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Editorial: High tech lab in Holland deserves state funds
12/24/2008
by The Grand Rapids Press Editorial Board
Wednesday December 24, 2008, 9:00 AM
WHY IT MATTERS
The new development will be a boost to Michigan's flagging economy -- provided it receives money to get off the ground.
In the waning hours of this year's state legislative session, lawmakers rammed through measures to allow a light rail system in Detroit, give $25 million over 30 years to rebuild Detroit's Cobo Hall and provide up to $335 in needed tax credits over the next decade to help car companies develop high-power batteries for hybrid electric cars.
But they rejected a mere $3 million for an alternative energy development at the former Pfizer plant in Holland Township -- exactly the kind of high-tech research plant that will help Michigan emerge from the economic wilderness.
Securing the promised funding should be the first priority of the new Legislature when it convenes next month. If Gov. Jennifer Granholm can release the money on her own, she should do that immediately.
The funding is apparently hung up in a political dispute between the governor and Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland.
In any case, West Michigan's economic development has been stalled because of dysfunction in Lansing. This occurred even as Southeast Michigan received a flood of help from the Legislature. The refusal of the Pfizer funding not only ignores pressing economic development needs, but brushes aside the importance of this project, and others like it, in the state's emerging economy.
The move could delay the planned 2009 opening of the laboratory and almost certainly compromises its ability to draw top-tier researchers.
Pfizer last year donated its pharmaceutical plant to Michigan State University. MSU will use the building to support research toward developing biofuels and other plant-based products. The place will eventually employ about 100 people.
Gov. Granholm has talked repeatedly about the need to make Michigan a center for alternative energy research. That's what the refurbished lab would do, provided it receives the state support it deserves.
This is the second time the funding has been scuttled. The first came earlier this year when Gov. Granholm cut it out of an approved bill using a line-item veto. Whatever the murky political reasons for the funding failure, the result is as clear as ice along the lakeshore: jobs have been delayed, perhaps denied.
Michigan continues to top the unemployment charts. This week the state was identified as one of only two that lost population from 2007 to 2008. Those downward trends can be reversed. The first step should be to put an end to petty political squabbles and approve funding for developments that have the potential to transform Michigan -- projects such as the MSU research lab in Holland Township.
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