The ODOT accountability charade

Every time Oregonians are asked to pony up more money for roads, ODOT trots out a report saying that they’re definitely going to improve their management and stop blowing through budgets. And they’re doing it again. In 2025, as Yogi Berra would say, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

There’s a multi-billion dollar transportation bill hanging fire in the Legislature.

ODOT’s managerial blunders and massive cost-overruns (quite logically) raise major questions about the wisdom of giving them even more money.

So the state throws money at management consultants, who generate a buzzword-filled report about how ODOT could improve.

The Governor promises that ODOT will implement these recommendations.

Voila! Accountability.

That’s exactly what Governor Brown did just prior to the 2017 Legislature approving the last transportation package. And Governor Tina Kotek and the Oregon Department of Transportation are following the same script in 2025, hoping a pledge to implement the consultant’s report will get everyone to overlook ODOT’s manifest managerial blunders and vote for the bill.

Here’s The Oregonian in 2017

The governor ordered the review in 2015 after negotiations to reach a massive transportation spending package collapsed. The review of agency management faced bumps along the way — including the initial auditor being dropped because of a conflict of interest — but Washington, D.C.-based McKinsey ultimately delivered the review on time. Brown has said she’s “committed” to implementing the suggestions that come out of the final report, which is due to land on her desk at the end of February. A spokesman said Brown looks forward to improving the transportation agency.

In 2025, Governor Kotek is following exactly the same script. ODOT and the Legislature have hired two firms to do a “strategic review” and a “managerial assessment” of ODOT. Instead of McKinsey, this time, the state has hired two of its biggest engineering consultants WSP, (which has billed $70 million for its work on the Interstate Bridge), and AtkinsRealis (which just bought David Evans and Associates, which is the second largest contractor for the I-5 Rose Quarter Project). Like her predecessor, Governor Kotek has ordered ODOT to get right to work “improving.”

Kotek directed agency director Kris Strickler in a Tuesday letter to submit a comprehensive report to her by Aug. 1 that would spell out an action to carry out key recommendations that consultants included in their review.

She listed 11 “high priority” recommendations. Those include suggestions to restructure the agency’s office that oversees major projects, establish clearer career pathways for employees, create a central dashboard for major projects and replace outdated financial software.

As we’ve pointed out at City Observatory, most of these recommendations are cosmetic, or have already been done–like creating a project dashboard, and centralizing authority for mega-projects. Many were included in the 2017 “reforms,” and we’ve seen exactly how well they work.

This is happening at exactly the same time the costs of major projects continues to rise, with no end in sight. The Abernathy Bridge just topped $815 million, up from an estimated $249 million in 2018; the Rose Quarter (approved for $450 million in 2017) is now slated to cost $2.1 billion (and an OTC commissioner believes it could go to $2.5 billion, and the $7.5 billion I-5 Bridge Replacement Project is more than a year late produce a new higher cost estimate, which is purposely being delayed until well after the legislative session. None of these reports offers any direct analysis or recommendations of how to lower the costs of any of these projects.

Not that these consultants have any interest in actually reducing project costs. They make more money when project budgets expand. As research on road building costs published by the Brookings Institution showed, excessive reliance on consultants is one of the major factors driving higher costs.

Re-Re-arranging the Deck Chairs

One of the signal innovations of the 2017 Legislature, meant to improve management and accountability (somehow) was transferring the appointment of the ODOT Director from the Governor to the Oregon Transportation Commission. (Supposedly this empowered them, and made them more responsible for the department).

But now, also in the name of accountability, HB 2025 of this legislature, the major transportation reform bill, exactly reverses this change, making the Governor responsible for appointing the director of ODOT. At worst, its contradictory, and at best its just more evidence that its simply change for the sake of change that will make no difference to agency performance or actual accountability.

Re-Re-arranging the Deck Chairs

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