On January 19, 2023, Associate Policy Director Brianna January submitted testimony to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee in support of SB 109 Interagency Commission on School Construction – Systemic Renovation Projects – Eligibility. This bill requires the Interagency Commission on School Construction to consider systemic renovation projects with a project cost of at least $100,000 as eligible for funding from the Supplemental Public School Construction Financing Fund and the Supplemental Public School Construction Facilities Fund. Currently, the project minimum for eligibility is $4 million.

From the MACo testimony:

By nature, the current eligibility requirements exclude many important school systemic projects that happen to fall below $4 million from accessing these funds, and, ultimately, some of theseprojects have either been delayed or shelved.

SB 109 seeks to sensibly remedy this by decreasing the $4 million minimum requirement to $100,000 and expanding eligibility to more systemic projects. Not only will this greatly increase counties’ flexibilityto meet the challenging needs of school revitalization and maintenance of critical systems as set forth by the Built to Learn Act, but it will also allow them to pursue more of these critical projects by increasing the accessible pool of funding from which they can do so.

The same bill was considered in the 2022 legislative session. It passed the Senate but stalled in the House. Stay tuned to Conduit Street for more on this bill and others as they are considered by the General Assembly.

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