A group of petitioners who recently tried to lower the city’s gas tax by 2 cents per gallon failed to meet the signature requirement needed to put the issue to a public vote. As a result, Eugene’s tax will return next month to the original 5 cents per gallon – the highest rate in Oregon.
Lane County elections officials finished checking the petition sheets late Wednesday night, and on Thursday they revealed that petitioners failed to meet the threshold of 6,365 signatures from registered Eugene voters – the minimum number required to place the referendum on a public ballot.
Annette Newingham, the Lane County Elections chief, said the number one reason petitioners failed was due to the high number of unregistered voters who signed the forms.
On Feb. 27, petitioners turned in 11,084 signatures to the city, and after City Recorder Mary Feldman disqualified a number of the petition sheets, the remaining 10,937 signatures were sent the county elections department for individual verification.
Newingham said the county uses a random sampling method to validate signatures. The first sampling concluded on Monday and did not meet the requirement, ultimately forcing the county to conduct a second sampling.
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During the two separate samplings the elections department checked 2,163 signatures and found only 1,198 that were valid, she said.
Of the rejected signatures, 319 were kicked out because they did not come from registered voters, 288 came from non-residents of Eugene, and 98 came from people not registered in Lane County.
Ron Tyree, owner of Tyree Oil and several Eugene gas stations, was a leader in the petition drive and said he’s frustrated with the city and the situation.
“Forty-five percent of our signatures were thrown out in the separate samples … we went through those signatures with a fine-tooth comb, so that rejection was like, ‘What?’” Tyree said.
In 2005, the city charged only a 3-cent-per-gallon tax, but it was increased by 2 cents later that year, bringing it to a total of 5 cents per gallon.
When the 2-cent portion was approved, there was an expiration date of Feb. 29, 2008 set on it. Late last year, city councilors decided against rescinding the 2-cent tax increase, and in January they voted to extend the sunset by an additional three years.
The extension was approved because councilors wanted more time to find an alternative to the local gas tax for funding road repair, the number one option being a statewide fuel tax increase.
Each penny of the fuel tax raises about $650,000 each year, which the city dedicates to addressing the potholes and street repair.
Collection of the 2-cent component was suspended during March while the referendum process was in full swing, and city officials said they lost about $110,000 in revenue. The tax will go back up to 5 cents per gallon on April 1.
Eugene imposes the highest fuel tax in the state at the nickel-per-gallon rate, and local gas station owners fought the renewal because they said it put them at a disadvantage to gas stations outside of Eugene who charge little to no fuel tax.
Tyree said the referendum leaders will pick up the petition ledgers and go through all of the rejected signatures to make sure they were correctly invalidated. He did not rule out the possibility of another petition that would put an initiative on a future ballot.
He wants to get together with other local gas station owners to see what their level of support would be for another costly and exhaustive petition process. “Who knows what will happen?” he said. “We’ll talk it over.”
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