House and Senate negotiators who have spent months smoothing differences over a $1 billion, 10-year life sciences plan outlined a year ago have reached “tentative agree-ment,” said a key lawmaker and other sources familiar with the deal late last week.
A spokesman for Senate President Therese Murray said that a conference committee session on the bill has been rescheduled for this week.
Asked about the Patrick administration’s opinion of the bill, Rep. Daniel Bosley, D-North Adams, House chair of the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, replied, “I think they’ll be happy with the bill.” Bosley disclosed the “tentative agreement” early Thursday afternoon.Senate President Pro Tempore Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, said senators got an update on the nearly finished life sciences bill during a Democratic caucus Thursday.
“They had a quick update on each of the conferences and that one, they said, was just about done,” Rosenberg said.Sen. Jack Hart, D-South Boston, the lead Senate con-feree, declined to discuss the agreement.
Both the House and Senate versions of Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal would allocate $250 million in tax credits for life sciences companies, $250 million for grants for educa-tion and research grants, and $500 million for infrastructure improvements. Many of the investments are earmarked for specific institutions.
Supporters say tax credits and incentives will lure a promising industry that top state officials have implored to build in Massachusetts. Critics say state government should not be in the practice of selecting winners and losers, and that the subsidies amount to corporate giveaways.
Patrick has pointed to the package as his top economic development priority, and after months of wrangling the Legislature advanced it earlier this year.
The Senate version of the bill strengthened “clawback” provisions on grant money where companies do not meet job creation thresholds. The Senate bill weakened the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center by giving capital grant awarding duties to the Executive Branch and eliminating the center’s authority to issue bonds.
Officials have said they want to push the bill into law before an international biotech convention in San Diego next month.
(State House News)
