A month after being elected governor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. mounted a podium before several hundred people at a technology convention in downtown Baltimore and vowed greater support for their industry.
"We've done pretty well," said Ehrlich, who co-chaired the biotechnology caucus in the House of Representatives as a Baltimore County congressman, "but we can do better."
Two years later, however, many in technology business - especially the life sciences - are uncertain about the state's progress. Ehrlich appointed a technology commission and has budgeted millions for new Maryland bioscience buildings, including $11 million in his proposed capital budget for fiscal 2006. But some in the industry, especially after this session's legislative agenda was unveiled, remain skeptical about whether such efforts are keeping pace.
States and cities chase the companies that pursue breakthroughs in the fight against disease like they once bid for automobile factories. In the past four years, the number of states that identify biosciences - a high-skills, high-wage sector - as an economic driver rose to 40 from 14. All 50 states offer some kind of technology-development initiative to biotechnology companies.
"It's kind of like a feeding frenzy in terms of economic development," said Patrick J. Kelly, vice president of state government relations for the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington.
Maryland has long been considered one of the top biotech areas in the country. But the state dropped to fourth place from third behind California, Massachusetts and North Carolina in a report last year by the accounting firm Ernst & Young - a slip that caused much hand-wringing among biotech boosters in Maryland.
Other states have taken "very aggressive steps to encourage entrepreneurial investments [in biotechnology] ... I don't see it from the state of Maryland, and I don't see it from the legislature," said Edward M. Rudnic, president and chief executive officer of Advancis Pharmaceutical Corp. in Germantown and chairman of Maryland's BioAlliance, an industry coalition of bioscience companies within the Technology Council of Maryland.
California's Proposition 71 designates $3 billion for stem cell research. Pennsylvania and North Carolina are channeling millions of tobacco-settlement funds to nourish life sciences initiatives. Massachusetts gave $35 million toward the establishment of an institute to develop technology initiatives and research centers focusing on biotechnology, nanotechnology and medical devices. New Jersey will invest $380 million to build and promote an institute devoted to stem cell research. New York has spent $95 million on bioscience-related capital investments.
