Out of control

Another year, another $112.5 million added to the price tag to renovate the Kansas Statehouse.

When will this end?

Kansans deserve an answer to that question.

Right now, it feels as if Kansas legislators have given themselves a blank check for the project. Easy for them. Not so easy for taxpayers who have to pay the bill.

Remember, the original estimate for the project was as low as $90 million. Then came expanded plans calling for office space underground as well as a $15 million parking garage, and the cost went up. This fall, the estimate had bulged to $172.5 million.

On Wednesday, the project's orchestrators told the Capitol Restoration Committee the cost would be at least $285 million. That's right - 316 percent more than the original estimate.

Feel your wallets getting thinner, Kansas taxpayers?

The saddest part of this week's episode of This Old Statehouse is it was no surprise whatsoever that the project's price tag went up.

That $172.5 million estimate from this summer didn't include the north wing, so the cost was destined to rise. Now, architects are saying the exterior stonework needs extensive work.

And so the price rises higher and higher.

Sen. Chris Steineger, D-Kansas City, had been predicting for some time that the final bill would top $250 million. He was sounding an alarm about the escalating costs, but his concerns fell on deaf ears among the Legislature's leaders.

"Trying to fight the project is a losing battle, because leadership has taken this attitude of damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, spend whatever we want to spend," Steineger said.

While it was a noble goal to restore the building to its original grandeur, Steineger and others believe the spending long ago went out of control. Does he like the fancy new desks that were installed in the Senate chamber? Sure, but he said his old desk was just fine. Same for the ornate hinges that replaced the cheaper, no-nonsense hinges on his office door. There are many, many more examples.

"I think the old Bob Docking ideas of austere but adequate have been forgotten," Steineger said. "They've been replaced by this borrow-and-spend consumerism mentality: Get everything you want and spend whatever you need for it."

Steineger said it's too late to rein in the Capitol restoration. Now, he said, legislators should focus on improving the state's contracting and cost estimation procedures to keep prices for other projects from rocketing upward.

Perhaps the "not-to-exceed" approach adopted by the Shawnee County Commission could be a model. The commission recently approved a contract for a $6 million-plus jail annex project that sets a ceiling on costs.

With hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements slated for buildings on college campuses, plus an estimate of at least $77 million to renovate the Docking State Office Building, Steineger's concerns are valid.

It's one thing to ask Kansas taxpayers to keep state government facilities up to date, safe and efficient.

It's another to expect them to keep giving no matter what the cost.

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