A car sits abandoned and buried by drifting and snowplows at I-84 in Portland in 2008. (AP Photo/The Oregonian, Randy L. Rasmussen)

Gov. Tina Kotek didn’t come out and say Tuesday that she is going to call a special session about the gap in the Oregon Department of Transportation budget.

She did give clear indication that’s where things are likely headed. After  legislators didn’t reach a deal on transportation funding, it has meant hundreds of layoffs at ODOT and will mean reductions in services.

“I don’t think it is acceptable for Oregonians to go without basic services provided by trained and experienced ODOT workers,” she said in an interview with Bulletin editors and reporters and other news outlets of Carpenter Media Group in Oregon. “But I also don’t want to overstate what the next step is. So right now, my team after we dealt with the layoff process, pivoted completely to how are we going to solve this, so I would ask for a little bit of patience until we have the right game plan worked out … This is a budgetary problem. This is not a transportation package problem at this point. This is a budget problem for the state of Oregon and the ODOT budget.”

Kotek announced on Monday that ODOT was laying of 483 of as many as 700 total layoffs. Legislators could not reach agreement on a funding package. The number of layoffs would be the largest layoff in the history of Oregon state government. The layoffs will mean that you will see changes on the roads, perhaps this summer. Less pothole repair. Less striping. Less brush clearing along the road. Less graffiti removal. Come winter, less snowplowing. And more of less.

Those are not vacant positions for the layoffs. Those are people losing their jobs because legislators couldn’t reach a deal. Those cuts in services are not hypothetical. They are coming.

Call your legislators today and tell them Oregon needs to reach a deal on the state transportation budget.