Tech Fares Well in Wisconsin Biennial Budget

On July 16, both houses of Wisconsin’s state Legislature passed a state budget including numerous incentives for technological development. The budget covers state spending for a two-year period that began July 1. Gov. Scott McCallum has until August 30 to approve the budget; several of the tech-related items were in the Governor's first state of the state and executive budget addresses. See the February 23, 2001 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest for a related story: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/2001/022301.htm

Highlights include:

• $18 million in bonding authority for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s BioStar Initiative through June 2003, with potential for another $140.5 million through July 2009. This money would help finance a new genome center and genetics laboratory and three new buildings for microbial sciences, biochemistry and interdisciplinary biology at UW-Madison.
• Nearly $8.7 million for information technology and biotechnology courses for the Chippewa Valley Initiative and 10 UW System campuses.
• $1.5 million for TechStar, a consortium of universities, businesses and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce to help turn academic and corporate research efforts into marketable products.
• $500,000 annually to a technology-based nonprofit organization to provide support for a manufacturing extension center.
• $300,000 for the Technology Loan Center (TLC). Beginning in 2002-03, funding under this new appropriation for the TLC would be used to purchase and repair assistive technology equipment, increase loans of assistive technology to eligible 
  
  clients, increase technical assistance to Wisconsin Technical College System districts, and develop additional partnerships with business and industry and WTCS districts to improve the training and employment of students with disabilities.
• $25 million for development of a university research park. The Department of Administration (DOA) would purchase the former Pabst Brewing Company for land and would organize a nonstock corporation known as the Pabst University Research Foundation to develop a research park and incubator facility.
• Delete $4.3 million from the technical and occupational program through 2002-03.
• Eliminate custom computer software sales tax. This would reduce general fund tax revenues by $20.5 million in 2001-02 and by $31 million in 2002-03.
• Reduce funding by more than $6.7 million in 2001-02 for various technology-related items for the UW System.

The budget also provided for the following:

• Nine technology zones allowing tax credits of up to $5 million for high-tech companies. One zone would be an agricultural development zone. The tax credits would begin Jan. 2, 2003. Gov. McCallum had proposed creation of 20 zones.
• Continued research on embryonic stem cells by UW-Madison researchers.
• Study on the New Economy. The Legislative Council would study how state government, the state’s research universities and the state’s business community can foster economic development in Wisconsin by assisting and developing businesses and industries based in science and technology. Included in the Council’s report would be recommended ways to: increase the number and percentage of jobs in science and technology; increase the average earnings of employees in these jobs; increase the amount of venture capital invested in Wisconsin and the amount spent on research and development; and increase the number of homes with computers and Internet access.

Summaries of Wisconsin’s budget provisions are available at: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lfb/lfb_publications.htm