Lab assistance expands to LANL

BYLINE: ANDREW WEBB Journal Staff Writer

Since 2000, Sandia National Laboratories operator Lockheed Martin has used tax credits to fund technical assistance to New Mexico companies.

Now, Los Alamos National Laboratory is about to do the same.

The two labs last week signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, pledging to work together to expand the Small Business Assistance Program to LANL, and to increase work with companies in northern New Mexico.

As it has done at Sandia, the program will continue to give entrepreneurs, from woodworkers and chile farmers to nanotechnology startups, access to laboratory scientists, advanced equipment and services outside the lab, such as market studies performed by university business services.

Richard Vann Bynum, a weapons engineering and manufacturing executive for LANL, acknowledged the two labs had, in the past, been less than cooperative with each other and thanked Sandia for its help expanding the program.

"We offer our technologies and our capabilities," he said.

The Sandia Small Business Assistance Program uses a $1.8 million tax credit, passed by the Legislature in 2000, to offer assistance valued at up to $10,000 per request.

In attendance at the Roundhouse last week as officials signed the agreement were several legislators who had backed the original bill. Now that LANL is operated by a private consortium that includes Bechtel Corp., it, too, must pay state income taxes.

Mariann Johnston, a LANL economic development executive, said officials from both labs want the Legislature to clarify the language in the original bill to include LANL, and to increase the total tax credits, as well as the amount available per project to $20,000.

A bill that would have increased those amounts died at the end of the 2006 legislative session.

The Sandia program has assisted about 1,000 businesses, some several times. It handles about 300 requests per year, said Sandia deputy director and executive vice president John Stichman.