In addition to and in furtherance of any other assistance available to a school administrative unit in this chapter, the bank, in cooperation with the Department of Education, shall establish a lease-purchase program for buildings to be used by all school administrative units whose school facility lease-purchase payments receive reimbursement, subsidy or other payment from the State. For the purposes of this section, a lease-purchase program is a system for awarding leases for a school administrative unit pursuant to a competitive bidding process. [PL 1999, c. 81, §15 (AMD).]