The wrong man for the job

LAME-DUCK appointments are rarely a good idea, but especially not when the economic future of the state is at stake. Governor Romney should reconsider his 11th-hour choice of an administration aide with no background in biotechnology as executive director of the new Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.

Repeatedly during his campaign for governor, Deval Patrick pointed to biotech and renewable energy as vanguards for economic growth. This focus justifies his objection to Romney's pick for the $125,000 -a-year job. Aaron D'Elia, now an assistant secretary in the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, was chosen without a search process. His boss, Thomas Trimarco, sits on the board of the Life Sciences Center and was one of four votes in favor of D'Elia's appointment. The sole dissenter was University of Massachusetts President Jack Wilson.

D'Elia said yesterday that he believes he is qualified on the basis of his work in administration and finance overseeing $1.3 billion in the state's capital investment plan. This involved dealing with some biotech companies and projects, he said.

There is value to that experience, but for a position as pivotal as the leadership of the center the board should have insisted on a broad national search that would have included candidates with a deeper background than D'Elia's in weighing proposals for public biotech assistance. Patrick is also justifiably concerned that D'Elia shares Romney's opposition to the use of therapeutic cloning to produce embryonic stem cells that share a patient's genes.

The Legislature created the center as part of its economic stimulus package this year. In addition to managing a $10 million fund, the center will coordinate the activities and investments that different state agencies have created or will propose to advance the life sciences.

The fact that the center has been modeled on ones in North Carolina and the state of Washington is evidence of the stiff competition Massachusetts faces in maintaining and expanding its biotech sector. "Government investment in the life sciences is increasingly viewed as essential to a state's future economic development," Wilson said in a Globe op-ed article he co-authored with Una S. Ryan, who was the chairman of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, earlier this year.

Patrick knows this only too well, and had a right to expect that Romney would either leave the director's position open for Patrick to fill or at a minimum conduct a national search. The center is too important to the state's future growth to be used as a soft landing place for a loyal but not highly qualified aide. Romney should ask D'Elia to step aside and let Patrick fill the post.