<a href="http://educationinthestreets.blogspot.com">Education In The Streets</a>

Saturday, April 03, 2004

CCNE's Incubating Biotech report, which dropped in July, 2001 and blew Yale's claims that subsidizing biotechnology startups benefitted the city wide open, exposing Yale's relationship to the biotech companies as a form of glorified corporate welfare at the city's expense, is now at the center of a controversy surrounding the impending impeachment of a man who is a member of the Yale Corporation - no, not Holcombe - and Connecticut's third-term governor, John G. Rowland.

The special break for CuraGen, however, was later exposed in a report by the
Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a nonprofit organizing group in New
Haven, on the "incubation" of biotechnology firms in that city.

The report disclosed that Public Act 00-192 created a five-year property tax
break for any company that purchased or leased equipment for manufacturing
or biotechnology, so long as its property was assessed at $2,187,361 and
$5,007,012 in 1997 and 1998, respectively, and the company paid $76,645.14
and $174,995.14 in property taxes for those respective years.

CuraGen, which leased property assessed at the exact values spelled out in
the act, qualified for its full benefit, according to New Haven tax records.

CuraGen also benefited from the activities of a nonprofit corporation called
Connecticut United for Research Excellence Inc., or CURE, which Rowland
designated to promote the state's "bioscience cluster."

CuraGen's president, Jonathan M. Rothberg, is a member of CURE's executive committee, as is a senior vice president of Bayer Corp., which owns 3.1 million shares in CuraGen. CII's Budnick is another member of the panel.

CURE helped convince the legislature to create a $40 million fund to underwrite the building of new laboratory space. The fund is managed by CII and has benefited many Yale spin-offs, including several located in the former SNET building at 300 Orange Street in New Haven.

CURE also is a tenant in that building, which was purchased for $500,000 in 1996 by Robert V. Matthews, a close friend of the governor. Matthews sold the building five years later for $27.5 million.

Budnick has said that CII's records concerning the property have been made available to federal corruption investigators probing Matthews' business dealings with the state.

Hey, maybe this means Zaccagnino's next. And yo Rowland, RESIGN ALREADY

¶ 9:47 PM

Smash Yale-[ comments.]

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