House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi said yesterday that Governor Deval Patrick's life science bill is unlikely to advance tomorrow, the last day of the legislative session in this calendar year, despite the administration's eleventh-hour hopes that at least small provisions of the bill would pass.
DiMasi said he would continue working on the governor's bill but offered a different idea to nurture the state's biotechnology industry in the near term: granting lucrative incentives to a handful of biotech companies that are now making pivotal decisions about their future in Massachusetts.
DiMasi said he asked the governor and Senate President Therese Murray during their weekly meeting yesterday to consider offering as much as $40 million in tax breaks and infrastructure investments to a half-dozen life science companies that are now deciding whether to expand in the state.
DiMasi said the deal would not immediately require legislation because the details could be laid out in a letter signed by the legislative leaders and the governor.
"I think that the governor was receptive to the idea as I outlined it today to him," DiMasi said in an interview yesterday. "He's going back to his people to discuss that."
DiMasi floated the idea of targeted incentives to
In an interview yesterday afternoon, as Patrick was listening to DiMasi's pitch, Patrick's economic secretary said the governor did not want to use the political process to hand out economic development money for biotech companies. Instead, he said, a special panel of scientists and other specialists should award incentives, as Patrick's biotech bill proposes.
"To maintain the integrity of this process, we need to have scientists making decisions about science," said Housing and Economic Development Secretary Daniel O'Connell.
"We can't substitute our opinions for theirs, or we won't get the kind of results for this initiative that we want."
Patrick's spokesman, Joseph Landolfi, said last night that he could not confirm whether the governor had agreed to consider DiMasi's proposal.
"The one thing we have said at every talking point is that we run the risk of missing an opportunity," he said. "There are companies out there who have said to us that they're watching legislation very carefully as they make plans for economic development in the state going forward. We have expressed a certain sense of urgency around the legislation because we did not want to lose companies who were either thinking of locating here or staying here or expanding here."
Patrick introduced the life sciences measure in May, with Murray and DiMasi at his side, which made it seem a shoo-in for passage. Over its 10-year life, the legislation included $25 million a year for research grants, $50 million a year for facilities and equipment grants, and $25 million a year for targeted tax incentives for biotech companies.
But six months later, the Legislature provided more than $20 million for the first round of the research grants, but the rest of the initiative has languished. The Patrick administration did not file the bill until July; the House did not assign it to a committee until the end of the summer; and disagreements have emerged between the administration and DiMasi over who should be eligible for the money and how it should be distributed.
Administration officials said that they are frustrated with DiMasi's targeted approach, which they said is much narrower in scope than the broad vision the three leaders had in mind when they unveiled the bill, a vision of creating a sweeping plan to nurture one of the state's most promising industries.
While targeting a handful of companies might be important, the administration sources said, many more companies would have benefited from the biotech legislation, and that would have had a much larger impact on the Massachusetts economy.
DiMasi, however, is not entirely happy with the Patrick administration.
He said he also expressed concern to Patrick in yesterday's meeting that O'Connell had not notified legislative leaders about the six or so companies weighing their future in Massachusetts, even though O'Connell's staff had been working with those companies.
"I think we need to communicate better about what's going on with respect to these companies," DiMasi said. "I think we need to react if we're going to let people know that we're serious about it. These companies are willing to create these jobs, and I want to be there to assist them."
DiMasi added that he, Murray, and Patrick agreed that the heads of four legislative committees handling the bill should immediately begin meeting on a regular basis with administration officials to hammer out the details.
"While we're clearly disappointed and a bit frustrated that the pace of the legislative process does not always mirror the pace that decisions in the business world are made," Landolfi said, "we remain committed to this very important piece of legislation."
