For the Oregon Department of Transportation, February is the cruelest month.
Legislators are
wrestling with health-care and education reform while trying to keep the
state budget in balance. Meanwhile, they’re all but ignoring ODOT. The
agency’s signature issue—the proposed $3.5 billion Columbia River
Crossing—still lacks funding.
Now, though, ODOT officials might wish legislators were paying even less attention to their agency.
Lawmakers and a
skilled lobbyist are preparing to strip millions from ODOT’s troubled
budget and send the money to a tiny agency most Oregonians don’t even
know exists—all in the name of safer, more pleasant rest areas for
motorists.
Last week, the Senate
Business and Transportation Committee voted unanimously to take control
of 19 rest areas along highways and freeways away from ODOT and give
them to a quasi-public agency called Oregon Travel Experience.
Oregon Travel
Experience is the agency that sells advertising space to hotels,
restaurants, gas stations and other businesses on those blue signs you
see before exit ramps. Run by the Oregon Travel Information Council, it
gets its $6 million-a-year budget from advertising, and increasingly
from ODOT.
Oregon Travel
Experience already is paid by the state to run five rest areas.
Lawmakers made the switch in 2009 after hearing how badly ODOT was
running the stops.
Among the worst were
the Baldock rest areas on Interstate 5, just south of Wilsonville. As
many as 100 homeless people lived there, says Oregon State Police Sgt.
Fred Testa. Drug dealers and prostitutes operated openly, Testa says,
and the “mayor” of Baldock created daily work schedules for panhandlers,
who took turns shaking down motorists.
“It was a mess,” he says.
Since Oregon Travel
Experience took over, state data show, calls for police service have
dropped more than 50 percent. And the restrooms get cleaned more often
while staff members patrol the parking lots.
But the better
service comes at a hefty cost—contrary to the typical claim that
specialized contractors can provide the same service as public agencies
for a lower price.
In 2009, ODOT spent
$3.8 million to maintain 41 highway rest areas. But under Senate Bill
1591, now before legislators, the agency would be forced to pay Oregon
Travel Experience $6.55 million annually to maintain just 28 rest areas.
(ODOT would still maintain 13 rest areas, at a yearly cost of about
$600,000.)
“It’s more expensive
because of the deferred maintenance and increased staffing,” says Oregon
Travel Experience CEO Cheryl Gribskov.
ODOT
director Matt Garrett isn’t happy. “With the financial pie shrinking,
is now the time to do this?” Garrett asked legislators while testifying
against the bill last week.
Garrett’s agency
finds itself in a serious financial bind for two big reasons. First,
federal stimulus money is drying up. And second, ODOT has spent itself
deeply into debt.
The department must
make payments on the $2.9 billion in bonds it has issued to finance road
projects over the past decade. The money that covers those debt
payments—registration fees and the state’s 30-cent-per-gallon gas
tax—aren’t keeping pace.
That
means ODOT has used up its buying power for new highway projects.
There’s no money for the Columbia River Crossing or smaller projects
such as widening Highway 217 or building the Newberg-Dundee bypass.
“ODOT’s State Highway
Fund resources,” Garrett told lawmakers in November, “are now
essentially fully committed to debt service, the costs of running the
agency, and maintaining highways, leaving virtually no state funding for
new capital projects.”
ODOT can usually
muscle its way in Salem. So how does Oregon Travel Experience—an obscure
private-public agency—wrestle an annual $6.55 million check from the
state’s transportation colossus?
Turns out the tiny
agency has a pretty skilled lobbying and communications team of its own.
It pays veteran lobbyist Craig Campbell (son of former House Speaker
Larry Campbell) $5,000 a month, and former Sen. Rick Metsger
(D-Welches), who used to chair the Senate’s transportation committee,
gets nearly $4,000 a month for “coalition building.”
But
the real secret, Gribskov says, is knowing that the public likes clean,
safe rest areas. ODOT made matters worse last September when it
threatened to close the Mount Hood rest area at Government Camp.
That encouraged Sen.
Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River) to propose moving the Government Camp rest
stop and a slew of others—along with the ODOT cash—to Oregon Travel
Experience.
Thomsen also won
over a powerful ally: Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), who
testified strongly in favor of the bill last week.
At the hearing, Thomsen joked that he knew the bill would appeal to Courtney, 68.
“I figured, of anybody in the Senate,” Thompson told Courtney, “you would have the weakest bladder.”
FACT: More than 3,500 vehicles per day stop at the
Baldock rest area, 14 miles south of Portland. The area encompasses
about 100 acres.
Nigel, do you even read what you write with a critical eye anymore, as you used to? If ODOT was providing a "service" that led to 100 homeless people, panhandlers, drug dealers and hookers living in or plying their trade at rest areas, are you implying that the new contractor is supplying the same "service", just for more money?
Government - among Oregon's worst, most inefficient agencies - did a horrible job at the simple task of cleaning the bathroom and spent $3.8 million doing it. The Oregon Travel Experience contracted to do a good job and get rid of the hookers and drug dealers. The idea that they are spending more money for the same "service" is a pretty dumb statement, even for WW.
