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    Title: Re: Legislative Building Commission
    Article Date: 11/18/1988
    Source:
    Author: Jill M. Schultz, Senate Research
    Type: Other
    URL:
    File: LBC.pdf 

    Text: TO: Members of the Legislative Commission
    on Planning and Fiscal Policy
    FROM: Jill M. Schultz, Senate Research
    RE: Minnesota's Legislative Building Commission

    * Because of difficulties the legislative and executive
    branches experienced putting together a capital budget in
    1955, an interim building commission was created to study
    the state's building -needs. The group returned to the
    Legislature in 1957 and recommended it create a permanent
    body to carryon the work, and the Legislative Building
    Commission (LBC) was born.

    * From its creation until it was abolished in 1973, the
    LBC was the main player in the state's capital budgeting
    process.

    * The commission was comprised of five Senators and
    five House.members who for the most part were the chairs
    of the divisions of the Senate Finance and House Appropriations
    Committees. The minority party of each house
    was also represented on the commission and the Commissioner
    of Administration was an ex officio member.

    * The commission made a list of all proposed state
    building projects and spent the interim between the
    biennial sessions traveling the state and making site
    visits to all of them.

    * The commission had a rule that no appropriation for a
    project could be included in a bill unless the site had
    been visited, which gave legislative leaders a right to
    say no to an appropriation request that came up on short
    notice. Typically it took four to six years from the
    first time the commission visited the project until it
    recommended the project for planning.

    * The LBC submitted its recommendations to the Legislature
    and through the Department of Administration, to the Governor.
    The Governor would approve or modify the recommendations and they became
    his capital bonding bill. With very few exceptions, governors incorporated
    the LBC recommendations intact into their bill.

    * The LBC bonding bills typically had the support of the
    Governor and key members of both houses' money committees and
    faced little opposition in the Legislature.

    * The LBC was abolished in 1973 and its responsibilities were
    transferred to the chairmen of the Senate Finance and House
    Appropriations Committees. A variety of reasons have been given
    for its demise such as a decreasing need to build state buildings
    because of lower population growth and declining enrollments, and
    the displeasure of some with specific projects which received LBC
    approval.

    * The LBC closely fits one of the National Conference of State
    Legislature's reform suggestions.

    JMS:lkl

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