WEEK IN REVIEW
SENATE APPROVES BILLIONS IN UNIVERSITY INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING
(AUSTIN) — Texas colleges and universities would have authority to issue billions in tuition-backed bonds under a bill approved just hours after Governor Greg Abbott added the topic to the session agenda. With just days to go in the third called special, the governor responded to a request by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick to open the agenda to permit the Legislature to move on this measure. The plan approved by the Senate would use $325 million in federal COVID relief funds to stake more than $3 billion in tuition-backed bonds, allowing institutions across the state to pay for desperately need renovations, repairs, and new construction.
For decades, said bill author and Conroe Senator Brandon Creighton, the Legislature would grand bonding authority to colleges and universities to cover infrastructure costs every four years or so. The last time lawmakers allowed institutions of higher education to issue these bonds was in 2015 and Creighton told members that booming enrollment growth has left state colleges with great need to issue tuition-backed revenue bonds (TRB) to build and repair the infrastructure necessary to accommodate that growth. “In the last six years, enrollment has grown, maintenance has been delayed,” he said. “Our colleges and universities have made the case for TRB funding.”
In his capacity as chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, Creighton has travelled to university campuses across the state and has seen firsthand the great need for infrastructure funding at state institutions. “We have buildings with soil heaving that has not just split the floors in these buildings, but caused major infrastructure damage that I’ve seen personally,” he told members. “Electrical and wiring problems, buildings with restrooms across the freeway on other parts of the campus – buildings that are over 100 years old.” His bill, SB 52, would approve more than $3 billion in bonding authority to pay for 47 different project requests, covering each state university system, independent state institution, and the Texas state technical colleges.
Some of the projects given approval include $140 million for construction of a new veterinary teaching and research complex at Texas A&M University, $107 million in renovations at the University of Texas at Arlington, $80 million for new research facilities at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and $128 million to build a medical research facility for the University of Houston system. Many of the requests were for desperately needed renovations and repairs, put off year after year as universities waited for bonding authority. “Twenty-two of the thirty-five projects in our original bill were based on a [Legislative Budget Board] definition of health and safety related mostly to renovations on whether or not it was safe for students to even be in those buildings…and whether some of those buildings could even be renovated,” said Creighton. In addition to funding billions in college facilities improvements, the bill would also change the name of the instrument used, from TRBs to CCAPs: capital construction assistance projects.
Also Friday the Senate approved HB 25, the bill to restrict transgender student participation in sports that has passed the Senate four times, sending that measure back to the House to consider a Senate amendment that removed a provision that would statutorily define “biological sex”. This issue has been on the call of all three special sessions after House opponents defeated the bill at the end of the regular session in May. The House can concur with Senate changes and send the bill to the governor, or they could request the appointment of a conference committee to find a compromise on the changes made by the Senate. With the session ending on Tuesday, however, any delays mean more chances for opponents to kill this highly controversial measure for the fourth time this year.
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