NATCHEZ — The Mississippi Legislature approved a new $230 million borrowing plan Monday, but that bill doesn’t include previously proposed money for Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center.

House and Senate members approved House Bill 787 and Senate Bill 2975 Monday, authorizing the state to sell new bonds.

The bills now go to Gov. Phil Bryant for his consideration. Included in the initial bond proposal that became the House and Senate bills was funding for a $6 million face lift for the Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center, which is operated by the Natchez Festival of Music.

The  Senate and House, however,  passed different versions of the bill — the House version was for $450 million and the Senate version was approximately $96 million — and after conference, the Margaret Martin money was removed.

Natchez Festival of Music board member and former Democratic Sen. Bob Dearing said he asked Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves why the money was taken out.

“I asked the lieutenant governor about it because he is the one who makes the decision about what goes in there, and he said, ‘You tell the people back home that I took it out because Sen. Melanie Sojourner voted against the bond bill, and I am not going to put a bond project in the district of someone who voted against the bill,’” Dearing said.

Laura Hipp, a spokeswoman in Reeves’ office, said she could not confirm or deny the lieutenant governor made the statement.

“I haven’t heard the lieutenant governor say that,” Hipp said. “But I am not with him 24 hours a day.”

Hipp noted because the final bill came out of conference, a lot of communities did not get the projects they requested.

“It is kind of the nature of the beast in negotiations, some projects wind up included in the bond bill and some don’t,” she said.

Sojourner said from the Senate floor Monday evening she had not spoken with the lieutenant governor about the bill.

“I have not been privy to the conference or what they did,” she said. “I have not had one person ask me about it.

“I have not had one person in leadership come to me. I was never given any indication of that.”

Sojourner said she was never part of the conversation that included the money in the bond bill in the first place.

“(Reeves) can’t try to sit here and pin something on me when they made that move to pull that out,” she said.

Sojourner also said her initial vote against the bond bill was not a vote against Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center.

“It had nothing to do with the Natchez project,” she said. “It had everything to do with the fact we can’t continue to raise the credit card debt of the state.”

Under the House and Senate bills, the state would borrow $30 million to buy a railroad running from Southaven to Canton and give the first $8 million of a three-year pledge to Tupelo’s Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. plant

Plans also call for $92.8 million for projects at public universities, including $30.5 million for a new medical school building at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and $23 million for community colleges.

Another $14 million would go for history and civil rights museums the state is building in Jackson.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.