Biotech Bills Before the 2007 General Assembly
The 2007 session of the Virginia General Assembly opened on January 10, on Jamestown Island, where it all started 400 years ago. The ceremonies featured comments from Vice President Dick Cheney as well as the annual State of the Commonwealth address by the Governor. Everyone knows that this is the 400th anniversary of the founding of the New World’s first permanent English settlement. While this is the most common refrain heard around Richmond these days, a more important point is that it also happens to be an election year for all 140 members of the legislature.
Following the Democratic victories last November, both sides of the partisan aisle are working hard to energize their bases without alienating moderate voters. The key to all of this is the transportation debate and how the voters decide to reward or punish the Republicans who control both houses of the legislature. Here are some statistics: Nearly 3,000 bills and resolutions have been introduced. That is on average about 20 bills per legislator. Usually, about 15 to 20 percent of the bills brought before the legislature end up being signed into law.
Here are some of the bills that the Virginia Biotechnology Association is tracking this year:
Longtime bioscience supporter Delegate Bob Purkey (R-Virginia Beach) has introduced two bills that would help the bioscience community. HB 1697 proposes to provide return guarantees for venture capital firms who invest in bioscience and nanotechnology companies. The VC fund would have to invest three times the amount of principal it receives from Virginia. The other bill, HB 1939, creates the Virginia Technology and Biotechnology Research and Development Fund to attract technology or biotechnology companies to, or assist those companies located in, the Commonwealth. Moneys in the Fund shall only be applied to qualified research expenses and basic research payments for research conducted in the Commonwealth. Both of these bills were referred to the House Appropriations Committee where they will most likely be killed.
Delegate Mark Sickles (D- Fairfax) has proposed HB 2820, a
bill to create the Virginia Biotechnology Company Seed and Early-Stage Investment Fund. The bill creates a non-reverting fund that can invest in early-stage or seed-level bioscience companies in Virginia. It is closely based upon a budget amendment introduced by Governor Kaine last year and previous legislation by Delegate Purkey. The bill passed the House Finance Committee unanimously on January 31.
There were also several bills that had to do supporting Human Embryonic Stem Cell (HESC) research in Virginia. Delegate Brian Moran’s (D-Fairfax, Alexandria) HB 2857 would have codifed the right for Virginia-supported institutions to conduct such research as long as the institution creates an oversight committee. Delegate Jim Shuler (D-Covington), sponsor of HB 1768, had a similar bill in the hopper. HB 2256, sponsored by Delegate Katherine Waddell (I-Chesterfield, Richmond), would have eliminated the ban on HESC research that exists in the “Christopher Reeve Stem Cell Research Fund” that was created a couple years ago but never funded. These bills have all been defeated or will be within the week.
Finally, there are two budget amendments (House version and Senate version) that VaBIO strongly supports. The amendments are sponsored by the House Majority Leader, Delegate Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), and Senator Brandon Bell (R-Roanoke) to create a $5 million fund to develop wet-lab space for biotech companies. The proposal made it all the way through the legislative process until it died in the conference negotiations between the two houses last year.
If you have any questions about these or other bills before the legislature, please contact us at the VaBIO office.
