By CLAIRE RUSH

Oregon could become the second U.S. state to require electric vehicle owners to enroll in a pay-per-mile program as lawmakers began a special session Friday to fill a $300 million transportation budget hole that threatens basic services like snowplowing and road repairs.

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Legislators failed earlier this year to approve a transportation funding package. Hundreds of state workers’ jobs are in limbo, and the proposal for a road usage charge for EV drivers was left on the table.

Hawaii in 2023 was the first state to create a mandatory road usage charge program to make up for projected decreases in fuel tax revenue due to the growing number of electric, hybrid and fuel-efficient cars. Many other states have studied the concept, and Oregon, Utah and Virginia have voluntary programs.

The concept has promise as a long-term funding solution, experts say. Others worry about privacy concerns and discouraging people from buying EVs, which can help reduce transportation emissions.

“This is a pretty major change,” said Liz Farmer, an analyst for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ state fiscal policy team, noting “the challenge in enacting something that’s dramatically different for most drivers.”

Oregon’s transportation woes

Oregon’s transportation department says the budget shortfall stems from inflation, projected declines in gas tax revenue and other spending limits. Over the summer, it sent layoff notices to nearly 500 workers and announced plans to close a dozen road maintenance stations.

Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek paused those moves and called the special session to find a solution. Republican lawmakers say the department mismanaging its money is a main issue.

Kotek’s proposal includes an EV road usage charge that is equivalent to 5% of the state’s gas tax. It also includes raising the gas tax by 6 cents to 46 cents per gallon, among other fee increases.

The usage charge would phase in starting in 2027 for certain EVs and expand to include hybrids in 2028. Should the gas tax increase be approved, EV drivers either would pay about 2.3 cents per mile, or choose an annual flat fee of $340. Drivers in the program wouldn’t have to pay supplemental registration fees.

Drivers would have several options for reporting mileage to private contractors, including a smartphone app or the vehicle’s telematics technology, said Scott Boardman, policy adviser for the transportation department who works on the state’s decade-old voluntary road usage charge program.

Republican lawmakers, who have opposed the tax and fee increases, unveiled a different proposal Friday that largely focuses on lifting restrictions on how the transportation department can spend money on maintenance operations. It does not include a road usage charge.

FILE – A line of electric cars and newly installed charging stations sit in front of the Portland General Electric headquarters building on July 28, 2015, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

As of May, there were over 84,000 EVs registered in Oregon, about 2% of the state’s total vehicles, he said.

Hawaii launches program

Under Hawaii’s program, which began phasing in last month, EV drivers can pay $8 per 1,000 miles driven, capped at $50, or an annual fee of $50.

In 2028, all EV drivers will be required to enroll in the pay-per-mile program, with odometers read at annual inspections. By 2033, the program is expected to expand to all light-duty vehicles.

Questions about privacy and fairness

In past surveys commissioned by Oregon’s transportation department, respondents cited privacy, GPS devices and data security as concerns about road usage charges.

Oregon’s voluntary program has sought to respond to such concerns by deleting mileage data 30 days after a payment is received, Boardman said. While plug-in GPS devices are an option in the program, transportation officials anticipate moving away from them because they’re more expensive and can be removed, he added.

Still, not everyone has embraced a road usage charge. Arizona voters will decide next year whether to ban state and local governments from implementing a tax or fee based on miles traveled after the measure was referred to the ballot by the Republican-majority Legislature.

Many people don’t realize that “both your vehicle and your cellphone capture immense amounts of data about your personal driving habits already,” said Brett Morgan, Oregon transportation policy director for the nonprofit Climate Solutions.

Morgan added that road usage charges exceeding what drivers of internal combustion engines would pay in gas taxes could dissuade people from buying electric and hybrid cars. Already, federal tax incentives for EVs are set to expire under the tax and spending cut bill recently passed by the GOP-controlled Congress.

“We are definitely supportive of a road usage charge that has EVs paying their fair share, but they should not be paying extra or a penalty,” Morgan said.

By BERNARD CONDON

NEW YORK (AP) — The car company run by Elon Musk asked a federal court Friday to dismiss massive damages awarded to victims of a deadly crash, arguing that their lawyers had misled the jury by improperly bringing up the billionaire during the trial.

