School Facilities Board chief quits; ax hangs over agency
Paul Bakalis resigned this week from his post leading Arizona’s School Facilities Board, the state agency charged with doling out more than $100 million every year to repair aging district school buildings and construct new schools.
The resignation, first reported by political newsletter Yellow Sheet and confirmed by Gov. Doug Ducey’s office, comes after Rep. Michelle Udall, RMesa, introduced a bill in the state Legislature to eliminate the agency altogether and put the work under the Arizona Department of Administration.
Udall told The Arizona Republic that complaints from schools about agency delays and a scathing audit released in June prompted the proposal.
“The week before session started, a lot of these issues came up,” she said. “A lot of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle were saying, ‘Why would we put more money in a system that is really broken?’”
Andy Tobin was appointed interim director of the agency. Tobin also leads
the Arizona Department of Administration — the School Facilities Board duties will be in addition to his role at ADOA.
Ducey appointed Bakalis to the School Facilities Board in 2016. In June, the Arizona Auditor General’s Office released a report that found more than 100 facility repairs at Arizona schools took longer than a year to complete. The delays potentially posed health and safety risks to students.
Bakalis told The Republic last fall that he was trying to steer the agency to get schools the repairs they need as fast as possible while responsibly managing the money.
“We probably always didn’t do that,” he said. “But since I’ve been here, we’ve been doing that.”
Scathing state audit
The Arizona Auditor General’s Office investigated the state’s Building Renewal Grant Fund, which the School Facilities Board manages.
The School Facilities Board, a ninemember voting board appointed by the governor, distributes tens of millions of dollars allocated every year by the state Legislature to the Building Renewal Grant Fund for critical school repairs.
Schools apply for grants to fix everything from leaking roofs to outdated cooling systems. Problems at the board included delayed building renewal projects, an unclear procurement policy and undisclosed conflicts of interest by a majority of board members, the audit found.
The audit flagged some significant delays in completing school repair projects through the Building Renewal Grant Fund.
❚ At the time of the audit, 628 building renewal grant projects at schools had been open for longer than a year, even though state law dictates that projects generally should be completed within 12 months.
❚ Of the 628 open projects, 154 projects let uncorrected school building deficiencies, such as a leaking roof or failing cooling system, go unrepaired for up to 4.5 years.
❚ The audit identified $49 million still unspent in 474 of the 628 open grant projects. The report estimates between $3.7 million and $4.3 million would remain unspent when all 474 projects are closed.
Bill to cut School Facilities Board
Udall’s bill would eliminate the School Facilities Board, transferring oversight duties to the Arizona Department of Administration. It would keep the grant program for larger expenses, but also create a funding formula, calculated per student, to give the schools money directly for smaller repairs.
“The idea is to make sure schools are getting money for the facilities, making sure that it’s not being wasted,” Udall said.
The lawmaker also raised concerns about the agency’s role in securing contractors to do construction work in schools. The June audit noted that the board’s school procurement policies are “unclear” and could mislead districts into not following state procurement rules.
Udall said districts have told legislators that the agency was unnecessarily getting involved with procurement, sometimes “in conflict with procurement law.”
The legislator said her bill is just a first draft. She plans to hold more stakeholder meetings and hear input from fellow lawmakers.