Gov. Tina Kotek renewed a challenge for Oregon to do more on housing in her state of the state speech in January: ”I am impatient about the pace of progress, and some days just plain angry that we’re in this predicament at all and that we can’t move faster to get more housing built. Please, my friends, let’s do more, let’s be bolder.”

How do we get there? How can Oregon be bolder on housing?

Flexibility is needed. Too much flexibility, though, and any money spent or state policy is going to raise questions.

House Bill 2018 in the Oregon Legislature is not a perfect case study. It reveals some of the tensions. The bill aims to give the city of Madras more freedom to spend money the Legislature allocated in 2024 for infrastructure to help housing be built.

So far, so good.

The Legislature allocated in Senate Bill 1530 “$1,425,000 to the city of Madras for stormwater infrastructure for The Heights at Yarrow Apartments and Belmont Lane Apartments.”

That’s where the problem comes, for some. That language is very specific. Only stormwater. Only for those projects.

Doug Riggs of the Central Oregon Cities Organization, which represents all the cities of Central Oregon, testified on the bill this week. He told a legislative committee that agencies are “backlogged,” legislators wanted to get money out the door quickly and he didn’t believe the final bill captured the Legislature’s actual intent. He said when he asked the state agency for flexibility in how Madras could spend the money, he was told that is not what the bill says.

Riggs told us that if the state is serious about treating housing with urgency, it should be flexible when allocating money. It should pass HB 2018 this year. It would allow Madras to spend the $1.4 million for public road improvements, utility connections and sewer and water improvements.

That’s not an unreasonable request, as long as that spending is still firmly connected to infrastructure for more housing.

We reached out to Gov. Kotek’s office. It rebutted the assertion of backlogged agencies.

“In 2024, the Legislature made direct allocations for infrastructure projects and HB 2018 is necessary only because the city is looking to use those funds differently than the Legislature approved,” a spokesperson told us in a statement.

That is exactly right. The bigger question is still how to get infrastructure in place so more needed housing can be built in Madras and all across Oregon.

Kotek’s spokesperson told us Kotek has a plan to fund more water, sewer and other infrastructure projects in a programmatic way. It will be through House Bill 3031.

For now, that bill is just a placeholder. We can’t wait to see how Kotek will go bolder.