A brief two-year reauthorization, bigger award sizes, VC eligibility clarification, and a $10 million grant program for state/local outreach assistance are included in the draft SBIR reauthorization bill circulated by the House Committee on Small Business Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez during the third hearing on the topic, held March 13.
 
The SBIR program will sunset Sept. 30, 2008, if reauthorization legislation is not passed by Congress and signed by the president before then.
 
Bigger Awards, Fewer Winners

Witnessing the success experienced by its neighbor, West Virginia is creating a university R&D matching endowment program similar to Kentucky’s. The legislature approved $50 million for Gov. Joe Manchin’s “Bucks for Brains” initiative to be allocated from lottery surplus funds (see the Jan. 16, 2008 issue of the Digest).

Aiming to resolve the state’s projected $935 million deficit in its current two-year budget, Gov. Tim Pawlenty introduced a plan that closes Minnesota's budget gap and invests additional funding in rural entrepreneurship and teacher training initiatives for K-12 math and science educators. 
 
Under the governor’s plan, state spending would be cut by $341 million and the state would tap into the budget reserve and surplus funds within the Health Care Access Fund for another $500 million.
 

An overwhelming majority of residents in Georgia see higher education as vital to the state’s economic growth and quality of life, as more educational attainment is aligned with higher incomes, higher levels of entrepreneurship and less government spending.

Though Silicon Valley and New England still dominate the U.S. venture capital landscape, several other regions - whether through local initiatives or the natural evolution of the economy - have emerged as respectable national hubs of investment over the last decade. Some areas, like San Diego, have seen greatly expanded investments and have joined the top tier of venture markets as VC firms turned their attention toward biotech.
 

On the heels of SSTI’s successful inaugural year awards program, recognizing exceptional achievements in approaches to improving state and regional economies through science, technology and innovation, we are pleased to invite applications for the 2008 awards cycle.
 
The purpose of the awards program is to showcase best practices across a broad spectrum of categories encompassing several elements that have been found in successful technology-based economies. The categories are:

Last week, SSTI reported the draft SBIR Reauthorization bill circulated by the House Small Business Committee in mid-March included language that would reauthorize the Federal & State Technology Partnership (FAST) for two years at its current $10 million level. FAST was created with the 2000 SBIR reauthorization and received appropriations through the Small Business Administration (SBA) for three of the next four years.
 

On March 25, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Under Secretary Thomas Dorr announced that Open Range Communications, headquartered in Denver, Colo., will receive a $267 million loan from USDA Rural Development to provide broadband service to 518 rural communities in 17 states. The commitment represents one of the largest public-private investments for broadband service by the federal government, the USDA reports. It is also the first USDA Rural Development investment to support Wi-Max technology.
 

Adjourning from the 2008 legislative session on March 13, Virginia legislators passed the fiscal year 2008-10 biennial budget but immediately called for a special session to resolve differences in the proposed capital outlay plan that supports university R&D and commercialization efforts. 
 

Idaho’s entrepreneurial support centers managed to survive the legislative session with half of their annual appropriation intact in the fiscal year 2009 state budget, despite being zeroed out in Gov. Butch Otter’s budget recommendation earlier this year.