Employees with Knife River Corp. lay asphalt along a stretch of road between Spring Creek and Meacham on Interstate 84 July 14, 2021. (East Oregonian/Archive)

SALEM — A statewide transportation bill, HB 2025, has been taken off the floor of the state’s House of Representatives and is going back to committee.

Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, said Friday morning, June 27, the bill was going back to the joint Transportation Reinvestment Committee.

The bill had made it out of committee Thursday and onto the House floor Friday morning with a recommendation to pass it after a third reading.

If it’s going to be approved, it must pass both the House and the Senate with a three-fifths majority by the end of the day Sunday, June 29, when the regular legislative session ends. This means the bill needs support from 36 members in the House and 18 in the Senate. Although Democrats hold a supermajority in both chambers of Congress, at least one Democrat in the House was against the bill as it was, meaning the House needed at least one Republican’s support.

Smith said Democrats were “working (him) hard for a vote” in favor of the bill, but he was against the 15-cent increase in the gas tax. Eventually, he said he heard the bill would be pulled from the floor and sent back to the committee.

At that point, he said he told House Speaker Julie Fahey, a Democrat from Eugene, he’d work with the Democrats if they lowered the increased gas tax to 3 cents per gallon and dedicated the funds raised to maintaining county and city roads.

“The part that’s most important to me is I want to know that our gas tax dollars are going to road preservation and maintenance,” Smith said. “No new roads, no new whoop-de-doo stuff. I want to know it’s going to roads and preservation in our counties and cities.”

Additionally, Smith said he wants accountability for the Oregon Department of Transportation built into the bill’s language. That could mean a subcommittee for major transportation projects, he said, adding he’d also like to see adequate funding to ensure projects get finished. He wants funds and plans to include cost increases. He said it “appears we may get some traction on that.”

If those changes happen, Smith plans to work with Fahey and the Democrats to get bipartisan support and pass the bill.

This is a developing story.