EUGENE, Ore. -- A referendum petition by Eugene, Ore.'s gas station owners to reduce the city's nickel-per-gallon gasoline tax by two cents effort failed to gather enough signatures of Eugene registered voters to put it on the May 20 ballot, Lane County elections chief Annette Newingham told The Register-Guard.
If voters had repealed the two-cent portion of the tax in May, the city would have lost $1.3 million a year that now goes to repave and rebuild streets, said the report. With the petition's failure, the city will resume collecting the two-cent portion of the local tax on April 1, [image-nocss] Public Works Department spokesperson Eric Jones told the newspaper.
The petition effort, financed by station owners and the Oregon Petroleum Association, needed the signatures of at least 6,365 registered city voters to place the matter before voters. But out of 10,813 total signatures, it gathered only 5,914 valid signatures, Newingham said. "This [petition effort] had a lot of bad signatures," she added.
Under state rules, election officials did not check each of the signatures collected to determine whether petition circulators had met the minimum to place the referendum on the ballot. Instead, they analyzed two samples of signatures—1,081 and 1,082, respectively—to extrapolate a conclusion about the validity of all the signatures. A total of 1,198 signatures from both samples were invalid, Newingham said. Many of those disqualified signers were not registered to vote in Oregon, Lane County or Eugene, she added.
The rising price of gasoline may have led some people to sign the petitions that shouldn't have, she said. "The price of gas makes people emotional. How could it not?" Newingham told the paper. "And you have all kinds of people who go to gas stations in Eugene who may not be registered to vote" in the city or the county.
The referendum is the latest battle in the war between the city and the Oregon Petroleum Association, which challenged local gasoline taxes statewide, the report said.
Last year, station owners and the association collected enough signatures to force a referendum on the City Council's decision to raise the gasoline tax three cents, from five cents to eight cents a gallon. Voters last November rejected the tax increase, said the report. But station owners also wanted voters to have a say on whether the city should keep the two-cent portion of the tax. The council last year and again in January decided to continue collecting the two cents instead of ending it last month, as was originally planned.
Ron Tyree, owner of Tyree Oil, Eugene, and a petition organizer, said petition organizers will review the invalid signatures before deciding what, if anything, to do next. He said possibilities include an initiative to put the two-cent part of the tax on the ballot. That would take another signature drive. "We're going to review the facts, see what makes sense and consider all our options," he told Register-Guard.
Last year, the association relied mostly on station employees to gather signatures from customers. In January and February, with tighter deadlines to meet, the association and station owners hired petition circulators, Tyree said.
He criticized the City Council for refusing to put the two cents before voters last year. "The City Council should not have made us go through this, because we had previously gathered enough signatures to get this issue on the ballot last year," he told the paper. "It doesn't show integrity on behalf of the City Council."
The city collects about $650,000 annually from each penny of the gasoline tax, or $3.25 million a year from the nickel tax, said the report. The city also receives a share of the 18-cent-a-gallon state gasoline tax to maintain and operate streets. In the fiscal year ending June 30, the state gasoline tax will have provided $6.4 million to Eugene, the report said.
The city has not collected the two cents per gallon since March 1, four days after the station owners turned in the referendum petition signatures. By not collecting the two cents for March, the city lost about $110,000 in tax revenue, the paper said.Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.