San Diego

Florida governor Jeb Bush this week signed legislation that will help to pump $570 million into bringing the Scripps Research Institute to the 'sunshine state'. But critics are already asking if the deal will attract the research jobs and biotechnology companies that its proponents claim.

The initiative to create Scripps Florida at Palm Beach has been spearheaded by Bush — brother of President George Bush. Last month, he called a special session of the state legislature to put $310 million into the deal, to pay for operations as the new institute builds up to house a projected 545 researchers after seven years.

On 23 October, the legislature approved the request, which includes another $60 million in projected investment income from money being put aside now to fund operations. Palm Beach County will also pay $200 million to build a huge lab complex for the institute. Bush has said the deal could bring up to 500 new firms and 44,000 jobs to Florida.

But sceptical Florida law-makers and economists say that this greatly overstates the benefits of the deal with Scripps, a non-profit organization whose only facility is in La Jolla, California. They also point to unanswered questions about the possible role of the Swiss drug firm Novartis in Scripps Florida's future.

Novartis and Scripps have a contract that says the pharmaceutical firm has first rights to select for product development up to 47% of ideas from the research institute at La Jolla. Novartis is paying Scripps $20 million a year under this pact, which created considerable controversy when it was signed in 1994 by Scripps and the Swiss-based drug company Sandoz — since incorporated into Novartis. Critics of the deal said that Scripps, which gets 85% of its income from the National Institutes of Health, should not have allocated such broad product-development rights to one company.

Neither Novartis nor Scripps will say whether the Florida facility will be covered by the contractual agreement, which expires in December 2006. A Scripps spokesman says that the concept of Novartis selecting technology developed at Scripps Florida “is under discussion”. Novartis officials refused repeated requests for comment.

In Florida, Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Bush, says that the existing Novartis–Scripps contract won't cover Scripps Florida. But she also adds that the governor's office is in discussion with Novartis and Novartis-funded researchers in La Jolla about possible future involvement in Scripps Florida.

If a renewed Novartis contract with Scripps did cover the Florida facility, it could have a major impact on the number of companies and biotechnology jobs that would spin off from it, critics say. Novartis would get automatic access to the most promising ideas for commercial development, they note.

Dan Gelber, a Democrat state representative for Miami Beach, who voted against the Scripps package in the legislature, says that most of his colleagues were unaware of such criticisms. “There was no deep thought put into this,” he says. “The legislature didn't do the due diligence the taxpayers would hope for; it was the equivalent of buying a used car.”

Gelber says independent experts estimate that the deal will create only 16,000 jobs over 15 years. And Joseph Cortright, an economist in Portland, Oregon, who specializes in the impact of biotechnology on regional development, calls the estimate of 500 new firms “ludicrous”. Bratina counters that the governor's economic forecasts are solidly based on “conservative” estimates.