Legislative budget committee approves first round of campus deferred maintenance spending

A. O. Williams Hall on the campus of the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Baton Rouge. (Photo courtesy Southern University)

The Louisiana Legislature’s Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget has approved the first round of college and university deferred maintenance projects to be paid for with a new dedicated fund approved earlier this year .

The committee gave its approval to 270 projects with a combined total cost well over the initial $75 million legislators appropriated to get the new fund started.

Commissioner of Administration Taylor Barras said this was done intentionally to give campuses more flexibility. If their top priority turned out to be too expensive, it allows administrators to switch to a less expensive project without coming back to the Legislature for approval.

The College and University Deferred Maintenance and Capital Improvement Program was created by Ruston Republican Rep. Chris Turner’s House Bill 940 in the regular session earlier this year.

Turner’s bill sets up a 10-year program through which the Legislature could appropriate up to $2 billion dollars, approximately equal to deferred maintenance costs for all four state higher education systems — excluding those at university hospitals that could be paid for with federal dollars.

Of that amount, the Southern University System would be allocated $153 million, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System would get $253 million, the University of Louisiana System would receive $523 million, and $1.07 billion would be set aside for the LSU System.

In the initial round of projects, each system will get $12.5 million in base funding, with the remaining $25 million allocated proportionally.

Legislators are expected to put more money in the fund next year.

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