Bush signs law to give $310 million to biotech firm (Fla.)

[Nambe]

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)

Jeb Bush signed a law Monday that will guarantee a prestigious biotech firm's expansion into Florida and possibly help the state develop a high-tech and high-wage economy.

Bush said a Scripps Research Institute in Florida would create unprecedented economic and educational opportunities and propel the state to the forefront of biomedical research and discovery.

State leaders have compared the deal to the arrival of NASA, Disney World and air conditioning.

The legislation Bush signed requires the state to spend $310 million to lure Scripps to Florida. Palm Beach County, where the biotechnology firm will be located, will add an additional $200 million to the incentive package. ---

Go to the Store!

Get an Excelent ’04 Party Hat!

[camero]

1. The largest piece of corporate welfare in the history of FL

All while education is being cut to the bone. It pays employee and executive salaries for 7 years with no promise that they will stay or give good jobs to floridians.

This is oligarchy, folks.

[E_Zapata]

2. 1/2 a billion - not bad, not bad at all.

But, but, but...people aren't getting educated in Florida. Where oh where will Scripps get employees worth HIGH SALARIES? Oh well, guess they will have to pay them peanuts.

I have had it with the greed, graft, corruption, evil......just have had it!

And what lovely city LOST Scripps, I wonder? And how much did their taxpayers shell out to get them to go there? Did they get a return on their investment, I wonder? hmmm, bet it's a dem state.

I guess it's like that time period when you could shop around for long distance carriers.....$50 cash and 1 month free; then switch to AT&T, and get the same deal; then back to MCI for the free $50...

[haele]

5. Scripps is based in beautiful La Jolla, CA

Just a wee skip north of San Diego, proper...where there are exorbirant real estate prices, and very little land to expand to.

What they might be doing is expanding departments to Florida; I personally (having done business with them at various points in my checkered career) that Scripps does have quite a few multi-million dollar oceanagraphic satellite offices/labs with NOAA (in Washington and Hawaii), the Navy (scattered in California, Washington, Hawaii, Japan and in other places), and with institutes such as Woods Hole, MA - as well as planetary physics labratory sites in Nevada, Turkey, Japan, Hawaii, Italy, and various small former Soviet states. Heck, they basically "own a town" in Nevada; the little town of Nelson NV owes most of it's ability to stay one step above a ghost town to Scripps and the earth movement monitoring sites Scripps rents yearly from the inhabitants (as well as livestock replacement as grad students may hit the occasional hefer or donkey trying to get out to a site or two in the middle of the night).

Not to mention all the bio-tech and medical programs Scripps is involved with. There's a reason the actual name is the "Scripps INSTITUTION" (rather than the apparently gramerically correct institute) - the whole organization is a crazy-quilt of gradute studies, government contracts, monitering sites, and experimental research programs crossing a spectrum of natural/environmental physics and biological studies.

A couple million dollars for a new site far from San Diego will not impact the area at all.

Personally, I'm not too concerned with the move...and most of the reaserch/phd types that are needed in these programs will probably be from out of state and it won't necissarily take anything from what is already exsisting in San Diego/La Jolla. It will be a boon for those locals who have at least some training in the technical and support side - as long as they have the proper lab and research attitudes.

Working for Scripps is not an easy atmosphere for a typical 9 to 5 type blue-collar or contract technical person.

And I'm not sure that Jebbie really understands the Scripps attitude; they're not quite the same as working with the oil ogliarchies and sugar synchophants he's used to. Scripps scientists and program managers don't like kow-towing to customer blackmail, and have been known to pick up and leave an area, no matter how "cost effective" it was for their organization, if they didn't get what they consider to be the proper respect and support from their customer and local political base - they've even quit a lucritive long term multi-million dollar Navy support contracts because the working environment "didn't suit" them.

The good thing to Florida employees is that Scripps will tend to "take care of their own".

Haele

[Tempest]

3. Does anyone really think Florida will make the money back?

If pro sports stadiums are any indication, Scripps will build and then fail to live up to the hype of jobs and tax receipt increases.

[FlaGranny]

4. I don't know what to think about this.

This company is supposed to take over and remodel the Motorola facilities. Motorola used to employ many hundreds of people there, possibly more than a thousand, some high-tech and some manufacturing. I'm not certain of how many were there at peak production. IBM used to have a huge facility in Palm Beach County employing thousands. Motorola and IBM both left (downsizing? or greener pastures?) and neither of them had any trouble finding high-tech employees here. In fact, my son, with a degree in biomedical engineering, lives less than a mile from the facility. He has never been able to get a job in that field, but instead works for an entertainment wholesale company maintaining their web pages. This may be a better opportunity for him. Is it worth $310 million, I don't know, but I DO know that they won't have a hard time hiring, and my son may get an opportunity to fully utilize his skills.

States have competed for many, many years to entice companies to their states. This is one thing I'm giving Jeb the benefit of the doubt on - but I still hate him anyway. If Bob Graham had still been governor I don't doubt he would have done the same.

[LeftHander]

6. Scripps research celebrates with

A toga party on the island of ibiza....

Yeah babay,,,,