Skip to main content
This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
Kris Strickler, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, provided details of layoffs looming at the agency in an all-staff email he sent this morning.
“Today, 483 current ODOT employees will be notified that they will be laid off as of July 31,” Strickler wrote in the email at 8:37 am.
“Additionally, we are eliminating 449 vacant positions that we can’t afford to fill. In total, we are reducing our workforce by 932 positions. If the funding shortfall isn’t resolved, we will be forced to plan another round of layoffs early next year.”
The announcement comes after the Legislature concluded work June 27 without passing a transportation funding package that was supposed to have been one of the session’s central achievements. Supermajorites in both chambers would have allowed Democrats to pass a package of new taxes to augment agency funding without a single Republican vote, but Democratic leaders failed to find enough support to pass any of the three versions of the bill that lawmakers considered in the session’s final week.
The layoffs will hit a key Democratic constituency hard: Service Employees International Union represents about 2,500 of ODOT’s nearly 5,000 employees. Those set to lose their jobs are mostly on the agency’s maintenance, operations and headquarters staffs. SEIU, a major benefactor of legislative Democrats and Gov. Tina Kotek, is unhappy about the job losses. Meanwhile, Republicans, who opposed the tax increases Democrats proposed, are in no mood for the special session Kotek has hinted she wants.
Kotek, Strickler’s boss, followed the Monday morning email with a message of her own.
“Consequences to essential transportation services are imminent across the state. This is not business as usual,” Kotek said.
“These layoffs constitute an emergency in Oregon’s transportation system that will hurt every part of Oregon. While we sharpened our pencils to temper the pace of layoffs from one wave into two, there will not be enough workers to provide the level of response Oregonians rely on, whether it’s filling a pothole or clearing safe passage for evacuation when a fire strikes.
“This emergency was preventable, and we still have time to intervene. I have not and will not stop fighting for Oregonians who rely on us to keep our roads safe and people and products moving. Come winter, without a shared commitment to solve this crisis from partners and lawmakers, Oregonians will be left out in the cold—literally.”
