"particularly in the Portland metro area"

This innocuous phrase is what it's all about. That area has its own city and county taxes as well as the Metro taxing district. They built a bridge over the Willamette that sits empty much of the time because it carries only mass transit. So now they, along with LTD, want a payroll tax on people in Heppner and Bandon to subsidize their mass transit. They want to tax kids' bicycles to put in more stuff like the path along I-5 and bridge to the Gateway Mall. What a quiet, scenic ride that is! Such paths are also for pedestrians, so I'm surprised they don't tax shoes.