Interstate Bridge Staff Hid Information About Ballooning Cost of Giant Highway Project

At a Dec. 15 public hearing on the Interstate Bridge Replacement project, government employees who have been working for years to replace the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River told a bistate committee of lawmakers they did not have new cost estimates for the project.

Project staffers first said back in January 2024 they planned to release new cost estimates. Two years later, staff appeared chagrined at last month’s meeting about the lack of information. “I apologize,” said the newly named interim administrator of the project, Carley Francis, who also heads the southwest region for the Washington Department of Transportation.

The lack of cost information came as unwelcome news to the 16-member panel, who expected updated numbers. (The most recent estimates date back to December 2022, when staff said the project would cost $6 billion.)

“I am extremely disappointed we are not getting a cost estimate today,” said Washington state Rep. John Ley (R-Vancouver). Added Oregon state Rep. Thuy Tran (D-Northeast Portland), “I want a date and I want a report, or I would say your group is not doing its work.”

Documents recently obtained by the Oregon Journalism Project, however, show the staff’s claim it couldn’t provide new cost estimates was false.

In fact, Interstate Bridge Replacement project consultants had completed highly detailed, updated cost estimates for the project by Aug. 15 — four months before the December meeting.

And the new estimates are ugly: The cost of a fixed-span bridge over the Columbia River that would not have to open and close for ships — the design IBR staff favors — had ballooned from $6 billion to $13.6 billion.

The numbers were outlined in a project document called “IBR Program–Fixed Span Cost Estimate” dated Aug. 15.

On Jan. 7, OJP shared the new cost estimates with Reps. Ley and Tran. Both said they felt Francis and IBR staff had betrayed them and the people of Oregon and Washington.

“Frankly, it is shocking to realize that they lied, on the record, not only to me, but to the committee and, by extension, the public at large,” Tran told OJP.

Ley told OJP he suspected IBR staffers at the December meeting were withholding what they knew. Now, he knows they were.

“I am outraged,” Ley said. “They have the tools to provide us cost updates monthly if they wanted to — it’s insanity that they don’t.”

In response to questions from OJP, Francis, the top IBR administrator, said she had done nothing wrong, was not hiding anything from the public, and that the new, higher numbers in the IBR document merely represent a preliminary draft.

Rather than answering questions, Francis responded with a statement:

“The document you received is a draft basis of estimate, not a completed cost estimate validation process (CEVP). CEVP is a time-intensive process that involves several iterations,” she said. “The cost estimate is not complete, and this work is ongoing. The program is working through validation of risks and associated costs. We do not yet have a new cost estimate.”

The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program traces its roots back more than two decades. The project’s scope is enormous. In addition to a new bridge, it includes stretching a MAX light rail line to Vancouver and rebuilding a tangled web of on- and off-ramps extending 5 miles along Interstate 5.

But the price tag for Oregon’s beleaguered Department of Transportation, which would be responsible for sharing the cost with the Washington Department of Transportation and the federal government, is almost unfathomable.

The new, higher cost estimates for the project come at a time when the agency is already in financial trouble. Oregon lawmakers and Gov. Tina Kotek made propping up ODOT with new fees and taxes a major focus of the regular 2025 legislative session.

But after lawmakers failed to pass a bill to bolster the agency, Kotek called a special session in September to approve stop-gap funding. As part of her pitch, Kotek pledged that new accountability measures in the revised bill would ensure that ODOT used new money wisely and that the agency reformed its sloppy management practices.

At the end of September, the Legislature passed House Bill 3991, which included a gas tax increase of 6 cents a gallon, a doubling of vehicle registration fees, and the doubling of a statewide payroll tax for transit.

On Nov. 10, Kotek signed the tax increases into law. On Dec. 4, she announced her candidacy for reelection. Opponents of the ODOT tax increases then referred them to the 2026 ballot. (On Jan. 7, Kotek announced she now favors repealing HB 3991.)

That was the backdrop for the bistate IBR committee meeting on Dec. 15.

Ley says he can think of only one explanation why Francis and her team would deliberately withhold information from the committee: “Politics.”

“In September, Oregon had just kicked off their special session to fund ODOT,” Ley says. “If they [IBR staff] had announced the $13.6 billion cost then, that would have killed the bill. By the time of our December meeting, they knew it was going to be on the ballot, so it’s ‘Oh, now we have an even worse problem.’ So they chose not to be honest with us.”

Joe Cortright, a Portland economist who has served as a watchdog on efforts to replace the I-5 bridge for 20 years, testified at the committee meeting Dec. 15 that he believed IBR staff was hiding the ball and costs would be much higher.

Cortright, who obtained the new cost estimates through a public records request and shared them with OJP this week, wonders if staff’s failure to share updated cost estimates that day could be part of a larger problem.

“IBR kept these exploding costs secret, even as the Oregon Legislature debated a multibillion-dollar ODOT funding package, endured a tortured special session, and produced a highway tax increase that has been referred [to voters],” Cortright says.

He adds that the finger should be pointed at ”the utter failure of the Oregon Transportation Commission, the governor, and legislative oversight committees who actually manage this project.”

Cortright says Francis’ explanation that the new cost estimates are simply preliminary is unconvincing.

“This is not about a single ’final number,’ it is about the range of expected costs,” Cortright says. “You can tell from the very detailed nature of this estimate that this represents work that is very far along, even if it isn’t ‘final.’”

OJP sent questions to Kotek today about the dramatically higher cost estimates. Rather than addressing specific questions, Kotek’s office provided a generic statement. (ODOT responded to questions with a similar statement.)

“It is the governor’s understanding that a process of revising estimates is ongoing and that the IBR Program has been clear with the public that the cost estimates are likely to go up as the process to complete this work continues,” Kotek spokesman Lucas Bezerra said.

“The governor remains committed to accurate, timely, and transparent communications with the public when costs for the full project to replace this critical infrastructure for our region are considered final.”

This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon