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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R-Canby) reacted strongly to an email Oregon Department of Transportation director Kris Strickler sent to agency employees last week in the wake of the Legislature’s failure to pass a transportation funding bill.
In her response July 2, Drazan was combative: “Stop the gaslighting and do your job, director Strickler,” she wrote.
Strickler originally communicated with the agency’s nearly 5,000 employees right after the session ended, warning that layoffs loomed for about 600 of them.
“This is the hardest message I’ve ever had to send in my career,” Strickler wrote June 28 at 9:03 pm.
“Moments ago, the legislative session ended without the Legislature passing a transportation funding package providing ODOT with either new funding, funding flexibility, or even an interim step so we would not have to take immediate reductions,” he continued. “The leadership team and governor pushed to the very end, including the governor testifying on a bill this evening. Because of this inaction, we are forced to make significant cuts starting this month.”
Although Democrats hold the three-fifths supermajorities in both legislative chambers that Oregon requires to pass new taxes, none of the various versions of the transportation funding bill generated enough support to result in a successful floor vote.
Lawmakers have cited a variety of explanations for the failure. Among them: Republican intransigence; the late arrival of the bill, which didn’t appear until the second week of June; and overreach on the part of Democrats, who initially proposed a $15 billion tax hike over the next decade, an increase that was difficult for members in swing districts to support. A slimmed-down version, which would have raised about $12 billion, was no more digestible, and a last-gasp, 3-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase failed to earmark any funding for local governments.
Underlying the failure: a general lack of confidence in ODOT among many lawmakers. Perhaps nothing captured the agency’s reputational issues in the Capitol more clearly than when a senior department official admitted to lawmakers early in the session that ODOT had made a billion-dollar error in its budget.
In his end-of-session email, however, Strickler repeated the agency talking points that had not convinced lawmakers of ODOT’s case:
“For many years, this agency has informed the Oregon Legislature that a structural revenue issue driven by flattening and declining gas tax revenue, inflation, and statutory restrictions on available funding would eventually force the agency to dramatically reduce its staffing and service levels if no intervention came forward,” he wrote.
Drazan didn’t appreciate that framing. Her caucus and Senate Republicans had urged ODOT to make significant cuts rather than seek so much new money.
“I have read your lengthy email to ODOT employees,” Drazan wrote. “Make no mistake, this is an offensive abrogation of duty. Throughout this legislative process you have on behalf of your agency failed to take full responsibility for a culture of careless fiscal management, political doublespeak, and blame shifting.”
Drazan blamed Strickler’s boss, Gov. Tina Kotek, for failing to engage with Republican leaders on ODOT’s budget and chastised the agency for declining to work with GOP lawmakers.
“ODOT refused to respond to questions and instead obfuscated and dodged hard conversations,” Drazan wrote. “It appears you have since spread the false narrative that your agency leadership was working tirelessly to build awareness and support for their work.”
Drazan said ODOT and Democratic leaders deserved the result they got.
“You advanced backroom deals that failed to pan out,” she wrote. “Public employees should understand that by choosing to exclusively engage in political gamesmanship you and the governor gambled and lost.”
She added: “I would respectfully say you have no business playing the hero in staff emails, while stoking fears among ODOT’s workforce and conjuring up false narratives with imaginary villains.”
Of course, 2026 is an election year, and Drazan, who ran against Kotek in 2022, losing by 3.5 points, is keenly aware of that. But her tone suggests two things: First, the business community, which depends on a well-functioning transportation system to move its products and whose members are Republicans’ financial supporters, is not in a conciliatory mood.
Second, Kotek’s intimations that she plans to call the Legislature into special session to pass stopgap funding for ODOT face a significant obstacle as Republicans are clearly not feeling much pressure to fall in line.
ODOT and Kotek did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Drazan’s email.
