Oregon’s transportation-focused special session broke down before it could get moving on Friday.

As planned, lawmakers descended on the Capitol to take up a contentious question: Whether to pass a package of tax hikes that will put more than $5.8 billion into road upkeep and public transit over the next decade — and avert hundreds of state workers from being laid off next month.

The problem is that not enough lawmakers made the trip. Late Friday morning, it became clear that the Oregon House didn’t have a 40-member quorum needed to conduct business, as many Republicans and a few Democrats remained elsewhere.

What was supposed to be an 11 a.m. start for the chamber got pushed to noon, then 1 p.m., then 3 p.m. and so on, as Democrats worked to bring absent members in. At one point, the in

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