Olympia Update No 6 • March 25, 2005
Senate Budget Due Out Monday:
Pullman Biotechnology/Life Sciences Building In Jeopardy
State Senate leaders are expected to deal a serious setback Monday to WSU’s decadeold plans to build a new four-story 117,210-square foot Biotechnology/Life Sciences
Building on the Pullman campus, perhaps leaving the ultimate fate of the building up to
an uncertain House.
Rumors are flying that the $57 million project will receive zero funding in the proposed
Senate capital budget which will be released around mid-day Monday, effectively
removing the linchpin from WSU’s plans to enhance its historic world standing in
biotechnology. This action is taken despite the building’s high ranking on the priority list
submitted by all six of the state’s four-year baccalaureate institutions.
The budget will be heard by the Senate Ways and Means Committee Monday afternoon at
3:30 p.m. The budget could pass the Senate as early as Wednesday.
With funding for the building also being debated among leaders in the state House of
Representatives, WSU‘s highest legislative priority for new construction appears to be in real
danger of not being funded in the upcoming two years.
The Biotechnology/Life Science Building is to house many of WSU’s most productive
researchers in everything from agriculture to cancer. These are the scientists who conduct
more than $6 million per year in federally sponsored research, and through whose
collaborations with other faculty in Richland, Pullman, Spokane and elsewhere in the system,
enable more than $20 million per year in federally sponsored research. These researchers will
serve as the backbone for developing both the Riverpoint Health Sciences campus at WSU
Spokane and the WSU Bioproducts building in Tri-Cities.
Both former Gov. Gary Locke and Gov. Christine Gregoire have recommended $45 million in
funding for the building. It was disappointing to the university that the entire $57 million was not
recommended for funding as was suggested by the state Higher Education Coordinating
Board. But the news gets worse as the budget process moves to the Senate.
WSU Vice Provost Jim Petersen, who heads the university’s research efforts was in
Olympia Friday to talk with legislators about the building’s fate. Also meeting with
legislators in Olympia this week were Mike Skinner, director of the Center for
Reproductive Biology; Engineering Researcher Anjan Bose, and Jim Cook, interim dean
of the College of Agriculture, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences. Bose, a
distinguished professor in electric power engineering, and Cook, a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, were honored by the full House of Representatives
Friday as part of a tribute to research. The WSU researchers told legislators that reports
of no funding for the building causes a cascading series of problems for the university
system that would result from at least a two-year delay in construction. Among those:

It weakens the university’s case for continuing federal funding of a similar-sized
adjacent building that will be constructed with funds provided by the federal
government. Some congressional funds have already been provided for this project,
funding that was leveraged by the promise of the state-funded Plant Biotechnology
Building (under construction) and the proposed Biotechnology/Life Sciences Building.
The three buildings are part of an integrated complex of buildings will be the major
research complex for agricultural, human health, and other life sciences in Pullman.
(This replaces Johnson Hall.) The project has been strongly supported by the
Washington Association of Wheat Growers.

It will delay long-sought relief to the Pullman research university campus that has less
than half of the teaching laboratories required for hands-on learning by undergraduate
and graduate students.

It will leave priority WSU research projects without state-of-the art laboratory space very
important to researchers and students involved in plant breeding, plant science, plant
pathology and entomology, human and animal infectious diseases and understanding of
life processes affecting health and performance, as well as microbial and viral
genomics.

It jeopardizes a potential $4 million National Institute of Heath proposal, which uses the
building as matching funds.

The delay may adversely impact a $650,000 proposal currently pending at the Murdock
Trust. If funded, this project would be the third largest grant major research equipment
proposal funded by the Trust. This grant would develop a Transgenic Mouse core
laboratory, which is essential to a developing Chromosome Biology collaboration
between Pullman and Spokane and which must be established before existing NIH
grants received by recent WSU hires could be moved to WSU.

The delay will hinder the bio-products research collaboration between Pullman and
Richland envisioned for the planned Bioproducts Research and Technology Building,
thus adversely impacting the success of the programs in that building.

Delay will adversely impact the collaborative bioengineering research recently funded
by the Keck Foundation. This collaborative project, involving engineering and life
science researchers, would develop new bone materials having the same chemical and
physical characteristics of the recipient’s natural bone. For example, articulation of the
planned life science complex was a significant factor in the success of this $750K
project.

It may leave the Pullman campus without any major state construction projects for the
coming biennium. Other construction projects being considered for funding by the
Legislature are at the Spokane and Tri-Cities campuses.

The two-year delay will add at least $5.8 million to the cost of the building.
Meanwhile, fate on the building with the state House of Representatives appears to be
uncertain. Some House members maintain that the building is vital to the university’s core
mission. But others have been working to reduce capital funding for WSU projects in this
coming biennium because the university received special funding last year for the Academic
Center Building in Spokane.
University officials have feared for the fate of all three construction projects on its priority list as
it became apparent that legislators were not using significant amounts of new higher education
bonding authority to construct buildings on the four-year campuses. In the governors’ budgets,
that pinch led to no funding being recommended this session for a new WSU Nursing Center in
Spokane. Now, in the critical Senate budget, it is the Biotechnology/Life Sciences building that
is in jeopardy.
WSU maintains that the real problem is inadequate capital construction dollars are
being discussed in Olympia for four-year colleges and universities. Those assumptions
make funding of all three projects much less likely, although House Republicans indicate they
have found a way to accomplish that.
In 2003 the legislature passed the Evans-Gardner Act (RCW 28B.14H.). It authorized $772.5
million of additional funding for higher education capital projects. The law says, “It is the intent
of the legislature that this new source of funding not displace funding levels for the capital and
operating budgets of the institutions of higher education.” The discussions now in Olympia
indicate that those funds were displaced:
Between 1993 and 2003 the share of the state construction account (057) and the
education construction account (253) dedicated to four-year institution capital projects
ranged from 24.4 to 42 percent. The 2005-2007 Locke budget would spend only 19.4% of
those funds on four-year college projects. Even with the additional Evans-Gardner funds the
percentage increases to just 24.5%.
For more information call: Larry Ganders, Assistant to the President, 360-956-2165