THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 19, 1994 TAG: 9412190068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
Tech, tech, more tech. That's long been the mantra of Virginia economic development officials, who tout technology as the keystone of the state's long-term prosperity.
Nonetheless, the state agency to promote the commercialization of science and technology could become extinct not long after its 10th anniversary. Gov. George Allen's Commission on Government Reform has recommended cutting public funding for the Center for Innovative Technology.
A key member of Allen's commission calls CIT a well-intentioned boondoggle that's never focused its mission or justified its $100 million in state subsidies.
Allen hasn't said whether he'll move on the recommendation, but he has promised sweeping cost-cutting throughout state government. CIT, with its futuristic headquarters in Herndon, Fairfax County, and a professional staff of 29, looks vulnerable.
The center's defenders - including business groups and university researchers - have saved it before. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder proposed phasing out financing for CIT just two years ago, but a Democrat-controlled General Assembly found the money.
Should taxpayer money dry up, a number of CIT-financed programs in Hampton Roads would probably wither as well, affecting Old Dominion University, Tidewater Community College, Thomas Nelson Community College and others.
The technology center's fate will be made clear when the state's new two-year budget is unveiled during an Allen press conference this morning in Richmond.
Connie Bedell is one citizen who hopes that Allen will turn off the CIT tap. Bedell, a Northern Virginia media and public relations consultant, served on the reform commission's executive committee and was the chief architect of the CIT-cutoff provision.
``Ten years ago, it (CIT) was a great idea,'' Bedell said. ``After 10 years, I feel very strongly this thing has proven a boondoggle. It's a way for universities to fund research projects. The questions that need to be answered haven't been.''
The main question, said Bedell, is whether CIT has helped to create significant numbers of permanent jobs.
Since the center's founding in 1984, the state has pumped in roughly $100 million of taypayer dollars into CIT, which in turn made grants to support basic and applied research, mostly at Virginia colleges and universities. Left out of the equation, Bedell asserts, are those who have needed that money the most: small independent businesses.
Meantime, she argues, CIT staff and university faculty have cashed in, drawing handsome salaries or stipends for work whose worth is debatable.
``CIT was supposed to have done all these things for economic expansion, but we really don't know how they're spending their money,'' Bedell said.
Defenders say state money spent by CIT has, at the very least, attracted significant investment from elsewhere. Typically, a CIT grant to a researcher is matched by private investment or a federal grant.
Businesses and the feds have chipped in $155 million to CIT-supported projects, far outweighing state support.
The state kills CIT at its own risk, says Hugh Keogh, president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and also a member of the CIT board. Most states have established or are establishing agencies or quasi-independent bodies to bring high-tech university research to market and provide brainpower or other resources to entrepreneurs.
``If CIT is abolished, within two short years another group would devise something that resembles what CIT does,'' Keogh said. ``That's something we can avoid. For Virginia to be a successful economic generator nationally and globally, some technological support component must be in existence. CIT is it for right now.''
The technology center's new president, Robert G. Templin Jr., concedes that university-based ventures in wireless communications, biotechnology, fiber optics, genetic engineering and drug design haven't always spawned new companies. But he believes the knowledge gained from the collaboration has profited businesses.
``At its birth the CIT was called to help bring universities and Virginia businesses more closely together. CIT did that,'' he said. ``But times changed. We have prepared a plan that matches the new environment Virginia faces.'' CIT was born in the go-go 1980s, brainchild of the administration of then-Gov. Charles S. Robb, who saw it as Virginia's answer to North Carolina's highly successful Research Triange project. CIT took on a number of high-visibility, high-tech projects the agency promised would vault the state into the national economic forefront.
But CIT was soon mired in political tugs-of-war. Four CIT presidents came and went before former Republican governor Linwood Holton took the helm in the late 1980s, a post he held until Templin's arrival in September.
A report prepared for Gov. L. Douglas Wilder in 1992 concluded that ``the scale and scope of CIT's programs are not sufficient to serve high technology industries and the current industrial base in the Commonwealth. . . The overall staffing, structure and management of administrative staff need to be reorganized (and) CIT needs to develop a `culture of accountability' with state government and the public.''
Reorganization and refocus are in full swing, said Erich Windmuller , a CIT board member and corporate vice president of Science Applications International Corp.
``In today's fiscally challenging times, CIT cannot afford to exist without measurable goals for which they are accountable - performance metrics, if you will,'' Windmuller said. ``CIT acts as a broker for the state, to pull together universities and businesses. Industry won't take that role as a broker. CIT critic Bedell, while an admirer of Templin, says that CIT has been given enough time. That the agency only recently prepared a strategic plan for Allen, she said, ``is sad. . . I personally would be embarrassed.''
Aides have shielded Allen from detailed comment on the outlines of the upcoming budget, including the future of CIT. Given the governor's repeated mention of high technology as central to the state's economic future, however, it appears unlikely that he will follow his commission's recommendation to the letter.
A more likely scenario is that, over a period of years, state funding will be gradually withdrawn from the center. If so, it will be up to private interests or Allen's successor to join the state's disparate science and technology interests into some sort of high technology partnership.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA STATE CENTER FOR INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY by CNB