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Politicians love to recount their successes. But learning from one’s failures is more valuable.

Long ago, former Senate President Gene Derfler, R-Salem, told me that any day when he had more successes than failures was a good day. Derfler, who served in the Legislature during 1988-2002, must know something – he turned 101 this year.

And this brings me to the fiasco known as the 2025 Legislature.

Despite successes in other areas, lawmakers infamously failed to fulfill their most significant assignment – successfully producing a transportation funding package. As a result, hundreds of Oregon Department of Transportation employees are losing their jobs, as are city and county workers.

Going into this year’s legislative session, many observers expected lawmakers to fail on a comprehensive package and settle for small steps to keep ODOT running. The Legislature couldn’t even do that, despite the Democrats’ holding supermajorities in the Senate and the House.

Today’s Capital Chatter is the first of what could be several columns about the good and the bad of the 2025 session, based on observations from participants and myself. We’ll start with Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and the transportation package.

Until the final days, or hours, the governor appeared largely absent from those discussions. Instead of being the dealmaker or the powerbroker, Kotek said early on that she would leave transportation to the Legislature.

Some political insiders suggest Kotek wasn’t particularly getting along with Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, and Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, though she met more often with them than with Senate Republican Leader Daniel Bonham, The Dalles, and House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, Canby. In turn, Wagner and Fahey reportedly clashed with the leaders of the transportation committee, particularly on the House side.

On transportation, progressive Democrats seemingly went for a strategy of “Go big or go home.”

In the late hours of Friday, June 27, they and their colleagues went home.

Drazan, who is expected to challenge Kotek for the governorship next year, had outmaneuvered Democrats and their less-experienced legislative leadership.

ODOT’s cutbacks will fall hardest on rural Oregon, which is mostly represented by Republicans. But for Drazan, the failure of a transportation package can be a key campaign issue. Despite Democrats blaming Republicans, it’s questionable whether there were ever sufficient Democratic votes to pass a transportation bill.

Throughout the session, Kotek stayed true to her three key political priorities: homelessness and housing, mental health and addiction treatment, and education. Her June calendar shows regular meetings on those issues and occasional meetings with legislators, particularly Democratic leaders.

Politics is the art of relationships, and the ongoing Capitol reconstruction didn’t help. The governor’s temporary office is in the State Library, around the corner from the Capitol grounds. Missing from the 2025 session were the serendipitous interactions of the governor, lawmakers and their staff members running into each other in the Capitol.

Kotek was at the Capitol for long hours during what wound up being the session’s final two days, June 26-27. 

At her 27-minute press conference the next day, June 28, Kotek criticized the Legislature’s failure to pass a transportation package and specifically blamed Republicans, particularly their refusal to waive the time requirements for handling the last-gasp, trimmed-down House Bill 3402.

Dirk VanderHart of Oregon Public Broadcasting pointedly asked the obvious question: “How is what happened yesterday anything less than fundamental mismanagement of that issue by your party?

“You’re blaming Republicans. It didn’t have to go to the last day. You guys could have left yourself a week, going through every procedural hurdle and voted on it, with the votes you say exist. So how is it not mismanagement by Democrats? And where were you before 36 hours ago, trying to ensure that that mismanagement didn’t occur, because I think a lot of people saw you as absent from this conversation.”

Kotek pushed back: “I do think the press has made that assumption lawmakers were in charge of the transportation process. My team supported every conversation there was. When they needed information, we were there. When there was a problem, we were there. We were having conversations with legislative leadership all session long about, ‘How do we get this done? What do you need?’ I was involved when there was a potential referral to the ballot.”

I assume she was referring to her June 24 meeting with Greg Remensperger of the Oregon Auto Dealers Association and House Majority Leader Ben Bowman, D-Tigard.

Kotek has said she was heavily involved behind the scenes. When other journalists and I have asked for details, she has not provided them.

Even on the final day, it appeared she was acting more like a cheerleader than a dealmaker while Democrats huddled for hours. She did meet with them and testified in favor of the stripped-down transportation proposal, HB 3402

During her press conference that Saturday, I asked what Kotek told lawmakers on that fateful Friday.

The governor responded: “What I know is at the end of legislative sessions, people are tired. Sometimes people don’t know all the things that have to get done.

“What I need to do is be able to have resources to fund a budget – that they had passed the budget – and I just want to remind everyone, the ODOT budget got passed, but that budget already had cuts in it that could be managed. But the rest of the budget was dependent upon either passing [House Bill] 2025 or House Bill 3402.

‘There’s no money lying around for ODOT without action by the Legislature. And so, my job yesterday was to remind people of that [and] say, ‘Please, you need to figure this out before you go home. There is a pathway.’

“And so, I was the extra, persistent voice to say, ‘I know you got a lot to do. I know you’re sad about [the] transportation package. You got to get this done.’”

“So that’s what I was doing yesterday with members, which is why I testified in committee,” she said, referring to her supporting HB 3402 once the House Rules Committee finally convened.