Highway Bill: Some Counties Win--Portland Loses

The proposed amendments to the HB 2001 contain earmarks
for $960 million in new highway projects.

These overwhelmingly benefit rural Oregon.  Yamhill county (thanks to
the Newberg/Dundee bypass earmark) gets more than $2,000 per resident.

Multnomah County gets a little more than $75 per person (for two
projects.  One is $24 million for East County (I-84/ 257th Avenue).
There is also $30 million for the Macadam Avenue/Sellwood Bridge
interchange (not the bridge itself)--which is less than 10% of the cost
of the Sellwood Bridge replacement.  The amended bill authorizes
Multnomah and Clackamas Counties to raise local vehicle registration fees,
which mean their residents get to pay double--once for projects statewide,
and again for local projects.

I've assigned projects to the counties in which they are located, and
computed the per capita amount spent in each county.  Counties not on
this list don't have any earmarked projects.


HB 2001-A17 Allocations, Sec. 65       
       
County        Total         Per Person
YAMHILL         192,000      2,036
MORROW          14,200     1,137
TILLAMOOK     27,000     1,036
BAKER          10,100     1,000
WASCO         19,000       786
GRANT          5,600       744
WALLOWA           5,000       703
HARNEY           5,000       649
JACKSON           125,000       609
UNION         12,000       473
HOOD RIVER     10,000       462
MALHEUR          12,500       395
KLAMATH          23,000       348
CLACKAMAS    122,000       324
LANE         82,000       237
UMATILLA     15,800       218
WASHINGTON      108,000       208
MARION          62,000       197
DESCHUTES     32,000       192
DOUGLAS         14,100       134
JOSEPHINE     10,000       120
MULTNOMAH     54,000        75

Note:  Amount in total is project amounts in thousands of dollars.
Per Person is the number of dollars in projects for a county divided by
that county's 2008 population.