Lawmakers, advocates and bankers testify as committee hears HB 2966 to study public financing and a possible state bank

The House Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection opened a public hearing on HB 2966 on Jan. 28 to create a State Public Finance Task Force to study public-finance tools for housing, infrastructure and disaster recovery, and to evaluate whether a future bill to establish a publicly owned state bank would be warranted.

Supporters told the committee the task force would examine ways to keep more public dollars in Oregon and lower long‑term financing costs for local governments, housing projects and disaster recovery. "What this bill does is it sets up a task force to explore the possible means of public finance for everything from housing to critical infrastructure," Representative Mark Gamba said in testimony. He and other supporters pointed to the Bank of North Dakota as an example of a public institution that provided countercyclical lending during the 2008–09 crisis.

The bill’s supporters described a range of possible outcomes of the study. "A…