Mo. House passes $46 million plan
Published Feb. 8, 2008
The Missouri House of Representatives approved $46 million for two UM system projects dropped from a capital improvement funding plan last year.
The budget request passed unanimously in the House and now must be approved by the state Senate.
The bill approves $31 million for the construction of a new Ellis Fischel Cancer Center and $15 million for the construction of the Pharmacy and Nursing Building at UM-Kansas City.
“The House’s quick action on these much-needed items is a testament to how well vetted the projects were last year,” Interim UM system President Gordon Lamb said in a statement issued Thursday. “We anticipate that the Senate will treat this in a similar timely manner.”
Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, said he expects the bill to be as successful in the Senate as it was in the House.
“I don’t see any problems if that comes over to the Senate,” he said.
Graham said the bill made it through the House without any changes, and that he hoped it would pass in the Senate just as easily.
“Hopefully, we’ll have that on the governor’s desk by the end of the month,” he said. “We’ll be doing everything we can to make that happen.”
At a Feb. 1 meeting, the Board of Curators, the UM system’s governing board, approved a plan that would incorporate the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center into a surgery tower being built at University Hospital.
The curators also voted to hire the St. Louis-based firm of Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc. to design the new surgery tower at University Hospital and, pending approval for supplemental funding from the state, the new Ellis Fischel facility. The firm will receive more than $5.4 million for the project.
St. Louis firm Cannon Design had already been hired to design the new Ellis Fischel facility at another location. The schematics were 85 percent complete, according to documents provided to the Board of Curators. The new design firm will use the plans as a basis for their new design.
Cannon was paid close to $1 million for the work.