By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

The organization paying for construction at Missouri universities will end the year $12.5 million behind in payments to the state, but it hasn’t affected work on Missouri Southern State University’s Health and Sciences Building.

The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority board recently voted to delay the last quarterly $5 million payment of the year, due later this month. The board also voted to delay the September payment and paid only half of the June payment, according to MOHELA’s December meeting documents.

MOHELA representatives did not return a phone call to the Globe Friday, but previously said a combination of the national economic collapse and changes in federal regulations have created financial problems for the organization.

MOHELA is scheduled to pay $350 million to the state over the next 15 years to fund construction at Missouri universities. Missouri Southern has been promised $18.9 million of that to pay for the new Health and Sciences Building. Terri Agee, MSSU senior vice president of business affairs, said the school has received all the money it was supposed to receive for project so far, including a $182,000 payment just received Thursday.

Local projects

To date, Missouri Southern has received $3,768,405 from MOHELA for the project, Agee said.

Bruce Speck, MSSU president, said university officials haven’t had any problems getting the MOHELA money and they hope it stays that way. Speck said he’s been told any MOHELA-backed projects that are already well-advanced should continue to receive funding to completion. But he said he has also heard that projects still in the planning stages could be put on the back burner again.

In that scenario, Missouri Southern’s project should be safe. Agee said crews with Dalton-Killinger Construction are hanging steel for the building’s second story and could soon be pouring the third-story floor. The firewalls, staircases and elevators are already blocked in and utilities and mechanical equipment have already been added. She said construction should be done by early 2010, and officials hope to open the building for classes in summer or fall of that year. The entire project is estimated to cost more than $24 million.

Crowder College in Neosho also had a new academic building project hinging on the MOHELA funds. But as of this summer, the college had received all of the promised funding, including $2 million for the new academic building and $200,000 for maintenance and repair costs to other buildings.

Financial troubles

MOHELA’s ability to pay the promised $350 million has been in question since before the projects even started.

The loan authority sold some of its assets and tapped into excess cash to transfer the initial $230 million Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative payment to the state in 2007 after the law creating the initiative passed the state Legislature. Since that initial payout, MOHELA has only paid in $12.6 million. The organization is scheduled to pay $107.5 million more toward the Initiative.

Earlier this year, MOHELA reported a loss in the first half of the organization’s fiscal year. It was the first loss reported in MOHELA’s 27-year history. In May, MOHELA’s board also decided to stop offering discounted interest rates to new borrowers who pay with automatic withdrawals and for students going into public-service professions in Missouri, such as teaching, policing and nursing.

Governor-elect Jay Nixon has been opposed to funding the building projects with MOHELA money from the beginning. He feared the initiative would hurt student borrowers and eventually end up bankrupting the loan authority.

After the December MOHELA board meeting, The Associated Press reported the loan agency is selling $369 million in student loans to cancel an equal amount of bonds. MOHELA has more than $3.5 billion in failed auction-rate bonds, which its investors have been unable to sell and the agency has been unable to refinance. The AP reported MOHELA officials plan to sell another $1 billion worth of student loans to cancel more bonds in the next few months.

Raymond Bayer Jr., MOHELA executive director, told the AP the sale will give the agency greater cash flow and improve its equity-assets ratio, an important step toward being able to issue new debt in the future.

Missouri State Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, author of the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative bill in the state Senate, said although the move to delay payments paints a dismal picture of the loan authority’s future, it may help save it.

“They are pre-paying interest rates right now to help secure them being financially stable in the future,” Nodler said of MOHELA.

Nodler said most — $242 million — of the total payments have already been made and the loan authority has up to 15 years to fulfill its commitment. In addition, he said legislators built provisions into the initiative to allow MOHELA to skip payments.

“I’d rather see it paid off as soon as possible, but I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about,” Nodler said of the delayed payments. “We’re in a troublesome time and it could be another year before we come out of it. (MOHELA) theoretically could skip payments for two or three years and be fine.”



Leading loan servicer

The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri, MOHELA, is one of the largest student loan secondary markets in the country and a leading national holder and servicer of student loans.

Source: www.mohela.com