Three Top Execs Named Today at $3 Billion California Stem Cell Agency

The California stem cell agency today marked the completion of a year-long reorganization with the appointment of three top executives, including a veteran of Genentech.

Randy Mills, who became president of the $3 billion agency in May 2014, said the appointments represent a “significant inflection point.”

Mills said in a press release,

“People are everything when it comes to the potential and performance of an organization.  With the appointment of these three exceptionally talented individuals to the leadership team, CIRM is now better positioned to achieve its mission and forever change the practice of medicine.”

The trio consists of Ramona Doyle, vice president of therapeutics; Maria Millan, senior director of medical affairs and stem cell centers, and Maria Bonneville, director of administration. Millan and Bonneville both were promoted from within the organization.

Ramona Doyle, Rhodes Project photo

Doyle comes from Genentech. She was senior group medical director for respiratory product development at the South San Francisco business, where she has worked since 2009. She worked for Gilead Sciences for two years. Doyle has also taught at UC San Francisco and at the Stanford Medical School, where she worked with Millan.

Beginning Monday, Doyle will oversee projects involving neurological and ocular, cancer and blood related and cardiovascular, lung, liver and other organ system-related conditions. She is also the only person designated as vice president within the agency, formally known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Doyle received her M.D. from Emory University and was a Rhodes Scholar after receiving an undergraduate degree in English and literature from Sewanee: The University of the South. When she was at Sewanee, she was editor of the Mountain Goat literary magazine and wrote prize-winning poetry.

Also named today as senior director of medical affairs was Maria Millan, who formerly was a

Maria Millan

medical officer at CIRM, which she joined in 2012. Prior to that, she was vice president and chief medical officer at StemCells, Inc., and director of the pediatric liver and kidney transplant program at Stanford, where was also an associate professor. Millan, a surgeon, is overseeing the agency's $34 million Alpha stem cell clinic program. 

Prior to Bonneville's appointment today as director of administration, she was executive director of the CIRM board. She will have oversight over the agency’s board relation, human resources, communications and information technology departments. Before joining CIRM, she was a consultant with Tramultola LLC and worked for former state Treasurer Bill Lockyer as finance director for Northern California.

Other members of the agency’s “leadership team” are Chila Silva-Martin, finance director, Gil Sambrano, director of review; James Harrison, general counsel; Gabe Thompson, director of grants management, and Patricia Olson, executive director of discovery(basic research).

All have been with the agency for some time. Harrison is an outside contractor.

Not including Mills, the 8-member leadership team at CIRM now consists of five women and three men. 

California Stem Cell Agency to Hire Top VP

Randy Mills, who enters his second year this week as president of the California stem cell agency, is looking for a vice president for the $3 billion research enterprise. 

The salary for the new executive ranges up to $375,524. He or she would be the only vice president in the organization.  

The new position oversees three key areas of research with a budget of more than $600 million and 75 active programs at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as the agency is formally known. 

Mills this month added the VP position to his official organization chart. In a memo to the governing board of the agency, he noted that some members of the board had expressed concern about the number of persons reporting directly to him.  Mills said that "upon further reflection" he determined that adding a VP would mean more efficiency and effectiveness. 

Also unfilled are the high-level slots for senior directors of the areas that the new VP would oversee: organ systems, neuro/ocular therapies and blood and cancer. 

The three senior director openings were first posted in January, reflecting Mills' new structure at the San Francisco agency and his emphasis on speeding development of therapies.

They are among seven job openings at the agency including project manager for clinical advisory panels, web and social media manager and grants management specialist.

The media manager position came open this month when Anne Holden left after about a year on the job and completing an overhaul of the agency web site. 

See here for access to all the job postings. 

Grant Reviewer Conflict in $40 Million Round at California Stem Cell Agency

Internationally renown scientist Lee Hood, winner of a National Medal of Science, violated the conflict of interest policies of the California stem cell agency earlier this year when he was involved in reviewing applications in a $40 million round to create genomics centers in California.

Lee Hood
Institute of Systems Biology photo

The agency quietly disclosed the February violation in letters dated April 2 to the leadership of the California Legislature. The letter (full text below) said that Hood “agreed that there was a conflict of interest that he had overlooked.”

The conflict of interest involved a $24 million application that included participation by another eminent scientist, Irv Weissman of Stanford University, and funding for facilities at Stanford.

Hood owns property jointly with Weissman in Montana. In 2008, San Francisco Magazine, in a well-reported piece on the ballot measure that created the stem cell agency, described the property as a ranch and Hood as Weissman's “good buddy.” Hood has co-authored research papers with Weissman. Both are on the scientific advisory board of Cellerant Therapeutics, Inc., of San Carlos, Ca., a firm co-founded by Weissman. Hood's nonprofit firm, Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, lists Stanford as a partner in the genetics of aging in humans. At Stanford, Weissman is director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, whose research involves aging. Weissman also serves on the Hood's institute's scientific advisory board.

Hood has not responded to an inquiry yesterday by the California Stem Cell Report for his perspective on the conflict of interest matter.

The conflict was not discovered by the agency during the review. It was raised by another reviewer at the end of the review, which, for the first time in CIRM history, failed to conclude with a decision supporting any of the proposals. Reviewers' comments have been sent back to applicants with another review scheduled for November. The agency said Hood will not take part in that session.

