By Taxpayers Association of Oregon / OregonWatchdog.com
—
Today, the Oregon State Capitol was abuzz over Senate Bill 1599, a bill that would swap the gas tax referendum election from the November General Election Ballot and places it on the lesser-turn-out election of the May Primary.
If you were to look up the State Capitol website to find the bill, you would notice that it apparently does not exist (as of 2:42pm 2/5/26). We did see it on a third-party bill tracker here.
So, the insider politicians know about the bill and can talk about but the public, at this point, is kept in the dark.
This is curious since something similar happened just days ago with the Kicker theft bill HB 4125.
A public hearing was announced around the weekend of a hearing on Monday immediately following the weekend, but on Monday morning the bill on the official Legislative website showed that there was no hearing assigned, no committee assigned and no ability testify.
See below:
The end result was that citizens who are dependent on the Legislative bill tracker, had to wait until hours before the hearing to learn that the hearing existed and could submit a testimony.
This same weekend surprise also happened to the big gun bill last Monday.
Both the gas tax election swap bill (SB 1599) and the Kicker bill and the gun bill reveal a pattern where the people are getting conflicting information and woefully late information on critical legislation that impacts their lives. There should not be a standard for capitol insiders and the public when it comes to what is going on in the Legislature.
Was this article helpful? If yes, please contribute online at OregonWatchdog.com (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction or Political Tax Credit options to promote liberty).