Welcome to Florida, where state dollars are as plentiful as sunshine when it comes to padding private-sector budgets.
That was the message received by biotech outfits such as the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, lured here in 2006 with more than $300 million in state and local dollars.
Now, just seven years later, Sanford-Burnham is tapping Florida's incentive spigot again.
Apparently the lavish package that included more than $150 million in public money from the state plus money from the city and county and private donations such as memberships at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club simply wasn't enough.
Beginning this year, and for the next eight years, the state will cut an annual check to Sanford-Burnham for up to $3 million out of the state's cigarette-tax collections. Combine that with the $3 million grant the state gave the institute last year and that adds up to at least $27 million — on top of the original handout that set a local record for size and generosity.
Take a moment to pick your jaw up off the ground, and I'll try to answer why taxpayers are still being asked to prop up these biotech institutes, which were heralded as Florida's path to new wealth and prosperity.
Sanford-Burnham isn't alone.
The Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, which got $100 million in incentives to locate in Port St. Lucie in 2006, has its hand out again, too. Torrey Pines wants $3 million from the Legislature this year and will likely ask for more money again next year.
And Scripps — the granddaddy of them all, with an incentive package worth half a billion — is going after cigarette-tax money this year.
"I think it's important to point out these are businesses," said Richard Houghten, chief executive of Torrey Pines, told me. "Is there a guarantee of success? No. Is there a possibility of failure? Yes."
Failure? That's not a word we heard back when these deals were struck.
Then-Gov. Jeb Bush called it "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build an economic engine with the power to drive this state forward."
The institutes would put the state on the national map for medical research. The Medical City development in Lake Nona, home to Sanford-Burnham, might rival Mickey Mouse in defining Orlando.
Well, we have the buildings, and the research has started. But the need for state dollars hasn't stopped.
In some ways, Florida's effort to make it big in the biotech world is a victim of the national recession.
The National Institutes of Health, the largest source of federal funding for medical research, has seen its dollars dwindle. Competing for grants is harder than ever for scientists.
A decrease in NIH dollars is one reason Sanford-Burnham went after the cigarette tax.
This summer NIH will stop funding the institute's Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, a drug-discovery lab that was once generating $15 million a year from NIH.
Spokeswoman Deborah Robison says Sanford-Burnham planned ahead for those dollars to dry up, and the state cigarette-tax money will help.
She said Sanford-Burnham isn't planning to go after any additional money during the upcoming legislative session. But given the climate for research institutes, it wouldn't be surprising to see Sanford-Burnham looking for more help from Tallahassee.
