SSTI Digest

The fourth installment of the Tech Talkin' Govs series includes highlights from state of the state, budget and inaugural addresses from governors in Hawai'i and Texas.

In support of the state's goal to attract and grow biotechnology companies, Gov. Martin O'Malley's executive budget recommends increasing by $400,000 the state's investment in stem cell research, while maintaining current funding for biotechnology tax credits and slightly increasing the appropriation for the Nanotech Biotechnology Initiative Fund.

In the 2007 fiscal year, funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) generated about $2.21 in new business activity for every $1 invested, according to a report from Families USA. The group, which advocates for increased healthcare spending in the U.S., argues that NIH investment can be a powerful driver of economic growth. Just in 2007, NIH funding generated 350,000 new jobs, more than $18 billion in new wages and $50 billion in business activity.

Pennsylvania Gov.

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The third installment of the Tech Talkin' Govs series includes highlights from state of the state, budget and inaugural addresses from governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, State of the State Address, Jan. 15, 2009

Tech entrepreneurs in Kansas would lose a long-time independent friend and ally in their efforts to expand the state's economy if the FY10 budget proposed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius passed the state legislature. The governor has proposed many of the functions of KTEC, a program spanning more than two decades as a quasi-public agency developing Kansas' technology-based economic development efforts, would be cut substantially and absorbed by the state Department of Commerce (DOC).

The proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, released last week by the House Appropriations Committee, would dramatically increase federal funding for research in several agencies required to participate in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program.  The National Science Foundation alone, for example, would receive an additional $3 billion - equal to 50 percent of its FY08 appropriations.  The Department of Energy would get a $2 billion research injection; the National Institutes of Health, a cool $1.5 billion for R&D.  The SBIR program requires the research agencies to award 2.5 percent of their extramural R&D funds to small businesses. So it would seem small tech firms fighting for funds in the highly competitive SBIR arena could see a windfall in the coming months as a result of a Recovery Act.

The South Carolina Centers of Economic Excellence (CoEE) Program, an initiative to recruit star scientists into distinct research clusters at the state's three research universities, has gained $205 million in competitive research awards and non-state matching funds over the program's lifetime - three times the state's distributed investment to date of $66 million. This finding and others regarding the fiscal and employment impact of the initiative was included in a recent outside evaluation of the first five years of the CoEE Program.

Successful small technology businesses serve as integral components of a robust innovation-based economy. The novel products and services brought to market are often the result of these companies' R&D efforts. As a result, nearly every state has programs and policies in place to support the growth of small tech firms.

Several years of virtually flat and occasionally declining federal funds for the nation's research and economic development communities could end abruptly with passage of an economic recovery plan resembling either proposal released by President-elect Obama or Congressional Democrats. Both call for unprecedented public investments to stimulate the economy out of its worst recession since the Great Depression, while at the same time moving the country dramatically toward a national innovation strategy mirroring the priorities of most state and regional technology-based economic development programs across the country.

Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House, however, opposition to the size and the nature of some components crosses both sides of the political aisle and as a result changes in the package are likely before passage.

The House Appropriations Committee version of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act released this morning includes support for improvement to the U.S. digital infrastructure. The proposal calls for significant spending to boost the economy through science and technology. That figure, along with additional spending on energy, small business, and healthcare improvements, includes significant investment in the country's information technology and networking assets.