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The filing in Miami federal court seeks to overturn the $243 million award after a 22-year old student out stargazing was flung through the air to her death by a runaway Tesla equipped with Autopilot features that Musk had talked up for years. A jury earlier this month found that the speeding Tesla driver was mostly to blame but Tesla was also responsible because of faulty technology.

The case has been watched closely by carmakers racing to develop fully self-driving features. They fear it could portend massive liability risks should future juries reviewing accidents decide carmakers are also to blame even when drivers act recklessly.

“If the verdict is allowed to stand, it will chill innovation, harm road safety and invite future juries to punish manufacturers who bring new safety features to market,” the company said in the filing.

Tesla is also arguing that opposing lawyers “led the jury astray” by introducing “highly prejudicial but irrelevant evidence” suggesting Tesla had hid or lost video and data that, after it was dug up by the opposing side, helped recreate what went wrong moments before the crash. Tesla had said that it made a mistake in not offering up the evidence earlier and did not do that deliberately.

Musk had taken a big chance by allowing the case to go to trial at a pivotal moment for his electric car company. He is trying to convince Americans that his self-driving technology, improved since the 2019 crash, can be trusted amid ambitious plans to roll out driverless Tesla robotaxis around the country.

Many similar cases against Tesla had either been dismissed or been settled by the company before going to trial.

The plaintiff lawyers revealed in a court filing last week that they had told Tesla that they were willing to accept $60 million to settle. But Tesla refused. In the end, the jury decided on compensatory and punitive damages for the family of the killed Naibel Benavides and her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, amounting to four times that amount.

The filing by Tesla on Friday asked the judge to grant it a new trial, throw out the award or at least vastly reduce it.

The jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed even though the driver had admitted he was wrong to be distracted by his cellphone. The driver had settled separately with the Benavides family and Angulo. Tesla has said the technology had nothing to do with the crash.

The plaintiff lawyers also said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.

They said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology.

European regulators have complained about Tesla word choices for its driver assistance software, and have raised questions about whether it misleads drivers, too. Musk had told investors last year that it expected to get approval from those regulators for a more advanced version of Autopilot in March, but it’s still waiting for the go-ahead.

That advanced driver assistance feature, which Musk calls Full-Self Driving, has also drawn scrutiny in U.S. for possibly misleading drivers. An administrative judge in California is hearing a case in which the state motor vehicles department is seeking to withdraw Tesla’s license to sell cars partly because of what it says are misleading names.

“I trusted the technology too much,” the driver in the Florida crash, George McGee, said in his testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”

The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding.

Tesla stock fell nearly 3.5% Friday, after a drop a day earlier when sales figures out of Europe showed car buyers there are still avoiding Tesla. The company had been hit with boycotts and protest earlier his year after Musk embraced extreme right wing politicians there.

By MARTHA BELLISLE

SEATTLE (AP) — Lawyers are demanding the release of a longtime Oregon resident arrested by Border Patrol while fighting a Washington state wildfire, saying Friday that the firefighter was already on track for legal status after helping federal investigators solve a crime against his family.

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His arrest was illegal, the lawyers said, and violated Department of Homeland Security polices that say immigration enforcement must not be conducted at locations where emergency responses are happening.

He is one of two firefighters arrested this week while working the Bear Gulch Fire in the Olympic National Forest, which as of Friday had burned about 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) and was only 13% contained, forcing evacuations.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Thursday that it had been helping the Bureau of Land Management with a criminal investigation into two contractors working at the fire when it discovered two firefighters who they said were in the country without permanent legal status.

The firefighter, whose name has not been made public, has lived in the U.S. for 19 years after arriving with his family at age 4. He received a U-Visa certification from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon in 2017 and submitted his U-Visa application with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the following year.

The map above shows the perimeter of the Bear Gulch wildfire in Mason County, Wash. (AP Digital Embed)

The U-Visa program was established by Congress to protect victims of serious crimes who assist federal investigators, and the man has been waiting since 2018 for the immigration agency to decide on his application, according to Stephen Manning, a lawyer with Innovation Law Lab, a Portland-based nonprofit that’s representing the firefighter.

Another Homeland Security policy says agents can’t detain people who are receiving or have applied for victim-based immigration benefits, his lawyer said. Charging the man with an immigration violation was “an illegal after-the-fact justification” given his U-Visa status.