@John Fairplay: Very good points John. The levels of service offered are completely different. I wonder what our state's visitors must think when they stop at rest areas. If you visit and OTE managed rest area, the personnel are friendly and visible in case you run into trouble. When I stop at an ODOT managed rest area, I see poorly cleaned restrooms and poorly maintained grounds. What kind of impression are we giving to those who see Oregon for the first time? What kind of tourism industry can we expect to grow or community business infrastructure if people are so turned off by filthy and unsavory rest areas that they just keep on moving down the highway, rather than explore Oregon's wild beauty?
You should note there has been an update to the proposed Legislation: I watched the Ways & Means hearings yesterday and ODOT managed to find an obscure fund to use to help Oregon Travel Experience manage and maintain the state's rest areas. This fund will not come out of the same pool of funds used for Counties and Cities. The Sellwood Bridge project would no longer lose any proposed funds under the Bill's revision. As I understand it, OTE does not mix any funds from ODOT with other agency funds received from the sale of their highway business signs. They adhere to State and Federal laws. The Highway Fund can only be used for highway projects, such as maintaining clean, safe rest areas. I believe OTE also organizes within local communities and calls these business and volunteer meeting groups "coalitions." The coalition building you noted helps to identify what local commununity businesses need at nearby rest areas. Things like cleaning up crime, homelessness, and driving visitors off the interstate and into nearby restaurants, gas stations and hotels are all a part of what this tiny agency is tasked to do under the 2009 Transportation Act.
The simple fact that ODOT is grousing about losing these funds and responsibility for maintaining the rest areas is proof-positive they weren't spending what they needed to in order to meet their obligation! If they were doing their job at the price they were being paid, it would be a wash. This just shows they were cashing the check, but not (as the article points out) delivering the service. The ODOT director should be ashamed of himself.
Let's think outside of the box for once, or twice or however long it takes.
Let's privatize it!!!!!!!!!!!!
What would that mean? First, not one organization could monopolize the service. Unique organization per rest stop.
Make the place a dream. Add shops for the travelers even sleeping facilities.
Do you know? I think that we have so many regulations intead of letting the best provide the best service.
Wouldn't you pay a dollar for instance for great service. A spotless bathroom, not a urine/poop smelling atrocity and poor excuse of a bathroom? What about offering "options"?
We need to do better people. If you don;t want to pay, then take a portion of the gas tax to pay for it.
The point is that we are operating at third world country levels being a developed country.
How is that possible? Some say it is the economy stupid! I say to that, boloney. It is our lack of common sense and reprioritizing.
Nobody gives a crap!
About the homeless in the rest areas. Hello? Simple solution. On the entrance of the ramp, add a ticket dispenser good for two hours for instance. On the exit ramp, you get charged if you abuse the allotment of hours with a fine. You don't have a ticket? To the slammer for tresspassing or community service or forced labor for that matter!
We are so dumb and so deficient in implementing solutions. Some could say well, Federal law says this, state law says that....again I say bolony. Make the laws easy to change according to the needs at the time.
How many times we see these people talking about the Constitution this and the Constitution that and that an ammendment is pretty much an act of God to pass. I say, duh, we are in the 21st Century when our lives go by really fast, accordingly, we ought to have a system as adapting to current reality as possible.
Otherwise how? How are we going to make it? How are we going to thrive? How are we going to achieve prosperity for the majority?
Oh, are you telling me that it was all a lie? A falacy, an utopian mental fart?
Then let's face the lie once and for all and start implementing some changes. I know you want to. As is is not sustainable.
Sooner than later, the whole sheebang will burn down.
It happened to Rome, do you really think that it may not happen here?
Think again!
This is to funny and at the same time sad. ODOT is basically broke when it comes to new construction. Funny that no one said a word in the last decade when ODOT bonded itself into this spot with the OTIA programs. I am sure everyone thought that the economy would just keep growing like it was then.
So in reality, Matt Garrett who has been at the helm of ODOT for this entire time is now saying that he did not see this coming. Really, more like he was told to turn a blind eye to this and the many other programs that ODOT has hosed in the last 12 years. So now he is claiming that he is mad because they are taking funding away from him to pay someone else to do the work at an even higher rate, what a stooge.
Matt has never been an engineer or even involved in any type of transportation work before he came to ODOT. He was and still is a YES man for the governor's office. What do we expect when we place someone so inexperienced in a position of authority when they have zero idea of the work needed to run a department like ODOT. I guess that we now have the answer.
So I guess the fiasco of a project that is Eddyville to Pioneer Mountain out by Newport will never be finished! We as a state have more than 165 million invested in this project to nowhere. Good going Matt, great to see YOUR new and innovative ideas paying off so well for the people of this state. If the state wanted to save money they would start by giving Matt the boot, but this to will get little if any coverage by the papers. Why is it that the Eddyville to Pioneer Mountain project has gotten so little coverage, it is one big mess that will cost us all more and more money as long as the likes of Matt Garrett is running ODOT.