Director presents options and costs for expanded state oversight or takeover of district major maintenance

The department director delivered a conceptual report on what would be required for the State Construction Department to assume direct management of all school‑district major maintenance projects or to manage a smaller subset (for example, recently built schools), and offered a lower‑risk oversight model as an alternative. Director Dale McComie said the department had examined the scope of the assignment and provided high‑level options required by legislation that asked the department to estimate the workload and resources needed. He told the committee there are about 5,298 active major‑maintenance projects in the department’s tracking system and more than 1,600 new work orders opened in 2025 alone, so a state takeover would be a substantial expansion of staff and operations. At a high level the director described three approaches: (1) maintain status quo with improved tracking and assistance; (2) take responsibility for a limited set of projects (for example, buildings completed 2022–2026) as a pilot; or (3) assume full responsibility for all districts’ major maintenance. He estimated the full‑takeover model would require roughly dozens of additional field personnel (one to two staff per district in his estimate), district‑level supervisory staff, vehicles and field bases, and a purchasing and contract‑administration expansion to manage thousands of contracts and purchase orders. The director cautioned that a major takeover would be costly, require investment in staffing and vehicles, and require policy work to decide how the state would house and deploy those staff throughout Wyoming. As a lower‑cost alternative, McComie proposed an oversight‑focused model that mimics federal highway‑style oversight: a small coordination team that performs periodic audits, spot checks and hands‑on assistance with districts’ facility planning to improve consistency and data capture. He suggested a small number of statewide oversight staff (for example, four or five) who would build relationships with districts, spot‑check records and provide technical assistance and long‑term planning support. Committee members expressed skepticism about a full takeover and urged caution about creating a large new state operation; several members said they would rather see improved oversight and resources for district capacity building than an immediate statewide takeover. The director said he would include the trade‑offs and estimated staffing/logistics in the department’s written report to the committee.