Posted: | March 6, 2015 03:56 PM |
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From: | Senator John H. Eichelberger, Jr. |
To: | All Senate members |
Subject: | School construction - PlanCon reform |
I plan to introduce legislation to address issues in the Commonwealth’s process of reimbursing school districts on their construction costs. This legislation would amend the Public School Code to provide a more modern, simplified and financially sustainable process of reimbursement, and is intended to be a companion bill to House Bill 210 introduced by Representative Seth Grove. When a school district undertakes a major construction project and seeks reimbursement from the commonwealth, a process known as PlanCon is initiated. PlanCon, an acronym for Planning and Construction Workbook, is a set of forms and procedures used by school districts to apply for reimbursement. The PlanCon process is overly cumbersome for school districts and requires PA Department of Education (PDE) approval at 11 separate stages. As you know, in the last several fiscal years, financial constraints have caused a backlog of projects. According to a PDE report, by 2014 more than 200 projects were being deliberately bottlenecked prior to the reimbursement stage. Additionally, the process is full of antiquated requirements, exemplified perfectly by a rule still on the books which mandates the submission of plans and bid specifications on microfilm. The efforts of the General Assembly in the 2014-15 budget, as well as PDE’s completion of reimbursement payments for older projects in the process, have had a positive impact on the beleaguered PlanCon process. While the situation may be improving, I believe the General Assembly must continue working to resolve the school construction reimbursement challenges. This legislation would overhaul the reimbursement process as follows:
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Introduced as SB694