The three lots that made it personal

“Currently, within FLRC, Clatsop County owns two properties and Columbia County owns one property. Neither county contacted the HOA to discuss potential financial hardship before testifying in support of HB 3545. This lack of communication is deeply disappointing, particularly given the expected impact of the proposed legislation on our small, rural community.”

Clatsop County's Board of Commissioners had filed testimony in support of the bill at the House hearing two months earlier.

Three lots out of 257 is a rounding error until the association is servicing a multi-million-dollar infrastructure loan on a fixed assessment base with a third of owners in residence.

What happened to the bills

House Bill 3545 passed the Oregon House 48–4 in April 2025, received one Senate hearing in May, and died in committee at sine die on June 27 without a work session.

The 2026 successor, House Bill 4064, refiled the same text and added an appropriation of $4,300,000 to the Department of Administrative Services for distribution to Fishhawk Lake Reserve & Community, Inc., “to be used to repay a loan taken out to pay an outstanding fine imposed by the Department of Environmental Quality.”³

It got no hearing, no testimony and no vote, and died at sine die on March 6, 2026.

So the association opposed the 2025 bill and was the named beneficiary of the 2026 one. Both failed, and the $4 million balance remains where it was.

What this teaches an Oregon board

Four things, and none of them is specific to Fishhawk Lake.

An association that owns infrastructure carries regulatory liability, not just maintenance cost. A dam, a lake, a wastewater system or a stormwater facility brings permit obligations, agency oversight and enforcement exposure. The $3.7 million settlement here dwarfs anything a reserve study would have contemplated.

Insurance did most of the work, and that is not guaranteed. Carriers covered all but $250,000 of the settlement. A board with regulated common property should know precisely what its policies respond to, because the difference between $250,000 and $3.7 million was a coverage question. Our Oregon insurance requirements page covers what an Oregon association must carry.

An association cannot raise capital the way a utility can. It has one source of revenue — assessments on a fixed number of lots — and no ratepayer base to grow into. A $4 million loan against 257 lots is roughly $15,500 a lot before interest.

Delinquency is an existential problem at that scale, and Oregon gives no special remedy. The association's lien rights under ORS 94.709 are the same ones every Oregon association has, and they work no better against a county than against anyone else. Our Oregon collections and liens page covers the mechanics.

The structural gap

Oregon has no statute addressing assessments on property a county holds through tax foreclosure. Two sessions have now failed to produce one. The interaction between ORS 312.200, which governs deeding foreclosed property to a county, and the assessment-lien statutes at ORS 94.709 and ORS 100.450, is simply unresolved.

For most Oregon associations that is an abstraction. For an association that is also the water utility, it is the difference between making a loan payment and not.

What to watch next

The 2027 long session, and whether anyone reintroduces. The concept has been run twice by the same representative, once passing a chamber 48–4 and once dying unheard, and no sponsor has said on the record that it is coming back. Nothing is pre-filed; the Legislature's system has no 2027 session yet.

Watch also for the first Oregon association to face a comparable environmental enforcement action. Associations that own dams, ponds, riparian frontage and stormwater infrastructure are common in Oregon's resort and lake communities, and the regulatory framework that produced a $3.7 million settlement has not changed.