Oregon Public Broadcasting

The State of Oregon and cities including Portland are postponing their bond sales as they wait for the nation’s credit markets to thaw.

State treasurer Randall Edwards says he recently had to pull two sales: the first for an energy efficiency project, and the second for a  community college in Tillamook.

Randall Edwards: “I feel bad about that, but it just wasn’t prudent to go to market. The bond market itself has been thrown into a mess and there weren’t any buyers for municipal bonds. Or if they were, they were so expensive it wasn’t worth selling them.”

Just as a family has to get a mortgage to buy a house, cities and states have to sell bonds to build roads and schools.

They’re essentially IOUs written by the government, promising to pay back money at a certain interest rate.

Portland is looking at trying to sell about $30 million worth later this month -- to spruce up the city’s fire stations. But debt managers are not sure whether to move forward.

Nationally, about 85 percent of these kinds of bond sales are being postponed.