TriMet has laid off all nine of its employees, according to a transit advocacy charity that has spent the last 20 years pushing the transit system to implement policies such as subsidized prices for low-income users.
OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon announced that it had laid off staff members as a cost-cutting measure in an Instagram post earlier this month and in an email sent to supporters and the media on Friday. The organization will continue to function, but its primary source of funding will be volunteers, according to its board of directors.
The board of the organization commented, “We acknowledge the livelihoods of nine hardworking staff and their families are deeply impacted by these difficult and painful decisions to reduce OPAL’s operations.” To this team and the people of Oregon, we sincerely apologize. We will perform better; we must.
The board of directors of OPAL said in the message that the layoffs were due to financial difficulties brought on by the loss of many funders’ assistance during the previous two years.
An email request for an interview on Friday was not immediately answered by OPAL.
Founded in 2005, the group is well-known for its impact on transit in the Portland area.
Beginning in 2010, OPAL established the Bus Riders Unite, a transit union, which pushed TriMet to increase the duration of its fare transfer window beyond two hours. The group claimed that low-income riders and persons of color who were concentrated in locations with less frequent service were unfairly harmed by the window.
When TriMet’s board decided to increase transfer windows to two and a half hours in 2014, it achieved a partial victory. (The Bus Riders Unite and OPAL had attempted to extend the window to three hours.)
One of the most outspoken advocacy groups, Bus customers Unite pushed for TriMet to implement a discounted rate for low-income customers in 2018 and to extend the YouthPass free transit pass program to Portland children in districts other than Portland Public Schools.
The group recently advocated for alternatives to police for a security presence on MAX trains and buses and pushed TriMet to consider lowering rates completely and providing transit service for free, following the lead of communities like Corvallis and Kansas City, Missouri.
Additionally, it was one of the groups that supported the Portland Clean Energy Initiative, a law that was approved by voters in 2018 and imposed a 1% tax on the city’s big-box retailers’ sales with the money raised going toward climate justice initiatives.
Alumni from OPAL have gone on to hold significant positions in other places.Prior to her 2020 election to the Oregon Legislature, Khanh Phamchaired OPAL’s board and later joined its staff. The chief sustainability officer for the city of Portland is Vivian Satterfield, a transportation advocate who served as OPAL’s deputy director before leaving in 2018 to work for another group.
According to the nonprofit’s most current publicly accessible tax returns, which cover its finances in 2022, it received $1.3 million in contributions, which translated into $543,000 in net revenue and $1.5 million in net assets. However, it lost about $60,000 the year before and had half the revenue from contributions.
For The Oregonian/OregonLive, Elliot Njusedits writes about business and economic news. You may contact him at [email protected].
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