Senate To Vote On Science Funding

The Massachusetts State Senate will vote this week on Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 ‘s $1 billion ten-year plan to bolster the life sciences in Massachusetts.

The bill, which passed in the House on Feb. 28, is designed to aid the biotechnology industry, spur job development, and entice talented professors and researchers to the Bay State’s state universities.

The bill would provide $500 million for lab construction and $250 million for research grants and post-doctoral education at the University of Massachusetts’ Worcester and Amherst campuses. The remaining $250 million would be allocated for tax credits to life sciences firms.

The bill will have significant impacts on university-based and urban economies including Cambridge and Boston which both have burgeoning biotech industries.

Newly elected Massachusetts State Senator Anthony D. Galluccio, who represents Cambridge, wrote a letter to the Cambridge Chronicle earlier this month strongly supporting the legislation.

Gallucio praised the bill as a means of anchoring the middle class, generating tax revenue in the local economy, and making Massachusetts a national leader in biotech industry and education.

“The governor’s life sciences bill establishes the Commonwealth’s ownership and protection of an industry that has come to define our state and is the envy of the world,” Gallucio wrote in his letter.

“The overspill of the life sciences can help to revitalize communities that once relied heavily on industrial and manufacturing companies.”

The bill aligns statewide priorities with the Cambridge City Council’s recent economic initiative to partner with universities and businesses to promote emerging industries such as the energy sector, nanotechnology and life sciences.

City Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, chairman of the Committee on Economic Development, Training, and Employment, said the bill would have limited fiscal impacts on Cambridge’s economy but would provide an ideological boost for the council by syncing local efforts with a statewide initiative.

Critics in the Senate have raised concerns that the life sciences bill ignores traditional Massachusetts industries like manufacturing, Galluccio said in an interview yesterday. Critics also argue that the bill will benefit only urban and university-based communities, he added.

Despite these concerns, Galluccio expects the bill to pass in the Senate.

“No other industry has the edge that life sciences does in Massachusetts, and people are starting to grasp that,” said Gallucio.

“This bill is the beginning of a progressive legislative effort to find industries to replace the manufacturing base that the state once had.”