LANSING ? Gov. Jennifer Granholm introduced legislation Thursday that will ask voters in November to approve selling $2 billion in bonds to fund life sciences, alternative energy and other technologies in Michigan.
Granholm said her proposal would add 72,000 jobs that would diversify the state’s economy to areas other than the auto industry and create jobs that can’t be outsourced to foreign countries.
The bond issue, however, faces an uncertain future in the state legislature where Republicans rule. Republican Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema said in a statement that he has questions about the governor’s Jobs for Michigan Fund, but will make sure it gets a thorough review in the Senate.
“I’m concerned about $2 billion being too much and the ideas on how to spend the money being too unfocused,” he said. “It’s the people of Michigan who will be paying off this debt. We owe it to them to make sure that effectiveness and accountability are set at very high levels and that they receive the greatest possible return on their investment.”
Granholm said the investments will follow what the state has done the past five years in investing in the Life Sciences Corridor. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, not the state, reviews proposals for those grants so the investment decisions aren’t based on politics or the state picking winners or losers, she said.
The money would help to attract top scientists and researchers to state universities, attract more federal dollars for research and development, invest in basic and applied research and help give more startup technology businesses the resources they need to grow, she said.
The money would be repaid with some of the tobacco settlement money now going to the Life Sciences Corridor, as well as by the return on equity the state would get from some of the investments and by general fund dollars, if necessary.
But Granholm’s proposal was slammed by Michigan Republican Party spokesman Nate Bailey as “reckless” because it would commit the state to repaying the bonds with no guarantee more jobs would be created. Granholm said Michigan cannot afford to do nothing in the face of an unemployment rate hovering around 7 percent and the continued loss of manufacturing jobs.
She said California already has done something similar, and that Ohio and Wisconsin are considering their own bond proposals to spur similar investments in research and bring new technologies to the market.
