Western Governors' Association Sponsor Luncheon Remarks

Hello, and welcome to Bend. 

For those of you from out of town, welcome to our beautiful Oregon. I am Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. I’m grateful to be able to host you all here at the Deschutes Brewery this morning.

 

As we stand here today, I cannot deny that we face many entrenched challenges right now – here in Oregon and across the West. 

When I was sworn  into office in 2023, Oregon had at least 18,000 Oregonians experiencing homelessness and a shortage of 140,000 housing units. Oregon’s housing crisis didn’t happen overnight and it will not be solved overnight.

Decades of underbuilding left Oregon with a severe housing shortage that drives up rents, home prices, and worsens our homelessness crisis.

The house supply shortage is a problem that touches every part of our economy. Economic prosperity and thriving communities are all at stake when we talk about housing production.  When people can’t afford to live where they work or simply cannot find housing options that align with their needs, employers lose potential hires.

Health care providers struggle to hire needed professionals. Basic services like fire departments, police, and schools face chronic workforce shortages. It’s more of the same within the agricultural sector, ports, and new industries. 

On my first full day of office, I also established an annual housing production goal of 36,000 additional housing units at all levels of affordability across the state. That was an ambitious target by design. It still is. 

But to get big things done, we must first believe they are possible – and I do. And I believe you do too. 

I signed a bill designed to speed up housing production, build and preserve more housing units, and increase homeownership statewide. I signed another to provide a menu of tools and one-time dollars to jumpstart the housing production we need to see across the state. 

And come summer, Oregon will have financed 2,800 affordable housing units and provided infrastructure for over 25,000 affordable and market rate housing units, and Oregon has new tools for local jurisdictions to get more housing into production faster.

These outcomes are a critical threshold of progress and a proof point that we can deliver results. We can move the needle if we set aside our differences and work towards a common goal.

The WGA exemplifies that spirit. It is purposeful about setting aside partisanship to sit down and figure out what works to make people’s lives better. 

Your support for WGA helps us cultivate these positive working relationships, opening lines of communication and information-sharing. If you happened to be at our winter meeting in Las Vegas last month, you saw that bipartisanship in action. Your support of WGA is a support of practical solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our states and our nation.

 

Let’s look at the past few WGA Chair initiatives: 

Colorado Governor Jared Polis looked at how western states can take better advantage of an abundant, secure, and clean energy source: geothermal energy.  His Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative produced a wide range of bipartisan recommendations to promote geothermal energy and remove some of the federal barriers to promote the development of this resource.

Last year, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon looked at Decarbonizing the West. His initiative also produced a number of bipartisan recommendations to address carbon emissions and move carbon sequestration efforts forward – whether by improving rangeland and forest management or helping industry move forward with carbon capture technologies.

 

This year, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is looking at housing solutions with her BRAND West initiative for WGA. If you don’t know, I’m hosting the second workshop for her initiative here in Bend over these next couple of days. 

 

None of the great work of WGA is possible without your support. WGA relies on sponsors like you for the intellectual resources to help us develop responsible, bipartisan policy for Western Governors, and for the financial resources that fuel our collective work.

 

Thank you again for joining us today!