One bill's journey through Beacon Hill

WELCOME to the Beacon Hill Sausage Factory.

Before we start today's tour, you'd best put on a pair of coveralls and some rubber boots. The process is messy, and you don't want to get splattered.

Oh, yes, and watch out for the mice. They like to skitter out from dark corners and nibble on your wallet.

Today we're going to look at an important piece of legislation as it wends its way through the process. See this smartly designed bill? It's Governor Patrick's plan to boost the life sciences in Massachusetts.

One way it would do so is by letting the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency, spend $500 million in capital funding on projects it judges important, as long as Administration and Finance signs off. That thoughtful legislation disappeared into the factory for months. It's still not finished, but one of the versions that has emerged looks, to use an early life-sciences allusion, a bit like Frankenstein's monster.

See that jovial fellow over there? That's Dan Bosley. He's a highly skilled sausage factory employee - actually, they prefer to call themselves state legislators - from North Adams. Representative Bosley helps run one of the factory's primary earmarking machines, known locally as the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies.

Let's look at the governor's bill now that Dan's done with it. Why, there's $49.5 million - almost 10 percent of the bond money - earmarked for the construction of a science center at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Now, the life sciences initiative is supposed to spur industry clusters and create jobs. Cutting-edge academic work in the field is usually done at big research universities, not small liberal arts colleges. Not even MCLA's biggest booster could plausibly describe the college as a life sciences leader. After all, it doesn't have any graduate programs in science.

Mind you, the college is hardly being neglected. The administration has included about $23 million for MCLA in the higher education bond bill (a sum that has now grown to $31 million in the factory). Based on an actual planning process, that $23 million is for a 28,000-square-foot addition that will let MCLA consolidate its science programs and build modern labs, classrooms, and offices.

So why the additional $49.5 million that's now earmarked for the college?

Well, here's a little quiz to see how well you understand the way the factory works. Where do you suppose the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts is located? That's right. North Adams.

And where do you suppose Dan Bosley graduated from? North Adams State College, which is now . . . the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Let's see if we can get close enough to talk to Dan. Watch your fingers, though. If they get caught in his machine, they just might end up earmarked for the Berkshires as well.

So, Dan, how do you justify earmarking $49.5 million for a college that doesn't even have a graduate program in science? "It doesn't have a graduate program," Bosley says, "because they have no life sciences center."

But the point of this bill isn't to start life sciences programs from scratch, but rather to build on the state's existing strengths. "So . . . screw Berkshire County because they don't have anything now, so screw them?"

But what about the millions already in the proper pipeline for the college? If the college gets the $49.5 million, Bosley says, "we wouldn't use [the millions] in the higher ed bond bill."

That's hardly the only earmark in the House bill. Altogether, almost $300 million of the $500 million is specifically earmarked, with nearly all of the rest tagged by the House for a variety of grant or loan programs. (The governor can choose not to spend earmarked money, but he can't use it for other purposes.)

OK, here's the question as we complete today's tour: Now that you've seen sausage being made, how much confidence will you have in the factory's final product?

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com.