Building a new Fulton State Hospital probably is not going to be a problem, even with Gov. Jay Nixon's concerns about potential budget problems stemming from eight bills that lawmakers passed last Friday.
"I would hope that the path designed for Fulton was separate, different and sustainable," Nixon told reporters after the legislative session ended for this spring. "That's a priority I've laid out for a number of years, and I'm appreciative of the Legislature for coming up with the method that I outlined in the State of the State, from the very beginning.
"On the priority list, it's really high up there."
Last week, Nixon voiced a major concern - that lawmakers in both houses "blew-up" the state budget they had passed just eight days earlier, by passing eight bills on the session's last day that, when combined, remove up to $483 million a year from the state's general revenues.
"This is not an effort, even, to get a balanced budget," the governor said. "This is business.
"And in the business of the state, they've failed to deliver what, fiscally, is necessary for us - or at least an effort - to get a balanced budget."
The Legislature's top leaders and budget officials have not commented, so far, on the governor's concerns.
Nixon has promoted the need for a new Fulton State Hospital for some time.
Since late last year, he's stepped up the push, noting it's operated continuously since 1851, making it the oldest mental health hospital operating west of the Mississippi River; that it works with some of the most difficult-to-treat patients, who often present a safety danger to themselves and others - and that the age of the hospital's current buildings make it a dangerous place to work or be a patient.
State Budget Director Linda Luebbering backed the governor's optimism, noting that lawmakers created the Fulton project as a construction project paid for with the sale of $198 million in bonds to generate immediate cash, then repaying those bonds over the course of the next 25 years.
"Since it's through a bonding process, it doesn't cost $198 million," Luebbering explained. "It only costs $14 million a year and, since it's one of the governor's highest priorities, he will protect it.
"That's what it boils down to."
But the governor also has championed renovating the St. Mary's Health Center complex between Missouri Boulevard and Bolivar Street, after the hospital moves to its new facilities in November, then donates the current complex to the state early next year.
Luebbering said she doesn't know if that still can be paid for this year.
"You can make a priority of one thing when you're looking at this level of cuts," she said.
Not does she know the fate of another nearly $400 million in college construction projects that would be paid for with another set of bond sales, under another bill finally approved last Friday.
"We haven't had a chance to look at it and, certainly, the governor hasn't had a chance to review it," Luebbering said.
That bonding plan includes $10 million for the St. Mary's project, while lawmakers budgeted $6 million in the main budget bills for the business year that begins July 1; more than $7.996 million for maintenance and repair projects at the Capitol; another $8.214 million for work at the Governor's Mansion, Supreme Court, Truman and Jefferson state office buildings; and almost $57.5 million for other area projects at state-owned buildings, including $3.456 million at Lincoln University.
The bonding bill also included $4.517 million in work at Fulton away from the hospital, and $950,000 in work at Linn State Technical College. The University of Missouri-Columbia is slated to get more than $33.707 million in campus building repairs under the bonding bill - if the projects can move forward.