The FY09 enacted budget provides $1.16 billion for the Treasury Department, not including the IRS. Though the overall appropriation for the department dropped, TBED-related funding increased.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), received $7.6 billion in FY09, $174 million above the 2008 appropriation. Science and Technology activities, including research and development activities, are funded at $790 million in FY09, $30 million above the FY08 appropriation.

NASA received $17.8 billion in FY09, a 2.2 percent increase from the previous fiscal year's amount of $17.2 billion. It is distributed as follows:

In FY09, the National Science Foundation received $6.49 billion, a 5.9 percent increase of $363 million over FY08. More than three-fourths of the total supports non-defense research and related activities, 13 percent will be for education and human resources, and 2.3 percent of the total is for major research equipment and facilities construction.

Several regional commissions and authorities receive annual federal appropriations for economic improvement activities within specific geographic regions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, Delta Regional Authority and Denali Commission.

The enacted budget sets funding for the Small Business Administration (SBA) at $546.6 million for FY09, excluding funds for the disaster loan program. Most of SBA's capital programs and its contracting and counseling programs have had their appropriations boosted above FY08 levels.

For many states facing a challenging budget year, level funding for science and technology is welcome news to the tech-based economic development (TBED) community. With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act earlier this year, governors are seeking solutions to stimulate their respective states' economies through new and expanded programs within specific priority areas.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Treasury released the details of its plan to award $100 million in grants to community-based financial institutions. These funds, along with an additional $3 billion in tax credit authority, were allocated to Treasury programs by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) last month.

Utah's 2009 legislative session ended earlier this month with a significant boost in funding to the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR) for recruiting science and technology researchers at the University of Utah and Utah State University.

TechConnect West Virginia (TechConnectWV) released a new plan on Monday to build a larger and more robust technology economy. The report, West Virginia Blueprint for Technology-Based Economic Development, proposes a four-part, general strategy for TBED and targets several key industries for development.

The National Science Foundation has made available the FY 2007 version of its Academic Research and Development Expenditures statistical tables. The release contains detailed information on research expenditures at individual academic institutions.

According to the National Science Foundation, the number of science and engineering PhDs awarded in the U.S. has been increasing every year since 2002. To further examine trends of the PhDs awarded in each state, SSTI has prepared a table showing the number of S&E PhDs per 100,000 residents and each state's relative rank from 2002 to 2006, as well as the percent change in PhDs awarded per capita over these five years and the rank of that change.

Virginia lawmakers passed a bill last month supporting the state's bioscience industry and providing incentives to investors for bioscience and advanced technology commercialization. The legislation comprised all of the top recommendations from the 2008 Joint Legislative Subcommittee on the Biosciences.

Vermont Governor James Douglas has released a plan to spend some of the state's share of funds from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on building a stronger base for technology-based growth. The $17.1 million SmartVermont suite of proposals includes funding for technology company loans, lending to small businesses, seed capital for entrepreneurs and support for regional economic development projects.

The Technology Innovation Program (TIP) in the National Institute of Standards and Technology is using its FY09 award competition to support high-risk, high-reward research in civil infrastructure and manufacturing. The program has $25 million available to support as many as 25 new awards. TIP is open to individual small-sized or medium-sized businesses or to joint ventures that also may include institutions of higher education, nonprofit research organizations and national laboratories.

On March 30, the National Institutes of Health announced a new funding opportunity to use up to $100 million of Recovery Act funds to enable academic institutions "to hire, provide appropriate start-up packages, and develop pilot research projects for newly independent investigators, with the goal of augmenting and expanding the institution's community of multidisciplinary researchers focusing on areas of biomedical research relevant to NIH."