Oregon took a substantive step toward reviving efforts to replace the aging Interstate Bridge that links the state with Washington.
"On Wednesday, [Oregon] House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney formally appointed eight state lawmakers to a new joint committee tasked with overseeing the bridge talks and working with lawmakers from the other side of the Columbia River on kickstarting that decades-old planning effort," reports Andrew Theen.
Political leaders in Washington have been pressing to jumpstart the project since 2018, and positive talk about the project has been reported in Oregon since April 2019.
"The CRC failed in 2014 in Oregon, but the year before a small group of Washington lawmakers torpedoed that state’s $450 million funding commitment, essentially dooming the project," explains Theen of both states' roles in the failure of the previous iteration of the project.
With the appointment of the eight lawmakers onto the join committee, Oregon legislators also expressed the desire to get to work as soon as possible.
FULL STORY: Oregon creates bipartisan Interstate Bridge committee, but ‘it’s going to be slow’
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