In 2015, the Oregon Legislature took a bold and highly visible step toward this goal by enacting the Oregon Promise Program (ORP), which was framed as providing "tuition-free" community college to qualified recent high school graduates. The effort garnered national headlines, putting Oregon in league with just a handful of other states (most notably Tennessee) with new policy initiatives that explicitly invoke the "free community college" label. This paper examines ORP and its tuition free community college framework. The paper has three parts: (1) A description of how ORP is constructed and operates, especially in relation to other federal and state financial aid programs such as Pell Grants and the Oregon Opportunity Grant; (2) A discussion of two key shortcomings--and one noteworthy benefit to date--of the ORP program as currently constructed that affect both its reach and equity-related impact; and (3) Recommendations for how ORP might evolve and even become a catalyst for new state-federal partnerships that could better accomplish the shared policy goals of increased access to post-secondary education, especially for low income and first-generation students.