Forget what I wrote in the paper today, about City Commissioner Sam Adams’ seemingly successful negotiations with the Oregon Petroleum Association and its allies, to prevent a referral of his transportation improvement plan to the ballot. A taxpayer group will try to refer the $463 million city fee to voters, and the folks who said they’d back off of a referral are joining the effort.

In an email to Adams and his staff on January 22, following negotiations with Adams, the OPA’s Paul Romain wrote:

“Thanks for taking the time to work with us to reach a settlement of the street maintenance issue… Although we do not support the street fee, the Oregon Petroleum Association will not refer the measures to the voters of the city, nor will we support any other group’s possible referral.”

Then this just landed in my inbox from Danelle Romain at OPA:

COALITION TO REFER STREET MAINTENANCE TAX TO BALLOT

A coalition of small business owners and Portland taxpayers will seek to refer the Street Maintenance Tax passed today by the Portland City Council to the Portland voters. The coalition includes small convenience stores including the Korean American Grocery Retailer Association, the Taxpayer Association of Oregon, gas station owners, among other groups and citizen activists.

Jason Williams, founder of the Taxpayer Association of Oregon, made the following statement on the referral:

“The city of Portland has once again turned to City taxpayers to dig them out of a long history of fiscal irresponsibility. Commissioner Sam Adams has worked at the City since 1991, yet has failed in over 15 years with the City to use previously dedicated road maintenance funds to fix Portland’s roads. Our elected officials have shirked their own responsibility and put pet projects like the OHSU Tram and the Street Car in front of essential transportation needs like fixing potholes and improving intersections. Portlanders should have the right to decide whether to make small businesses and homeowners pay to clean up the city council’s own mess. The people deserve the final say on this issue.”

Coalition members also cited the political games and Commissioner Adams’ “bait & switch” tactics. They cited Adams’ attempt to prevent a public vote on his tax by dividing the one ordinance into three separate ordinances, successfully doubling the cost of a referral effort.

“Adams cited the City Attorney’s opinion recommending he divide the ordinances into three to prevent a ‘single subject’ legal challenge, which we later found out was completely fabricated,” said Lila Leathers, who owns Leathers Fuels in Portland.

“The process at the City has been purely games, backroom dealing, and a bait & switch effort designed to keep this new tax out of the hands of Portland’s voters,” said Leathers.

The Coalition will begin collecting signatures immediately.

I checked in with Danelle, to see what changed—she says Adams has been “completely gaming us.” She also noted that Paul Romain’s email specifically said “we would not refer the measures, plural.”

“We negotiated knowing it was in three parts,” she says, knowing that they probably wouldn’t be able to afford to refer three pieces to the ballot.

“Sam came out in the press and said I’m putting it back into one,” Danelle Romain says. “A taxpayer group has decided to refer it. And we’re joining them.”

This was news to the Adams’ staffer I just called—I’d asked them about this late last week, wondering if it was risky to put the measure back into one piece. Did they really trust that Romain et al wouldn’t refer it? According to his email, he wouldn’t, I was told.

Team Adams is going to get back to me with a comment in a moment.

When the council passed the transpo fee this morning, 4-0, everyone bent over backwards to praise Adams’ leadership. (Well, everyone except Mayor Potter, who started off with an anecdote about Sen. Ron Wyden’s vision for national transportation funding, and finished with a weak “I also support Commissioner Adams’ leadership on this on the local level.”) Indeed, pushing through such a massive tax while he’s running for mayor takes guts—and this morning, following the apparent compromise with OPA and the vote, Adams seemed in excellent shape to run as a bold leader who gets shit done. It’ll be interesting to see what this referral campaign will do to his mayoral one—will it be seen as a screw up, or will he ride it out and earn even more cred?

But first, the opponents have to collect over 18K signatures in 30 days. The Taxpayer Association’s Jason Williams tells me the clock is already ticking, and their “legal heads” are plotting the next steps.