Nearly 500 state transportation employees received layoff notices Monday, as the Oregon Department of Transportation warned that lawmakers’ recent failure to boost its budget would result in diminished services.

All told, state transportation leaders informed 483 workers – roughly 10% of the agency’s workforce – that their jobs will go away at the end of July. Gov. Tina Kotek said Monday that more layoffs are expected early next year unless lawmakers act to find more money.

“This is not business as usual,” Kotek said in a statement. “These layoffs constitute an emergency in Oregon’s transportation system that will hurt every part of Oregon.”

As it sheds workers, ODOT is also planning to close 12 road maintenance outposts around the state. Agency leaders say they plan to scale back pothole repairs, road striping, litter pickup, snow plowing and other services as they work to close a $354 million funding gap.

“ODOT is forced to make service reduction decisions because funding won’t be available,” the agency said in an FAQ document. “All of these impacts are severe and there are no good choices.”

The announcement of steep cuts comes a little more than a week after Oregon lawmakers failed to agree on a road-funding proposal designed in part to avoid layoffs.

And they prompted Kotek to, once again, hint at what many suspect: A special legislative session to blunt the impact of the funding hole may be in the works.

“This emergency was preventable, and we still have time to intervene,” Kotek said. “I have not and will not stop fighting for Oregonians who rely on us to keep our roads safe and people and products moving.”

But a special session would require Democrats to first come up with a workable funding plan. And the logistics will prove tricky in a busy summer season when many lawmakers have vacations planned.

Even the Capitol building has a scheduling conflict. It’s completely shuttered until Aug. 10 as part of a years-long renovation project. That means lawmakers couldn’t convene there until more than a week after hundreds of employees will be let go.

While elected officials figure out whether they can avert layoffs, ODOT offered its most specific look at cuts to date in its Monday FAQ.

Alongside shrinking the number of people available to do road maintenance, the agency said it is eliminating positions in support positions like IT and facilities. It’s also cutting “project delivery” positions that allow bridge and paving projects to move forward.

Among the specific services the agency warned will be cut or reduced:

• maintenance on state park roads and rest areas
• 120 miles of “chip seal” projects that increase the lifespan of roads
• homeless camp cleanups on ODOT property in Portland.
• new edge striping on low-traffic roads
• pothole repairs
• guardrail replacement along portions of U.S. 30 damaged by fires in the Columbia River Gorge earlier this year, which may mean keeping the road closed through the summer.

ODOT leaders have said for years that the revenue the state agency takes in from gas taxes, licensing and titling fees and other sources was flattening out, even as costs were rising steeply. They’ve been warning about looming cuts since last year.

Oregon Democrats offered up a number of road-funding proposals this year that would have filled the budget gap – and then some.

An initial version of House Bill 2025 would have raised around $14.6 billion over a decade via higher gas taxes, a new tax on car sales, an increase in registration fees and more. Much of the money would have been shared with city and county road departments that are also warning of dire shortfalls. The City of Portland said Monday that 50 transportation workers might lose their jobs because lawmakers didn’t act.

But Republicans and a handful of key Democrats said the proposal was too expensive. When it became clear a major road-funding package didn’t have support, legislative leaders and Kotek scrambled in the final day of session to pass a stop-gap bill to avoid cuts at ODOT.

When House Republicans refused to allow Democrats to fast-track that bill to a vote, the Legislature adjourned two days earlier than necessary, and ODOT started executing layoff plans.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/07/oregon-transportation-odot-hundreds-road-workers-laid-off/