photo by: Screen capture/Kansas Reflector

A pair of Kansas lobbyists are working to start a construction contractor association to finance work to convince the 2022 Legislature to invest an extra $315 million over seven years to tackle deferred maintenance on academic buildings in the Kansas Board of Regents system of public universities.

Topeka — A fledgling association of construction contractors led by two lobbyists hopes to persuade the Kansas Legislature to make an unprecedented seven-year, $315 million investment to shrink the building repair backlog at the state’s six public universities.

Lobbyists Ed McKechnie and David Kensinger have been working behind the scenes with commercial contractors and an assortment of subcontractors to form the University Contractors Association of Kansas. This new group would finance the partners’ lobbying efforts, which are calling for a $45-million-per-year-plan to address antiquated academic buildings on campuses around the state.

The state Board of Regents, meanwhile, is standing by its request that the Legislature appropriate an extra $25 million annually for building maintenance, rehabilitation and demolition projects at the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Wichita State University, Fort Hays State University, Pittsburg State University and Emporia State University.

The contractors association’s proposal, according to an internal memo by the association, would amount to more than a billion dollars invested in building upgrades over a decade. It would involve an increase in the legislative appropriation, a surge in contributions by universities and the growth of an existing statewide property tax levy dedicated to building needs.

The memorandum said that during the legislative session that starts in January, the association hopes to secure $45 million a year in new state funding for seven consecutive years. The six universities would be expected to contribute matching funds of $45 million annually for seven years from either tuition or endowments.

That money would be combined with a minimum of $45 million per year from the Educational Building Fund, or EBF, which has provided university building maintenance support through a 1 mill property tax. The EBF is expected to grow to $53 million within 10 years. In the eighth, ninth and 10th years of the program, the universities would increase their self-funded building maintenance budgets to match whatever was produced by the EBF.

All told, the association’s blueprint would result in $1.28 billion for university building upgrades through 2032.

“If you’re going to get something passed, this is probably the year to get it done,” said McKechnie, a lobbyist from the Pittsburg area who served as a Democrat in the Kansas House and as a member of the state Board of Regents. “We’re looking for a few legislators to begin that conversation.”

The reason he wants to act during the 2022 session is because the state government is sitting on approximately $1 billion in federal coronavirus relief funding. At the same time, state tax collections have surpassed expectations — so much so that both Republicans and Democrats have been preparing to debate tax cuts.

Lukewarm response

McKechnie formed the bipartisan university lobbying partnership with Kensinger, who served as a campaign manager and chief of staff to Republican Sam Brownback during Brownback’s successful campaigns for governor and U.S. senator. Both McKechnie and Kensinger operate lobbying firms.

A brief profile of McKechnie said one of his achievements was helping the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association secure $3,500 a year in tax credits for every mile of railroad track maintained by Watco, his former employer. In 2008, when U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts won reelection, Roberts said that Kensinger was the Kansas GOP’s “pit bull without lipstick, whose expertise in this new and very different world of political campaigns is unrivaled.”

In an interview, McKechnie said the association had approached about 10 contracting companies with a vested interest in commercial-scale multimillion-dollar projects at state universities. He didn’t identify those companies, but the list seemed to include the heating, ventilation and air conditioning company Trane Technologies. Documents outlining the association’s agenda contained the Trane name and logo on the pages.

The association memo said six subcontractors had signed on to the university lobbying approach, which is modeled after Economic Lifelines, a coalition of companies and organizations that support comprehensive state transportation program spending.

Some of the companies the lobbyists solicited have been reluctant to join, including J.E. Dunn Construction, McCownGordon Construction and Hutton Construction.

“Some people are not sure they want to participate,” McKechnie said. “They’re hoping that maybe they can get it to happen without any help. Maybe it can. Maybe things will magically occur.”

One of the companies that didn’t want to be involved, Hutton Construction, was founded by Mark Hutton, a former state legislator and a member of the state Board of Regents. The company has offices in Wichita and three other cities and has done work at Wichita State and K-State.

Hutton said he was concerned about the political optics of construction companies manufacturing a political framework to land big contracts from the universities.

“We’ve been approached and we said, ‘No,'” Hutton said. “For obvious reasons. We don’t want to be associated with lobbying for something that’s perceived to benefit a regent. That would be incredible.”

Hutton said it would be illegal for university building construction or renovation contracts to be directed to companies in exchange for financing the association’s lobbying. There’s too much government oversight for lobbying organizations in Kansas to get away with a pay-to-play effort, he said.

Expanding backlog

The six state universities maintain 1,130 facilities on 28,000 acres, and the total square footage of the facilities is 38 million square feet. Half of these structures are categorized as “mission critical,” and half of those properties are more than 50 years old.

A study commissioned by the Board of Regents found that the cost of resolving the deferred maintenance backlog would be $1.26 billion. And as time passes, the cost rises.

“If nothing is done within 20 years, it’s going to be over $4 billion,” said Blake Flanders, president of the Board of Regents. “There needs to be an approach that starts to mitigate the deferred maintenance.”

The challenge of fixing campus buildings goes beyond aesthetics. Kicking the can down the road would eventually lead to higher repair bills, more building system failures, additional health and safety hazards and an inability to meet functional needs of academic programs.

Flanders said the Board of Regents was convinced that university buildings needed more taxpayer support. That’s why the Regents recently requested $25 million a year in state aid from the Legislature and the governor, he said.

“We also know there might be some really good ideas out there,” he said. “If the board’s ask doesn’t come to fruition, then obviously we will continue to advocate for the board’s priorities.”

The Board of Regents has also directed each university to gradually increase the money it devotes to building maintenance over the next six years.

Matching challenge

The $1.28 billion proposal from McKechnie and Kensinger is about more than just new state funding. If the lobbyists get the extra appropriation they want, it would provide $315 million — or 25% of the $1.28 billion amount. The rest would come from the EBF, which is funded by property tax, and from the universities themselves. The EBF would deliver $492 million over the next 10 years, or 38% of the $1.28 billion amount. The universities would be responsible for generating $473 million during that same period — 37% of the $1.28 billion amount.

KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said the need for state support to repurpose or upgrade campus buildings was overwhelming. However, he said it wouldn’t be practical for the universities to make the financial commitments that the lobbyists were envisioning.

“There’s a matching expectation, which I have real concern about,” Girod said. “There’s no way we can do that. There’s a lot of things we can raise money for, but operations and deferred maintenance aren’t two of them.”

Richard Myers, the retiring president at Kansas State University, said he had fewer objections to a plan that hinged on universities raising more cash for building maintenance.

“Partnerships have worked in the past. That would be attractive, I would say,” he said.

Myers said he wanted the Legislature to acknowledge that the EBF was insufficient to maintain the state’s portfolio of university buildings. The replacement cost of the buildings is nearly $7 billion, and Myers said the $45 million or so allocated to universities each year through the EBF falls well short of meeting universities’ needs.

Myers said that investing tax dollars in universities should be considered a form of academic enrichment and economic development.

“We can’t nibble away at it very effectively with the current funding we have,” he said.

— Tim Carpenter reports for Kansas Reflector.