• Save the date for SSTI's 2024 Annual Conference

    Join us December 10-12 in Arizona to connect with and learn from your peers working around the country to strengthen their regional innovation economies. Visit ssticonference.org for more information and sign up to receive updates.

  • Become an SSTI Member

    As the most comprehensive resource available for those involved in technology-based economic development, SSTI offers the services that are needed to help build tech-based economies.  Learn more about membership...

  • Subscribe to the SSTI Weekly Digest

    Each week, the SSTI Weekly Digest delivers the latest breaking news and expert analysis of critical issues affecting the tech-based economic development community. Subscribe today!

MD Innovation, Entrepreneurship Programs Survive Contentious Budget Negotiations

April 23, 2015
  • Forward logo
  • LinkedIn logo

Following a lively debate over education funding, state worker pay and pensions, Maryland legislators approved a $40 billion budget. Under the approved legislation, $68 million would be available to support the state's most expensive school districts. Gov. Larry Hogan, however, had favored using those funds, and an additional $132 million, to shore up the state's pension fund, according to the Washington Post. Gov. Hogan will not be able to spend these funds for any other purpose than that approved by the legislature, but has expressed an interest in letting the funds go unspent.

The approved budget provides $3.8 million for the Office of Business Development, $3 million for Maryland's Office of Strategic Industries and Innovation, and $1.8 million for the Small Business Development Financing Authority.

The $19 million set aside for programs under the Maryland Technology Development Corporation includes $9.4 million for the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, $3.6 million for Technology Development, Transfer and Commercialization, $4.9 million for the Maryland Innovation Initiative, and $1 million for the Cybersecurity Investment Fund.

The budget also includes the $12 million proposed by Gov. Hogan for the Maryland Biotechnology Investment Tax Credit. Another $1.5 million is provided for the CyberMaryland Investment Incentive Tax Credit.

Support for small, minority and women-owned business investment totals $10.6 million, while business assistance through the Maryland Small Business Development Financing Authority would receive $6.3 million. Maryland's Enterprise Investment Fund and Challenge programs are allocated $15 million.

Within the capital budget, $81.5 million is provided for a new health sciences research facility at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, $39.7 million for a natural sciences center at Bowie State University, $31 million for a behavioral and social sciences building at Morgan State University, and $10 million for a bioengineering building at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Read the operating budget (HB0070) and capital budget (HB0071).

 

 

Marylandstate budget