Information from the Oregon Capital Chronicle is included in this report.

Oregon Department of Transportation officials will lay off almost five hundred state employees at the end of the month after a transportation package failed to pass the state legislature last week.

Gov. Tina Kotek announced the layoff of 483 employees Monday in a statement. Employees were notified by phone call or email at noon Monday, two hours before Kotek made the public announcement.

The immediate impact on the agency’s Salem workforce wasn’t clear. ODOT’s administrative offices and the headquarters for the Department of Motor Vehicles, which the agency oversees, are both in Salem. 

Statewide, ODOT has more than 4,900 jobs, including 481 in administrative services and 119 in finance, according to its current budget. DMV headquarters in Salem has 475 employees, the budget shows.

Layoffs include employees delivering “basic services to Oregonians,” such as filling potholes and basic road repairs, roadside cleanup, improvement projects and, in the winter, deicing and snow removal.

An ODOT spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about how many affected employees work in Salem or their specific job titles. Kotek’s office didn’t have a detailed list of positions affected, but a spokeswoman for the governor said ODOT was preparing one for public release likely on Tuesday.

A second round of layoffs is expected in early 2026, Kotek said. A total of 600 to 700 employees will be laid off as a result.

Another 449 vacant jobs will be eliminated, Kotek said.

The layoffs came after the Oregon Legislature wrapped its current session June 27 without passing a funding bill for the department to pay for staff and fill a $300 million budget shortfall.

ODOT Director Kristopher Strickler called lawmakers’ failure to act “shocking, scary and frustrating,” in a July 1 email to employees, according to reporting from Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Kotek called the layoffs “preventable,” in her statement and said that, as a result, people will see changes in changes in road services and emergency responses.

Despite being in fire season, the layoffs will reduce fire prevention work and brush clearing this summer, increasing wildfire risk around Oregon.

Kotek’s statement said that following the end of the legislature’s session, she ordered a plan for reducing the layoffs’ impacts to public services.

“The current reduction plan temporarily mitigates the impact to basic services by vastly reducing purchases of materials like sand and deicer, delaying the replacement of aging vehicles, maintaining senior staff to protect irreplaceable expertise, and closing fewer maintenance stations,” the statement said.

About half the employees being let go are represented by Service Employees International Union, one of Oregon‘s largest public sector unions.

Union-represented employees whose jobs are cut can “bump” less senior workers from similar jobs, meaning the specific people losing work won’t be clear until later this month, spokeswoman Pati Urias said.

“This layoff is big and is having a real negative impact on staff morale. The process is chaotic, and people are scared,” she said in an email.

Finding a way to fund the agency amid declining gas tax revenue were key priorities for Kotek and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers going into the 2025 session. The state also has a large backlog of deferred road and infrastructure maintenance.

Democrats proposed House Bill 2025 on June 9 as a solution, with less than three weeks from the June 29 constitutional deadline to end the legislative session. 

To raise revenue, it would have increased state gas and payroll taxes, hiked vehicle licensing and registration fees, and created new taxes on car sales to generate nearly $14.6 billion for the Oregon Department of Transportation and local governments over 10 years. 

But by the last day of the session, lawmakers failed even to pass a watered-down version that would’ve raised $2 billion over the next decade only for the state Transportation Department, by raising the state gas tax 3 cents and increasing licensing and registration fees.

Republican lawmakers who stopped a vote on the gas-tax proposal from going forward said they did so because they opposed new taxes that would make it more expensive to live in the state. They also accused Democrats of engaging in a secretive, behind-the-scenes process that left Republicans out of critical discussions on the transportation agency’s needs, resulting in bloated proposals shared too late to be considered in the six-month Legislative session.

Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].

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