University to fund Ellis Fischel with revenue bonds

University of Missouri Health Care has chosen to take on its own debt to build a new cancer treatment facility after the legislature once again failed to appropriate funds for the center.
Following another legislative session in which state funds for the project were not made available by Missouri’s General Assembly, the curators of the University of Missouri voted unanimously on May 21 to issue revenue bonds to fund a new Ellis Fischel Cancer Center facility.
The project, estimated to cost about $52 million, will be funded with $30 million in new revenue bonds, and the rest will come from University of Missouri Health Care operating revenues, according to a release from UM Health Care.
The new facility will take up two floors in UM Heath Care’s new patient tower and is expected to include a radiation oncology area with expanded imagining capabilities, 36 examination rooms, a new breast cancer center and a variety of cancer survivor services, according to the release. Construction on the patient tower is expected to be completed by 2013.
Although unable to obtain state funding for the project, local legislators were commended by Health System Vice Chancellor Dr. Harold Williamson Jr. for their efforts.
“We are grateful to our local legislators for working hard in a bipartisan effort to try and secure state funding,” Williamson said during the curators meeting.
In late April, Missouri’s House of Representatives voted to approve funding for the new cancer center in a reappropriations bill sponsored by Budget Committee Chairman Allen Icet, R-Wildwood. At the time, Icet gave credit for the measure to Columbia Rep. Chris Kelly, another member of the Budget Committee.
Within a week of the House’s passage, however, the Senate Appropriations Committee struck out the provision for Ellis Fischel funding.
Kelly, a Democrat, said some members of the General Assembly have erroneously treated the funding for the center as a “pork barrel” project for Columbia’s delegation. He said the detractors of the funding ignore the fact that Ellis Fischel provides cancer treatment of last resort to more than 90 counties in Missouri.
Kelly also said that opponents of the center’s funding ignore the financial benefits of having a top-notch cancer hospital in the state of Missouri that could combine both research and medical interests at the University of Missouri.
“It would have by far been the biggest economic development bill if passed,” Kelly said.
Rep. Mary Still, D-Columbia, agreed with Kelly on the benefits of the new center to all Missourians. The new cancer facility would be “such a help statewide, not only locally,” she said.
Speaking a day before the UM Heath Care announcement, Still said she had hoped a bonding bill proposed by Kelly would have passed during the last session and provided funds necessary for the new cancer facility. The bill would have authorized the General Assembly to issue $800 million in bonds for construction projects throughout the state.
After being read during the first week of session, Kelly’s bill laid dormant until being assigned to committee the final day of session.
Although both Kelly and Still had previously promised to raise the issue of Ellis Fischel funding again during the 2011 legislative session, the announcement by UM Health Care seems to make that promise unnecessary.
UM President Gary Forsee said current economic conditions make this the optimal time to construct the new facility.
“With interest rates and construction costs both at optimally low levels, the time to act is now,” Forsee said in the UM Health Care release.
The new Ellis Fischel Cancer Center will replace the existing one, located on Business Loop 70. The current facility was constructed in 1939 as the state’s first cancer hospital, according to the release, and was transferred to the university and renamed the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center in 1990.