His lawyers said Friday that they located him in the immigration detention system and were able to make contact. They were still processing information and are demanding his immediate release, they told the AP in an email.

A senior DHS official said in a statement to the AP on Friday that the two men apprehended were not firefighters and were not actively fighting the fire. Officials said they were providing a supporting role by cutting logs into firewood.

“The firefighting response remained uninterrupted the entire time,” the statement said. “No active firefighters were even questioned, and U.S. Border Patrol’s actions did not prevent or interfere with any personnel actively engaged in firefighting efforts.”

FILE – A wildland fire crew looks on after setting a fire line on Harlow Ridge above the Lick Creek Fire, July 12, 2021, south of Asotin, Wash. (Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP, File)

When the Bureau of Land Management was asked to provide information about why its contracts with two companies were terminated and 42 firefighters were escorted away from the state’s largest wildfire, it declined. It would only say it cooperates with other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.

“These law enforcement professionals contribute to broader federal enforcement efforts by maintaining public safety, protecting natural resources, and collaborating with the agencies, such as the Border Patrol,” Department of Interior spokesperson Alyse Sharpe told The Associated Press in an email.

Manning said in a letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, that the arrest violated Homeland Security policy.

Wyden was critical of the Border Patrol’s operation, saying President Donald Trump’s administration is more concerned about conducting raids on fire crews than protecting communities from catastrophic fires. Firefighters put their lives on the line, Wyden emphasized, such as the Oregon firefighter who died Sunday while battling a wildfire in southwestern Montana.

“The last thing that wildland firefighter crews need is to be worried about masked individuals trampling their due process rights,” Wyden said in an email to the AP.

Meanwhile, wildfire officials were still trying to get control of the Bear Gulch Fire. The number of personnel working on the blaze was listed at 303 on Friday, down from 349 on Thursday.

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

HONOLULU (AP) — A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Hawaii imposing a tourist tax to deal with consequences of climate change seeks to stop officials from enforcing the new law on cruise ship passengers.

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In the nation’s first such levy to help cope with a warming planet, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed legislation in May that raises tax revenue to deal with eroding shorelines, wildfires and other climate problems. Officials estimate the tax will generate nearly $100 million annually.

The levy increases rates on hotel room and vacation rental stays but also imposes a new 11% tax on the gross fares paid by a cruise ship’s passengers, starting next year, prorated for the number of days the vessels are in Hawaii ports. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. court in Honolulu this week, notes the law authorizes counties to collect an additional 3% surcharge, bringing the total to 14% of prorated fares.

“No other State imposes comparable fees — and for good reason: It has been a fundamental principle since the Founding that the navigable waters of the United States are a common resource, not one to be commandeered by individual States for their own parochial revenue-raising interests,” attorneys representing the Cruise Lines International Association wrote in a motion asking a judge to prevent the state and counties from collecting the tax on cruise ships while the lawsuit is pending.

A Honolulu company that provides supplies and provisions to cruise ships, and tour businesses out of Kauai and Big Island that rely on cruise ship passengers joined the cruise ship association in the lawsuit.

The defendants are various state tax and county finance officials.

The Hawaii attorney general’s office declined to comment Friday on the lawsuit until it had been reviewed.

Hawaii County spokesperson Tom Callis said they don’t comment on pending litigation. County representatives on Oahu, Maui and Kauai didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

According to the lawsuit, the cruise ship industry draws nearly 300,000 annual visitors to Hawaii, supporting thousands of jobs throughout the state and contributing more than $600 million a year to the economy.

The tax would make Hawaii cruises too expensive, and potential visitors will choose to vacation elsewhere, the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs, in a motion seeking a preliminary injunction to declare the law’s cruise-related provisions unconstitutional and bar its enforcement, urges a judge to act swiftly because cruise-ship passengers typically make travel plans well in advance.

The impending surcharge “will begin to skew the market even before they take effect,” causing families who would have purchased Hawaii cruise tickets in 2026 to make other vacation plans, the motion said.

The new law adds 0.75% to the existing 10.25% tax on daily hotel and vacation room stays for a 11% total. Hawaii’s counties each add their own 3% surcharge, and the state and counties impose a combined 4.712% general excise tax on goods and services including hotel rooms. Together, that will make for a hotel and vacation rental tax rate of nearly 19%.