Kelly vows to revive state’s biotech industry

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democrat Laura Kelly is vowing to revive a program that invested in the biotech industry if she is elected governor.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Kelly credited the Kansas Bioscience Authority with helping to create a biosciences corridor stretching from Manhattan to Columbia, Mo., before it was sold off in 2016. She also says it was instrumental in the federal government’s decision to locate a new National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, at Kansas State University.
“We need to put something back in place that works for Kansas, and I think the Bioscience Authority worked,” Kelly said in an interview. “Whether we go back to exactly that, I don’t know yet. I need experts to come around the table and we’ll work that through, but something like that. We know it works, and we know it works quickly, and we have no time to spare in turning our economy around.”
The program was funded largely by taking Kansas tax withholdings that were generated by jobs in bioscience companies, and state university employees who were associated with bioscience research, and transferring that to the Bioscience Authority — up to $35 million a year.
In 2012, the agency came under intense criticism from lawmakers after an external audit found that a former head of the agency, Tom Thornton, had misused agency funds and had destroyed documents and erased the contents of his computer after he had resigned from the agency the year before.
There had also been philosophical concerns within the Legislature and, later, within former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration that the state should not be using taxpayer dollars to be in the venture capital business. Following the audit’s release, Brownback urged KBA to put a moratorium on new investments and commitments until the Legislature made a decision about the agency’s future.
With new state money all but cut off after that, the KBA decided to become an entirely private organization, and the state sold its assets in the agency for about $14 million, far less than the $25 million state officials had hoped for.
Today, sentiment in the Legislature toward the KBA is still mixed.
Sen. Julia Lynn, R-Olathe, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said in an interview that she felt “a sigh of relief that the thing is over and done with.” But Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine, R-Emporia, said in a separate interview that he thought problems at KBA were mainly about management, not the basic concept.