South Carolina Commits $500M for TBED Package

The South Carolina Technology Alliance calls it the most significant victory for South Carolina's research universities and tech entrepreneurs in the last 50 years. An idle exaggeration? Probably not.

Senate Bill 0560 creates a $50 million venture capital (VC) fund for the state and offers tax credits and other incentives to attract large life science and pharmaceutical businesses. It also facilitates borrowing up to $250 million for university construction and improvement projects encouraging research and tech-based economic development (TBED). The bill, which passed overwhelmingly in both the state senate and house, includes three sections:

• The South Carolina Life Sciences Act provides multiple tax credits for recruitment and expansion of large life science facilities. To receive the credits, the business must invest more than $100 million in the new facility and create a minimum of 200 full time jobs that pay at least one-and-a-half to two times the annual per capita income for the state or county in which the facility is located. The Act also allows the state to issue up to $250 million in general obligation bonds to pay for infrastructure improvements necessary to induce the location of large life science facilities within the state.
• The Venture Capital Investment Act of South Carolina creates two funds within the Department of Commerce, the South Carolina Venture Capital Fund and the South Carolina Technology Innovation Fund. The $50 million VC fund may provide equity, near-equity and seed capital of up to $5 million or 15 percent of the committed capital of the investor, whichever is less. Deals must be for S.C.-based firms.

Uses of the Technology Innovation Fund are more varied, permitting the state to provide small grants to support research and tech transfer through the technology incubators connected to the state's research universities. Administration of the Innovation Fund will be contracted to a separate nonprofit.

• The South Carolina Research University Infrastructure Act increases the state's debt limit by half a percent to provide as much as $250 million for facility and infrastructure improvements at the state's three research universities — Clemson University, The Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of South Carolina- Columbia. Projects must advance economic development and creation of a knowledge-based economy.

S. 0560 is available at: http://www.scstatehouse.net/cgi-bin/web_bh10_2003.exe