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Pressure on Oregon lawmakers to act in final weeks Tuesday Jun 20, 2017 at 5:54 PM Jun 20, 2017 at 5:54 PM By Kristena Hansen Associated Press SALEM — As new developments this week continue shrouding the 2017 legislative session in uncertainty, local leaders and special interest groups are trying to pressure on Oregon lawmakers to pass a transportation measure. On Tuesday, more than two dozen mayors, county leaders and mass transit officials from the metro Portland area signed a letter to lawmakers urging them not to leave Salem without having approved a long-term $8.2 billion transportation infrastructure package. That bipartisan proposal, and top priority for Gov. Kate Brown, is the culmination of almost two years-worth of work that many assumed would've been a done-deal by now. Yet it remains in limbo today, as Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists and others argue over details such as the low-carbon fuel standard. As a tax measure — which would increase the gas tax and add new levies on car and bicycle sales and impose highway tolls — it needs supermajority support in both chambers. "We have two choices to preserve our quality of life: we can take action now, or let the challenges deepen as the fixes get more expensive," the Portland-area leaders wrote. "This is bigger than any one city, county, or metro area." The transportation package is separate from the state's budget, but the two have become linked in recent weeks. Some labor unions have threatened to try thwarting the transit plan at the ballot if lawmakers don't raise more revenue from businesses. Democrats, particularly those in the Oregon House, have been exhausting their efforts to close a $1.4 billion budget hole with the help of a big overhaul to Oregon's corporate tax code, but with Republicans' refusal to support it, the matter is now on "pause" as of Monday. Continued gridlock over the corporate tax plan has affected other matters as well, delaying a $8.2 billion K-12 education package from final approval until next week, just days before schools enter the new fiscal year, and stalling progress on the state's overall 2017-19 budget that must be balanced by July 10. On Tuesday, Salem's influential public employee labor unions — Oregon Education Association, SEIU Local 503, Oregon AFSCME — said they can't wait any longer for a more stable revenue stream for education and other public services. They say they've filed initial signatures to proceed on three ballot measures, one of them a scaled-back redo of last year's failed Measure 97 tax proposal, they have in the works for November 2018.