Oh, no, no.

And um asked.

And more of our sessions.

Okay.

Yeah.

What if everyone's playing?

So we can do invaded way this session is gonna be the big thing is gonna be the disconnect.

So I don't know if you know this, but our income tax system is basically a carbon copy of whatever the feds do, we do so when we did HB1, we get all those huge tax cuts for the millionaires and the billionaires.

That also affects our state income because the same rules all that last year lock section.

The house passed a bill that would have disconnected us, would have blocked us to the previous year's system.

Um it did not pass in the Senate.

Basically, it didn't get out of community in the Senate.

So we we're gonna take another run at that because we have to disconnect to the greatest degree possible.

I'm all for a complete disconnect.

I know that the sound of not paying taxes on uh overtime or tips uh sounds really good, but if you actually read the middle, it's not gonna help those people much.

There's very small windows, there's limits, there's all these things.

So even that part of it is kind of BS.

People, so I'd be fine with a complete disconnect.

That is not what's gonna happen.

We're gonna be cherry picking to disconnect.

And early indications are not awesome.

Forgetting for getting it connected as it should be the less disconnected we are, the more cuts we're going to have.

The more connected we are to the federal or federal tax law too, the more we're gonna have the state level.

And it's can it can't be retroactive to last year, can it?

So if we're gonna have that year anyway.

Yeah, so no matter what we did this year's um, and the the question is what will next year be like, and that's why the disconnect is really critical.

So it's gonna be one of the top things that we do.

What was the bill number last session?

Do you remember?

I can't even remember my bill number.

Um I think there's gonna be a lot of conversation about transportation because in there's obviously signatures to put a recall for the recall.

Uh referendum on ballot, and um the polling sets that uh which means that you know OER will not have the money to keep people employed to triple stand to cities and counties.

So they have so far avoided transit agencies.

They've so far avoided the 500 layoffs or whatever it was the governor was that point that's coming.

There is some layoffs coming, however, they're looking at some ideas to try and maintain as much of the staff as they can.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people are on their jobs because why would you wait around to get paid off?

So as soon as they got the signatures, so we're losing a lot, which is not gonna hold well for anything, applying roads, striping preparing parts of theater in the highway that falls into the ocean, whatever.

Um there's an idea of how you got functionally and then not only so um but part of what I think all of our job is is to help people understand that uh spite the noise that the Republicans are reading about how inefficient ONAT is they're certainly more inefficient than all of the dots are uh they'd be state or community or whatever, they're big organizations, it's complex stuff.

A lot of people to be super efficient.

Um problem is that they're underfunded.

We have a lot of decades back when they set the gas tax, uh it was sufficient, and we have very rarely increased it, and always I don't know to keep up with just inflation, just inflation back in 2017 when we passed when they passed a little bit of increase that they did then, they knew that they needed to increase it 70 cents just to catch up to inflation, and they increase to their dime, and then they gave ODOT a whole bunch of projects to do, right?

And then everyone wondered why ODOT is paid.

So I think it's the job of leader leaders in our community to help people understand that yes, times are done.

Yes, things are expensive, they're also expensive for agencies, right?

The same inflation that we all see in the grocery store is the inflation that the agencies experience, right?

You're trying to buy steel, you're trying to buy all concrete, all the things.

Actually, inflation on construction has been going up 15% year over year since about 2010.

So I mean, you know, it's it's part of why they look in out, because you know, we talk about a big project like um the rose quarter.

We say, okay, it's gonna be 400 million dollars, and we're gonna pay the line 10 years later.

We're going, okay, we need to do the rose quarter.

Why is it 150% more than it was last time?

That's called inflation, and years at 15% year over year, that's 150% more.

So we have helps people understand that if we would like our system to continue to function, not have bridges fall into the river and things like that.

We are going to have to raise revenue for our transportation system.

Full stop.

Um brings me to one of the two bills I'm running this session, which is sort of a first step towards trying to make the maintenance and preservation of our system to behave more like a utility.

So, what I'm asking ODOT to do in this bill is work with cities and counties, come up with a set of criteria of what we want our system to look like.

All the way up and down.

What's what's our standard that we want to get?

How often do we want to restrict?