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The director of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, Al Wenstrand, is leaving to become executive director of the Florida's Great Northwest, an economic development agency serving the Florida Panhandle.

With state revenues posting a surplus, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush used his 2006-07 budget proposal to make his largest request yet to support efforts to diversify the state's economy through technology-based economic development (TBED). In total, the budget provides $630 million for several new research-focused initiatives, business recruitment funds, and other economic development programs.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell is set to release his fiscal year 2006-07 budget request later this week, which is expected to significantly redesign the state's investment in biotechnology and life science research, according to materials released by the governor's office.

Not all of the pieces critical to building an innovation-based economy have to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, as might be suggested in the Florida and Pennsylvania stories above. Gov. Matt Blunt's Feb. 2 call for the state to provide $2 million for a new Missouri Life Science Incubator - designed to help researchers move their science from the laboratory to commercial businesses - provides a case in point.

On Jan. 26, New York Gov. George Pataki and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno announced legislation to create a $200 million Biotechnology and Biomedicine Research Initiative through the New York State Charitable Assets Foundation.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently announced the 13 recipients for one of the most anticipated new federal workforce programs to be launched in several years. The $195 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) program attempts to integrate human capital issues of talent and skill development into larger technology-based economic development strategies.

Despite overall signs of improving fiscal health in 2005, half of the nation’s cities have been forced to raise new revenues to address gaps created by rising employee health care and pension costs, as well as increases in public safety and infrastructure needs, according to a National League of Cities (NLC) survey released last week.

Many Wall Street analysts reacted to last month's jobs numbers with fears of inflation, but a new report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors Jan. 27 finds those new jobs often are associated with smaller paychecks than those before the last recession. A declining standard of living is not a goal for any state or local economic development program, so the findings present new challenges on how to create higher wage jobs in the future.

With the sustained depth of the recession, the IT crash, the rapid growth in unemployment and the speculative office construction craze of the late 1990s, one would expect office vacancies to climb and property lease rates to edge down in many cities. Following this thought further might suggest, with cheaper office space available, the need for publicly supported low-rent technology incubator space would decrease.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published online the Science & Engineering State Profiles: 2000-2001, a set of 52 science and engineering (S&E) profiles summarizing state-specific data on personnel and finances. Rankings and totals are given for the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and the report includes a data source page.

Blair Carnahan will be the first director of the new Columbus Regional Technology Center in Columbus, Ga. The new facility will house an incubator, the Columbus Georgia Tech regional office and the Columbus office of the Small Business Development Center.

Blair Carnahan will be the first director of the new Columbus Regional Technology Center in Columbus, Ga. The new facility will house an incubator, the Columbus Georgia Tech regional office and the Columbus office of the Small Business Development Center.

The Sacramento Regional Technology Alliance is losing its executive director as Clare Emerson has announced she is relocating to oversee AEA's Texas office.

John Kotek, formerly with Argonne National Laboratory-West, has been named deputy manager of the Department of Energy's Idaho Operations Office. The office oversees the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Utah House Speaker Marty Stephens began his term as President of the National Conference of State Legislatures during its annual meeting last week.

The backdrop for this year's annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) was painted in budget cuts, tax increases and nearly three years of gloomy economic news. Only adding salt to the wounds, the meeting was held in California, a state whose FY 2003 deficit – now carried over into FY 2004 because of partisan squabbling – could swallow the entire budget approved in more than half of the states in attendance.

As states forecast the worst fiscal crisis in half a century may be ending, the nation's mayors, too, see marked economic improvement on the horizon, according to a report released last Thursday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. However, they remain concerned that the economy is still not generating jobs at a sufficient level for U.S. workers.

The 2004 budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as passed by the House of Representatives mid-July, includes $678 million for the Distance Learning, Telemedicine and Broadband program (DLT). Through loans, grants and loan and grant combinations, DLT provides the facilities and equipment to link rural education and medical facilities with more urban centers and other facilities.

Late last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) calling for academic white papers that will focus on specific areas related to social science issues. This is the first step in the review process for colleges and universities that would like to be selected as a Homeland Security Center of Excellence (HS-Center). The Department anticipates selecting at least one HS-Center by end of November 2003 and up to nine more HS-Centers by end of 2004.

Congressional responses to the Administration's recent proposal to merge the Department of Commerce's technology and telecommunications operations into one coordinated agency ranged from a hearty endorsement to dead in the water, according to Capitol Hill-focused news media.

We recognize that SSTI's annual conference quickly has become the premier professional development event annually for the tech-based economic development field. It's quite an honor, but it is also quite an obligation. Our conference participants have come to expect a level of unsurpassed quality. At least, that's what they tell us in the evaluations.

The first two installments of SSTI's annual look at how TBED will play in the 2006 legislative priorities of the governors can be found in the Digest archives on our website: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/digest.htm

Delaware

Innovation and national competitiveness increasingly are capturing the attention of Congress as the 2006 legislative agenda takes shape. The latest addition is a bipartisan package of three bills introduced to address 20 recommendations outlined in Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, a National Academies of Science report issued last October.

Total funding for research and development is expected to increase by approximately 2.9 percent to $329 billion in 2006, according to the joint Battelle-R&D Magazine annual forecast. The projected increase, from the estimated $320 billion spent in 2005, covers all R&D expenditures across industry, government and academia.

 

To survive economically in an innovation-based economy, Fresno needs to foster the creativity of its people and attract others into the population, says a recent report from the Fresno Creative Economy Council. While encouraging creativity to spur innovation and economic growth has captured the attention of cities and regions across the continent, how to accomplish that goal is less clear for many.