling expense quotes and combating efforts to “right-size” jobs.

Oregon’s Transportation Vision Task Force is being misguided about the reasons for these expense overruns and, as an outcome, will eventually stop working to produce a genuine option.

At one time or another, you’ve most likely played the icebreaker video game “Two Truths and a Lie,” where an individual makes 3 declarations about themselves, 2 of which hold true and among which is comprised; your obstacle is to think which is which. The Oregon Department of Transportation has its own variation of the video game, which we’ll call “Two Lies and a Truth.”

Guv Tina Kotek has actually selected a Transportation Vision Task Force to attempt to figure out the monetary catastrophe that is the Oregon Department of Transportation. While the Task Force slightly yields that something should be done to handle significant task expenses, its considerations are perpetuating 2 utter fallacies about job expenses and scope. The fact is that ODOT has actually methodically focused on megaprojects over preserving and maintaining roadways. The lies intend to move blame for low-ball expense price quotes and job scope sneak to the Legislature and to neighborhoods. In truth, ODOT and its puffed up coterie of professionals are accountable for both of these issues.

Mostly, the department and the job force remain in rejection about the chief reason for the firm’s monetary issues: blowing up expenses for a handful of megaprojects. (Two of the company’s existing jobs, the IBR and the Rose Quarter, are, respectively, the most pricey and 3rd most pricey highway jobs per mile in the country.)Precisely comprehending why these jobs are so costly, and why for more than 20 years ODOT has actually stopped working to come to grips with this issue, is necessary to repairing transport financing in Oregon.

Here are the 3 declarations:

• ODOT is compromising conservation and upkeep to pay megaproject expenses.
• ODOT was required to “low ball” job price quotes by a hurried legal procedure.
• Regional authorities and the Legislature broadened the scope of accepted jobs, increasing their expenses.

Just the very first of these declarations holds true. The others are merely incorrect.

Results 1. FACT: ODOT is cannibalizing conservation and upkeep to spend for significant jobs

The fact they’ve yielded is that ODOT consistently sacrifices conservation and upkeep to divert financing into preparation, introducing, and covering the huge expense overruns of a handful of extremely costly megaprojects. Which’s not embellishment: 2 ODOT tasks– the Interstate Bridge Replacement and the Rose Quarter highway widening– are, per mile, 2 of the 3 most pricey highway jobs in the U.S. (a reality which, to our understanding, hasn’t been revealed, much less gone over by the Task Force). It was just recently exposed that Oregon has one of the worst highway upkeep deficits of any state.

ODOT regularly releases its megaprojects with just a portion of the required financing in hand, and when expenses intensify and hoped-for profits vaporizes, it takes cash that might be invested in conservation and upkeep. At the September 9, 2026 Vision Task Force conference, Oregon Transportation Commissioner Lee Beyer kept in mind:

“So you got a task underway and you got to find out how to money that, and you wind up taking cash from conservation and upkeep or other smaller sized jobs to do that, so that’s a truly huge concern on that …”

As we’ve kept in mind before, ODOT regularly rearranges funds– versatile financing, unexpected federal funds, job cost savings– to preparation, beginning, or paying the expense overruns of significant jobs. It has actually likewise utilized its short-term loaning authority– a sort of payday advance loan– to introduce tasks and obligate future incomes to megaproject building and construction. It has actually methodically overstated the earnings that would spend for megaprojects (whether from federal grants or toll profits), which has the impact of slashing financing for conservation and upkeep.

Results 2. LIE: ODOT has actually been required to do “hurried” expense quotes

The very first lie is the claim that the Legislature all of a sudden develops concepts for jobs that ODOT never ever understood about, which ODOT prepares slapdash expense price quotes that end up being far too low. Here’s OTC Commissioner Lee Beyer making that claim at the current Vision Task Force conference:

“The truth is that the majority of the significant tasks are not … they do not come off ODOT’s preparation list, if you will. They’re directed by the legislature, and typically those jobs, you understand, are provided an initial price quote before any work’s done on them to the legislature. It’s sort of like, ‘Oh, we wish to do this, just how much is that going to cost?’ and without having actually done the initial work, the personnel provides a number.”

While Lee Beyer offers voice to this claim, he didn’t develop it; ODOT Deputy Director Travis Brouwer informed the very same tall story in legal statement.

