The journalist does not understand how budgeting works. All the answers and explanations provided by ODOT in the article make sense.

Let’s not ignore the other item ODOT cites: inflation. Inflation has been huge lately and means that they minuscule rise in total revenue the author points too as a “gotcha” is much much smaller than inflation. So while revenue is up in nominal terms, their revenue is declining in real terms.

As an example let’s say your employer gave you a 2% raise each year for the past three years. This means that your income has gone up a bit over 6% (a bit over because of compounding). But even though your nominal income is up, inflation has gone up way more than that. Inflation averaged around 5% per year, meaning stuff costs about 16% more than is did three years ago. If your nominal income is up 6% but stuff costs 16% more, you can now buy less. Put a different way, your real (that is, inflation adjusted) income is down 9%. ODOT is facing the same kind of situation.

It really looks like the people at ODOT tried to help this journalist understand the numbers and why you can’t just poof into an existence a rainy day fund, nor keep doing the same amount of work with what is functionally less money. But instead the journalist ran with their rage bait.

Finally, I’m just talking about the authors claims about ODOTs budget and the journalists shoddy attempt at analysis. I have no idea if ODOT is spending the money effectively.

Dear journalists, if you don’t understand math and finance, don’t write articles about it. -math nerd out.