Editorial: Right priority

Legislators and KU officials have set the right priority by putting funding for a new medical school building ahead of support for new high-class apartments to attract student-athletes.

Kansas University officials made a wise decision to drop a bonding request for an apartment building near Allen Fieldhouse and focus their efforts on gaining approval for a new health education building at the KU Medical Center.

They didn’t exactly have to read the tea leaves to make their choice. Legislators had sent a pretty clear message about the prospects for approval of the two proposals.

Last week, The House Education Budget Committee rejected KU’s request for $17.5 million in bonding authority to build a high-class 66-unit apartment building just south of the fieldhouse. About half of the units would be occupied by non-athletes, but a key impetus for the project was to provide upgraded housing for KU student-athletes. The apartments, KU officials argued, were vital to the university’s athletic recruiting efforts.

Maybe so, but in the big scheme of things, the KUMC building project that gained support from another committee on the same day will have a far greater impact on KU’s academic mission as well as a tangible payback for the state as a whole. The new $75 million medical education building is needed to support updated training for students in the School of Medicine. Without the building, KU officials said, the school’s accreditation might be in danger and the school wouldn’t be able to increase the size of its medical school classes to help address a doctor shortage, especially in the rural parts of the state.

KU already has authority to issue bonds for $35 million for the project, but it is asking the Legislature to help pay off $15 million of that debt with an annual allocation of $1.4 million starting next fiscal year. It also is seeking the return of $25 million in Social Security and Medicare contributions that KUMC paid on behalf of its interns. Those contributions later were found to be unnecessary and were refunded to the state, and KU officials would like to apply that money to the cost of the new building. The rest of the building’s costs will be paid out of private donations and other university funds.

Although Gov. Brownback didn’t include any funding for the KUMC building in his budget recommendations, members of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction were more supportive of the plan and recommended approval of $1.4 million for next year.

KU officials say they will explore other options to complete the apartment complex, but they were smart to drop that issue with the Legislature and concentrate on the positive response they have gotten on the medical school building. Both KU officials and legislators have their priorities straight on which of these projects is more deserving of broad state support.