Cherriots wanted a new tax on local employers to expand bus service. Business groups wanted more say in that decision and pushed for a smaller tax, or no tax at all. 

The two sides spent nine months trying to find middle ground. Last week, that effort paused with no agreement. It matters because it decides whether Salem gets more frequent, later-running buses anytime soon, or whether local businesses avoid a new cost.  

Either way, this fight likely comes back around in a couple years.

Here's the catch-up, plus what the people actually in the room told me about why it fell apart.

Cherriots, Salem's transit agency, was given the legal authority to tax local business payrolls without putting the tax to a public vote beginning in January 2026. Last year, it moved to actually use that authority, proposing a tax of 0.7% on what businesses pay their employees. In plain terms: for every $100 a business pays out in wages, it would owe Cherriots 70 cents. The total cost would have been close to $39 million a year, money Cherriots wanted to spend on more frequent buses, later hours, and weekend service.

Six business and real estate groups organized against it: the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, the Keizer Chamber of Commerce, the West Salem Business Association, SEDCOR, the Home Builders Association of Marion and Polk Counties, and the Mid-Valley Association of Realtors. 

Facing that pushback, Cherriots agreed last October to delay its vote and negotiate instead, forming a task force with board members, business representatives, and community members. The goal was for that group to land on a joint recommendation.

They didn't get there. Cherriots announced the pause on July 1.

Business leaders keep pointing back to a deal struck in 2018. 

Cherriots tried a smaller payroll tax in 2015, and voters shot it down. After that loss, then-Senate President Peter Courtney personally stepped in to broker a compromise between Cherriots and the Chamber, then led by CEO Nick Williams. The resulting bill did two things: it moved Cherriots from an elected board to one appointed by the governor, and it gave the agency the power to tax payrolls without a public vote. Salem Reporter's reporting on that history is worth reading if you want the full paper trail.

Here's where it gets contested. Business leaders, including Salem Main Street Association President TJ Sullivan, say the deal came with an informal understanding that Cherriots would bring business voices onto its board going forward. Board Chair Maria Hinojos Pressey says that's not what she understood the agreement to be. 

Ryan Tribbett, who worked the recent negotiation for the business coalition, told me in a call this week that he doesn't think the dispute matters much anymore anyway: "It is 100% different Cherriots board. It is 100% different chamber board and chamber staff." The only person still around from 2018 is outgoing Cherriots General Manager Allan Pollock, who's retiring this month.

I got Hinojos Pressey on a video call on July 1, the day after the pause was announced. I asked her directly why the timing didn't work, and she gave me four reasons.

Ballot strategy. If Cherriots had imposed the tax, she expects opponents would have tried to refer it to voters, the same move used against Cherriots' 2015 tax and the city of Salem's 2023 payroll tax, both of which failed at the ballot. She wanted any eventual vote to land during a high-turnout general election rather than a low-turnout special election. In her words: "Everyone knows that in a special election, most of those times, that's when those ballot measures go to die." She'd hoped to have the whole process wrapped up by May. It wasn't.

Pollock's retirement. With Cherriots' longtime general manager leaving this month, Hinojos Pressey said it felt wrong to push the tax through right as the person with the deepest relationships in the business community was walking out the door. She said business leaders told staff, more than once, some version of, "Allan, you're a great person, I have no problem with you. I have a big problem with what you're trying to do."

Affordability worries. Even though the tax targets what businesses pay employees, not employee wages directly, she said people are anxious about costs getting passed down to them anyway.

The May statewide vote. Oregon voters just rejected a statewide transportation package that included a gas tax hike, higher vehicle fees, and a temporary payroll tax. "That was another piece of information," she told me, "that this is not something that people would readily accept."

Her summary: "If we're going to do this, we have to do it right, and we have to make sure the community is with us. I didn't see a community that was ready for this."

She also told me the pause isn't the end. She's hoping the incoming general manager spends real time building community and business trust, with the tax conversation possibly returning in as little as two years.

Two days later, I got on a call with Ryan Tribbett of PacWest Lobby Group and Rick Metsger, their VP of Legislative & Public Affairs. Both of whom worked on the negotiation from the business coalition's side. Their frustration runs deeper than scheduling.

Tribbett said the coalition came in wanting three things from the task force: a real conversation about how payroll taxes hit lower earners harder relative to what they make (a concept economists call regressive), a look at how other struggling transit agencies have adapted without new money, and a commitment to test any big service changes on a few bus routes before rolling them out system-wide. He said Cherriots opened the process by presenting roughly 300 pages of its own plans, studies, and polling, and the group spent its early meetings listening rather than discussing. Cherriots had repeatedly told the coalition those three topics were coming, Tribbett said, but "we hadn't got to that point" when it became clear Pollock's retirement was going to force a pause anyway.

Rick's frustration was broader: transit ridership has been falling nationally for 15 to 20 years, he said, and doubling down on the existing model without first figuring out why people are choosing Uber, Lyft, or their own cars struck him as backwards. Both pointed to Akron, Ohio, whose transit agency grew ridership without any new tax revenue, just by rethinking routes and frequency. That comparison also came up from a Cherriots critic during public testimony last September.

Cherriots' own numbers complicate that national framing a bit. The agency's ridership dropped sharply in 2020, like almost every transit system did, but it's grown steadily since: 3.6 million rides in the fiscal year ending June 2025, up 3.3% from the year before and about 17% above pre-pandemic levels, according to Cherriots' own performance reporting. 

Tribbett confirmed Cherriots asked to reconvene discussions around September, once a new general manager is in place, though nothing about format is locked in.

About two dozen people spoke about the tax during a Sept. 25, 2025, Cherriots board meeting. Over roughly two hours about two in three speakers who showed up in person opposed the tax. That's a fact about who attended and spoke, not a measure of broader public opinion. The board also received 18 written comments ahead of the meeting, and most of those were supportive.

The Chamber's own polling, which it says surveyed 434 likely voters, found 62.2% opposed a Cherriots payroll tax if it went to the ballot. What follows is how individual people felt about it in their own words from the meeting.

Riders in favor of the tax:

Business owners and their supporters, opposed:

Board Chair Hinojos Pressey answered the collaboration point directly in her closing remarks that night, referencing the 2018 deal brokered by Courtney and the late state Sen. Jackie Winters: "I'm not very keen on returning to someone that does not keep their word."

Not everything from the nine months was a wash. Hinojos Pressey pointed to a revamped Community Advisory Committee that successfully recruited more business and community members to participate going forward. And she said the Sept. 25 meeting drew more public comment than she's seen in six years on the board. She takes that as a sign that more Salem residents are paying attention to how their bus service gets funded than ever before.

Cherriots isn't cutting service. Hinojos Pressey said the district isn't facing a "fiscal cliff," transit-world shorthand for running out of money and having to slash routes. But without the new tax revenue, plans are scaled back to what the district can already afford: optimizing existing routes, pushing more frequency where ridership already justifies it, and continuing to explore micromobility, meaning bikeshare or scooter programs, limited mostly by cost.

Both sides are circling the same rough timeline. Cherriots wants its new general manager in place and up to speed before reopening talks. Whether the next round goes differently than this one may come down to whether Cherriots and the business coalition can close the gap on what problem this money is supposed to solve, and how anyone will know if it worked.

What do you think Salem?

- Jacob Espinoza