Portland has fallen behind in delivering dozens of transportation projects described in a 2016 voter-approved gas tax, failed to provide annual audits or updates to City Council and provided “incomplete, inconsistent, and outdated” information to a citizen group tasked with monitoring the projects.

That’s according to a report from Portland’s Audit Services division released Wednesday.

Auditors examined whether the Portland Bureau of Transportation is living up to commitments made before voters approved a 10-cent-per-gallon gas tax in 2016. According to the report, thus far the results are a mixed bag.

The report comes as the city, state and region are poised to see an unprecedented stretch of construction projects in coming years.

The city has thus far proceeded with the safety and paving projects it pitched to voters in 2016, but 38 of those projects scheduled to begin before 2019 aren’t completed yet, a handful more were finished at a cost greater than initially expected, and the city has not produced annual audits it committed to back in 2016.

“Bureau staff said the schedules were not realistic, and that it took longer than anticipated to break ground because the scopes of individual projects were not yet well defined,” auditors wrote in the 26-page report. “Bureau staff said they did not flesh out full project designs before sharing projects with voters in case the tax did not pass.”

Auditors also said it was difficult to determine if the city was holding fast to its pledge to spend 56 percent of gas tax revenue on street repairs and 44 percent on safety. The watchdog city agency said Portland had made it “difficult to assess” whether that is true.

“It’s critical that the city meet its commitments to voters who have agreed to tax themselves based on representations of what will be delivered,” Mary Hull Caballero, Portland’s City Auditor, said in a statement. “Our recommendations are intended to help the program stay on track and improve communication with its oversight committee and the community.”

The report notes, however, that 2019 and 2020 construction seasons are likely to be very busy ones, and city officials say despite falling behind their own project schedule, they expect to finish all of the transportation projects promised by 2020.

Portland approved the gas tax after years of transportation funding debates kickstarted by then-Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick.

Chris Warner, Portland’s interim transportation director, said the gas tax money came in after “many years of constrained funding” and it took time to catch up.

“PBOT had to quickly ramp up its project planning and delivery practices to meet the demands of managing the new funding stream,” he wrote in response to the report. “As the audit notes, there were some initial delays in the first two years of Fixing Our Streets related to launching such a new program.”

Fixing Our Streets is the marketing term assigned to the $64 million gas tax plan outlined in the voter approved measure. The tax passed with 52 percent support.

Despite initial challenges, the city expects to finish all projects on budget thanks in part to higher than anticipated gas tax revenues.

As of last month, Portland had collected $39 million in gas tax revenue, $7 million more than expected.

Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the transportation bureau, said she plans to send another gas tax to voters in 2020. In her formal response to the audit, Eudaly said Portland will finish 20 projects this year and start construction on 21 more. “BOT staff have developed new project delivery processes that are helping improve the safety and accessibility of our streets while achieving significant equity contracting outcomes,” she said.

Warner said his bureau planned to hire an outside auditor to produce reports the next two years, and he pledged greater transparency in the project cost and designs, so the citizen oversight group has better clarity moving forward. He said he “fully expects” projects to meet the predetermined cost split for paving and safety projects.

Auditors separately said the city also failed to live up to its promise to ensure large truck owners pay their share of street maintenance.

“We found that heavy vehicle owners did not pay into the program commensurate with what experts calculated was their share of City street maintenance, operations and improvement costs,” they wrote. That policy came to the forefront last year when the City Council decided not to raise the rate on eligible trucking businesses to make up an estimated $2 million revenue shortfall.

“We are currently preparing a range of policy adjustments for City Council to evaluate as they consider extending this program,” Warner said in response to that issue.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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