By DIRK VANDERHART/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Increases to Oregon’s gas tax, vehicle registration fees and a transit-oriented payroll tax will not go into effect as scheduled next month, after opponents of those changes submitted a massive number of voter signatures Friday.

The Republican-led No Tax Oregon campaign said it turned in nearly 200,000 signatures to state elections officials in Salem, more than double the roughly 78,000 needed to refer the tax hikes to the November 2026 ballot. While some signatures will be ruled ineligible as officials analyze the petition, few doubt the referral will succeed.

The submission amounts to a dramatic rebuke of new taxes passed by legislative Democrats in late September.

With a shoestring budget and an army of volunteers, No Tax Oregon collected signatures with incredible speed. State elections officials have until Jan. 29 to determine whether the petition has enough valid signatures.

The development also puts elected Democrats in a bind.

Gov. Tina Kotek pushed the taxes in order to prevent mass layoffs and service cuts she said would be required at the Oregon Department of Transportation without new money.

With signatures now submitted, the taxes will be suspended until voters can have a say. That means ODOT is still facing a funding shortfall, though the agency did not offer a definitive dollar amount when OPB asked this week.

Nearly 300 ODOT employees quit from July to the beginning of December, according to Communications Director Kevin Glenn, and ODOT has more than 600 vacant full-time positions.

“I don’t believe that the governor will ultimately fire a bunch of people out of the gate,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, a leader of the No Tax Oregon effort. “I don’t think that makes a lot of sense.”

Kotek’s office said Friday that “cuts to crucial transportation programs are financially unavoidable” now that signatures have been submitted, but also that it would look to avoid near-term impacts.

“The Governor’s guiding principle is to avoid causing immediate service cuts that will impact Oregonians – especially the rural communities, veterans, and people with disabilities who rely on transit,” spokeswoman Roxy Mayer said.

Kotek has directed ODOT to continue hiring winter road crews, even as it became clear the ballot referral was likely to qualify.

The revenue streams targeted in the referral amount to only a portion of House Bill 3991, the bill that passed after an unwieldy special session that concluded in late September. The main revenue-raising pieces of the bill would increase the state’s 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax by 6 cents, temporarily double a payroll tax that funds public transit, double registration fees for most vehicles, and nearly triple titling fees.

All of those will be suspended as elections officials determine whether the referendum petition qualifies. Assuming it does, they would not take effect at least until voters have a say. Absent intervention from lawmakers, that would occur in November 2026, during the same election in which Kotek is seeking another term in office.

Other pieces of the bill will go into effect as lawmakers intended. Those include changes to the way heavy trucks are taxed in the state, deleting statutory language that required tolling in the Portland region, provisions to give lawmakers more oversight of ODOT, and a law that will eventually require drivers of electric vehicles and hybrids to pay for every mile they drive.

One major question heading into February’s month-long legislative session: whether Democrats will opt to simply scrap the entire bill and start fresh. That would face pushback from at least some Republicans, and from interest groups that fought for changes that remain in place.

“That would be a really bad move,” said state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, another leader of the No Tax Oregon effort. “A lot of people like the fact that much of the tolling language was taken out. There’s all the language the truckers have fought for. That’s a tough move for them politically to backtrack on everything.”