It’s difficult to square this story with truth for any of ODOT’s significant tasks. As we’ve explained, the 2017 Legislature didn’t license financing for the I-205 Abernethy Bridge job; rather, it needed ODOT to establish an extremely in-depth “Cost to Complete” report. ODOT took 6 months, invested $12 million, and had a specialist advance task style to the 15– 25 percent level. The expert even consulted with potential professionals to verify its price quote, integrated in inflation and escalation, and declared that it was “quite positive” in its price quote.

That not did anything to manage the expense of the task: the Cost to Complete report stated the job would cost $250 million; the present price is $885 million, and counting. The exact same can be stated for the I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement Project: when the Legislature licensed $1 billion in basic fund-backed bonds in 2021, ODOT stated the job would cost about $4.8 billion. That was extremely incorrect; expenses intensified initially to $7.5 billion in 2023, and after that to $15 billion in 2025. All of these tasks have long pregnancy durations: the IBR goes back to 2004; Rose Quarter preparation began in 2010; and these procedures were run by ODOT (and its specialists), not the Legislature.

Time and once again, it’s ODOT that offers tasks to the Legislature based upon low-ball expense quotes, and after that wants to stick the Legislature with the costs (and now, likewise the blame) when expenses skyrocket. ODOT personnel and specialists consistently postpone admitting their mistakes: IBR personnel openly confessed in 2024 that their expense quote was too low, however postponed nearly 2 years before informing the Legislature just how much the cost had actually increased. As we’ve kept in mind, integrating low-ball expense quotes with appealing anything simply to get building and construction begun is a traditional Robert Moses rip-off for drawing out cash from the Legislature.

Results 3. LIE: Cost overruns are because of regional authorities and the Legislature triggering “scope creep”

The 2nd lie is that regional authorities and the Legislature are accountable for “scope creep,” the ramification being that ODOT has actually a thoroughly looked into, budget friendly style that regional authorities demand gilding. The claim is that in some way, after a job has actually been authorized, these regional authorities keep contributing to task size, scope, or functions. Here once again is Lee Beyer at the September 9, 2026 Transportation Vision conference:

“One of the issues with that is that frequently those numbers are not based upon what the task lastly ends up being, due to the fact that the deal with the neighborhood and specifying the scope of the job alters a lot. And I utilize the example of the Rose Quarter as one of those. When the legislature chose that, it was a much narrower task than what’s developed today based upon what the neighborhood stated: ‘If you’re going to do this, this is what we require to do,’ therefore the expenses increase a lot.”

This, once again, is an innovative retelling of history. ODOT dealt with the I-5 Rose Quarter Project for the much better part of a years before looking for financing from the Legislature in 2017. Preparation began in 2010 and produced a “Broadway-Weidler Interchange Plan” in 2012. ODOT’s favored style consisted of a “highway cover” that was paraded as a method of fixing the damage highway building and construction had actually done to the Albina area.

Beyer’s description of ODOT’s suggestion as a “much narrower job” is an Orwellian description of the Rose Quarter Project. ODOT’s strategies– which it concealed– required expanding the 82-foot-wide highway to 160 feet. The task’s huge width, not the “covers,” was accountable for its increasing expenses. ODOT’s own worldwide acknowledged specialists (ARUP Associates) stated the highway was so expensive since it was at least 40 feet broader than it required to be. ODOT hid the width of the job, disregarded the ARUP finding, and obstinately declined to think about “right-sizing” the task, even as expenses took off and federal financing vaporized. Paradoxically, among the conditions of the City of Portland’s approval of the Rose Quarter task was that it consist of blockage prices, which would have assisted pay its expenses; however ODOT ended the blockage prices program, additional expanding the task’s financing space.

The Rose Quarter was not a task passed off by the Legislature onto a reluctant ODOT– in reality, ODOT was leading the charge for the job as early as 2010, and its personnel were the chief supporters for the job, not regional authorities. When it concerns scope creep, ODOT is accountable, not regional authorities. The job’s “caps” are a traditional example of ODOT being raised by its own petard: ODOT, not the neighborhood, created the claim that structure large overpasses would fix the damage ODOT had actually done to Albina. It was just after ODOT continued declaring that the goal of the task was to bring back the community that regional groups took them at their word and held them liable for that pledge.

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