Legislative Update - Week 20: Reactions to House Bill 2001

It's a little Pollyanna-ish to show the bike dude triumphant this week...both chambers quickly acted on House Bill 2001, both passing it, and sent it to the Governor.

Reactions:

Bikeportland first on the House, with comments from Salem's Doug Parrow. In her floor speech, Rep. Vicki Berger (R-Salem) had an interesting claim about pollution reduction:

“But perhaps the least mentioned green part of this package,” Berger added, “is simply to lessen the gridlock that paralyzes the transportation system in this valley at least two times a day. Sitting in a car or truck, idling or slowly moving is the single most polluting thing we can do.”

Here's Bikeportland on the Senate vote.

Economist Joe Cortright at Impresa Consulting offers a county-by-county breakdown that shows the weird skews, especially for the Newberg-Dundee bypass.

Steve Duin at the Oregonian pays more attention to the Newberg-Dundee bypass and suggests some of the political arithmetic and calculation behind it.

Economist Patrick Emerson at the Oregon Economics Blog suggests that the bill does not address problems in a coherent fashion:

My view has always been that the problem is carbon emissions so we need to address carbon emissions through a gas tax. Full stop.

Here's the Official Press Release after it passed the House. And after the Senate vote.

In other news:

House Bill 2106 - Governor signed
House Bill 2377 - held worksession
House Bill 2554 - no change