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Appropriations committee presses DAS on MGFA requests, certificates of participation for fleet and public-safety equipment
Summary
Committee members asked Commissioner Kirsten Figueroa to provide updated debt schedules and details for Maine Governmental Facilities Authority borrowing and certificates of participation; the administration sought authority for several financing options and requested ongoing MGFA funding increases.
The Appropriations Committee pressed the Department of Administrative and Financial Services on April 1 for more detail about borrowing authority in LD 210, including Maine Governmental Facilities Authority (MGFA) requests and certificate-of-participation financing for state vehicles, radios and information-technology modernization.
“Kirsten Figueroa, the Commissioner of the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, said MGFA is specifically about state owned buildings and the work that we need to do on that,” committee members heard. “We are still in a catch up phase of maintenance on some of our buildings,” she added, describing a request for additional ongoing funding.
What was presented: the administration’s written materials (a response packet referenced in committee discussion) outline a request for $56,000,000 of ongoing MGFA funding tied to state building maintenance (noted in the packet as raising the MGFA baseline to $34,500,000 per year) and a $25,000,000 request for Department of Corrections HVAC and roof work. Figueroa told members the $56 million equates to roughly $4.5 million a year in debt service and the DOC work would add roughly $2 million a year in debt service. The packet records that the administration has requested about $218,000,000 through MGFA and related authorities since 2019.
Certificates of participation: Figueroa described four financing lines the administration would like authority for in LD 210: central fleet replacement, the Public Safety Radio Network, information-technology modernization, and state police vehicles. She said the budget increases the appropriation for state police vehicles while the other three requests seek borrowing authority without increasing ongoing debt service in the current proposal.
Committee members sought the underlying debt schedules and statutory limits. Representative Scharmer asked for the current outstanding MGFA amounts and for a comparison against the statutory cap; he referenced Title 4 and a borrowing cap cited in committee discussion. Scharmer asked for an updated debt-service schedule similar to the published continuum of obligations, noting the latest continuum the member had found was 2023.
Representative Blair and others asked for a clearer mapping of the current $28,000,000 in annual debt service tied to MGFA and how an additional roughly $6.5 million in annual debt service (identified in the packet) would connect to outstanding principal balances. Commissioner Figueroa said the treasurer’s office and the bond bank provide interest and schedule guidance, and that she would provide updated materials and schedules to the committee.
The committee also discussed practical maintenance questions: members asked whether MGFA borrowing could be used for large onsite sanitation projects at correctional facilities; Figueroa said those decisions would require review and that some solutions (for example, extensive piping) had been more expensive than short-term trucking solutions adopted for a facility.
Ending: committee members asked the administration to provide an updated MGFA continuum or debt-service schedule and follow-up documentation on the certificates of participation proposals and requested statutory citations; the commissioner agreed to provide those materials.
