Controlling the Narrative

By Steve Poftak
May 27th, 2008

A key element of politics is seizing control of the narrative around a particular issue, regardless of the underlying data, and running with it. The backers of the Governor’s original life sciences bill seem to have done just that:

See this smartly designed bill? It’s Governor Patrick’s plan to boost the life sciences in Massachusetts….[it works] by letting the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency, spend $500 million in capital funding on projects it judges important, as long as Administration and Finance signs off. That thoughtful legislation disappeared into the factory for months. It’s still not finished, but one of the versions that has emerged looks, to use an early life-sciences allusion, a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. – April 25th Scott Lehigh column

The governor’s initial proposal sought to empower a panel of industry specialists and academic leaders to decide how to spend $1 billion over 10 years in several targeted areas, much like a similar program in California. But lawmakers in the Senate and House decided how and where to dole out large portions of the $1 billion that would be spent in the bill, which could emerge from a conference committee as early as this week, earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for specific projects, even giving names to individual buildings and grants. – May 20th Globe article

…along the way, Patrick’s bill got mugged by old-style politics. The versions that emerged from the House and Senate are weighed down with legislative earmarks, which may serve political ends but limit the state’s ability to do what’s best for the life sciences. – May 22 Globe editorial

To sum up, the Governor’s wonderful bill has been ruthlessly devoured by those pesky legislators.

But I urge you to go back and read the original bill. It was incredibly open-ended — a broad definition of life sciences (”advanced and applied sciences”), an alarmingly broad array of potential investments (loans, derivatives, options, warrants, you name it), and minimal oversight (an appointed board at a quasi-public agency).

We disagreed with that bill, and we don’t like a lot of the new earmarks either. But let’s dispense with the notion that the original bill was some victory for good governance.