Tax repeal effort declared out of gas.

Byline: Edward Russo The Register-Guard

Eugene's city recorder on Thursday said an effort by gas station owners to repeal the city's latest gas tax has failed to qualify for the ballot.

But a lobbyist for the station owners disagrees, and says the matter may end up in court.

City Recorder Mary Feldman said that a check by the Lane County Elections office of referendum signatures gathered by Eugene gas stations showed that they did not collect enough valid signatures to put the matter before Eugene voters in November.

"It didn't qualify," she said.

A referendum organizer, Ron Tyree, said organizers will discuss what to do, including the possibility of launching another signature-gathering effort to put the repeal before voters next year through an initiative petition.

"We'll evaluate our options," said Tyree, the owner of Tyree Oil, a Eugene-based gasoline and fuel distributor that also has two stations in Eugene. "We are disappointed that it didn't (get on the ballot). We were optimistic that we had enough signatures to refer it (to voters). But since we weren't successful, we certainly learned a lot about the process."

However, a legal dispute may be brewing.

Eugene gas station owners launched the repeal effort, needing to collect the valid signatures of at least 10 percent of the votes cast for mayor in the last mayoral election. That's 6,365 registered Eugene voters, the city said.

Station owners were helped by Oregon Petroleum Association lobbyist Paul Romain, who on Thursday argued that the city should have required the gathering of only 5,373 valid signatures.

Romain said the city set the incorrect higher threshold by erroneously including write-in votes for mayor in the vote tally from which the 10 percent was calculated.

Romain said he will try to persuade Tyree and other petition organizers to sue the city over the matter.

"We have more than sufficient signatures" to meet that 5,373 threshold, Romain said. "Unless I get talked out of it, there is a pretty good case that we will demand the referral be placed on the ballot."

The City Council in May voted to add 3 cents to the city's 5-cents-a-gallon gas tax to raise another $2 million annually for street repairs.

The referendum effort put the tax increase on hold.

With the petition drive's failure, the 3-cent-a-gallon increase will take effect Aug. 1, city officials said.

At 8-cents-a-gallon, Eugene will have the highest city gas tax in Oregon. About a dozen cities have gas taxes, most of them 3 cents a gallon.

The station owners launched the referendum to repeal the city's latest 3-cent gas tax increase and undo a City Council action to keep a previous 2-cents-a-gallon increase that was originally set to expire next February.

A repeal of both actions would have knocked the city's gas tax back down to 3 cents a gallon.

Station owners sought the repeal, saying the comparatively high tax puts them at a disadvantage with station owners in Springfield, which has a 3-cent tax, and Lane County, which has none.

Station owners collected more than 10,000 signatures, which Feldman sent to Lane County Elections to check their validity.

Elections officials do not need to check each signature on petitions that require more than 4,500 signatures.

Instead, they analyzed two large samples and then extrapolated to reach a conclusion about the validity of all the signatures.

In order to qualify for the ballot, two samplings totaling 2,087 signatures would have had to yield 1,355 valid signatures, Feldman said. But the analysis found only 1,132 valid signatures in the sample, or 223 fewer than needed.

The city's Public Works Department relies on the gas tax to pay for most of its street repaving. In the five years it has been collected, the tax has funded the repaving of nearly 125 lane-miles on more than 75 streets, said Public Works spokesman Eric Jones.

At 8 cents, the gas tax will generate slightly more than $5 million for street work in the current fiscal year, he said.