CIRM spokesman Kevin McCormack said today that Hood's conflict was “clearly a case of a new reviewer making an innocent error.” McCormack said it was not a violation of the state's conflict of interest law. The agency's conflict policies go beyond economic issues and deal with personal and professional conflicts. 

The agency's letter to the state legislative leadership said,

“Dr. Hood had not previously participated in a meeting of the GWG(grant review group), and as a result, he was not familiar with CIRM’s conflict of interest policy, particularly the policy’s inclusion of 'personal' conflicts of interest.  Thus, when he completed the conflict of interest form for the Genomics Awards review, he inadvertently neglected to indicate that he had a personal relationship with an investigator who was involved in one component of a joint application submitted by two institutions. Dr. Hood and the investigator are close personal friends and their families own vacation property together. Because of his personal relationship with the investigator, Dr. Hood had a conflict of interest with respect to the joint application under CIRM’s conflict of interest policies.”

The agency's letter said that Weissman would have received $11,000 over five years under the terms of the application, but that it also involved  "creation of a data center at one institution and three research projects that would be undertaken at (Weissman's) institution (Stanford). 

The California Stem Cell Report asked the agency about the involvement of CIRM President Alan Trounson, who has been a guest at the Montana ranch, and whether he recruited Hood as a reviewer. Last year, Trounson excused himself from participating in public discussion of another application involving Weissman.

McCormack said,

“Alan helps recruit many reviewers, including in this case Dr. Hood, but he is not involved in assigning reviewers to individual applications.”

The conflict of interest involving Hood was easily detectable in routine searches on the Internet, including a Google search on the search term “lee hood irv weissman.” The first two entries in that search yesterday turned up serious red flags.

Asked whether the agency performed “any sort of serious examination” of the confidential statements of interests filed by reviewers prior to review sessions, McCormack said,

“Yes, we do a serious examination of statements of interest from all our reviewers. However, this conflict was not identified by the reviewer either in the financial disclosure statement or identified in the conflict of interest list. Normally we do not check Google for all possible combinations of 15 GWG reviewers times about 200 individuals listed in these applications. That would be about 3000 independent Google searches to identify a possible conflict.”

The agency's legislative letter said that it plans to “amend its regulations to add greater clarity in an effort to prevent future conflicts from arising and to augment its efforts to educate reviewers, particularly new reviewers.”

Our take?

This is the latest in a series of questionable activities involving the stem cell agency, which is trying to come up with a plan to sustain itself after its state funding runs out in 2017(see here, here and here). The agency is giving more-than-serious consideration to an effort to raise funds from the private sector, which can lead to new and more difficult ethical considerations than a state-funded agency would normally face.

What these questionable activities demonstrate is that the $3 billion agency needs to give much more thought, to put it mildly, to its policies ranging from conflicts of interest to incompatible employee/director activities to the conduct of top management in providing special treatment for donors.

It also is clear that the statements of interests of reviewers are not examined closely for their accuracy by CIRM staff and attorneys. McCormack's remarks clearly indicate that the agency does not think it has time to be sure that no conflicts exist among its plethora of reviewers. That is precisely the reason reviewers' statements of interests – economic, professional and personal – should be made public rather than kept under wraps by CIRM. Then, interested parties, presumably mainly applicants, can check a panel of reviewers, if they wish, for conflicts in a particular round. Obviously, the agency can and should withhold the names of reviewers examining a specific application – the release of the names on the panel in a given review session is sufficient.

Tomorrow the CIRM governing board's evaluation subcommittee meets privately to discuss Alan Trounson's performance. It appears to be the second part of an evaluation process that began last October. Trounson's involvement with Weissman and Hood -- and his actions in connection with a $21,630 gift from a member of the public, albeit a not-so-ordinary member of the public -- should also be on the evaluation subcommittee agenda.

  California Stem Cell Agency Letter Re Lee Hood Conflict

Stem Cell Agency Chair Pressing for Consensus on IOM Recommendations

The chairman of the $3 billion California stem cell agency, Jonathan Thomas, yesterday outlined how he intends to proceed next week when the agency's governing board considers the far-reaching recommendations of a blue-ribbon Institute of Medicine panel.

Writing on the agency's blog, Thomas said,

“While some of the IOM’s recommendations are administrative in nature and can be implemented, others are much more complex and would require changes in (governing) board policy or legislative changes.” 

Jonathan Thomas, chairman of CIRM governing board at far right. Art
Torres (center), co-vice chair and former state Democratic party chairman,
who would  play key role in dealing with lawmakers. Robert Klein is at the
 left in this 2011 meeting, Klein's last as chairman of the agency and the one
 in which Thomas was elected chairman. 

He continued,

“My goal is to strive to reach consensus on a course of action on the 23rd. However, if the board isn’t able to choose a course of action at this time we will continue the conversation and bring it up at future board meetings until we reach agreement.”

It is worth noting that Thomas did not mention the possibility of having to ask the people of California to amend the state constitution, which would require a statewide election. Opponents to change at the agency have used that possibility to discourage action. (See here and here.) An election would be costly, politically difficult and could open the door to additional unwelcome changes at the eight-year-old research enterprise.

Thomas' desire for a consensus among the 29 board members – instead of a simple majority – could be a stumbling block as the board becomes snarled internally, perhaps for months or more. The board normally meets only about once a month and has a full slate of regular business on those occasions. The agency will run out of money for new grants in less than four years, and action on the IOM recommendations seems a necessary prelude to winning continued financial support.

While four years would appear to an ample period of time, making the sort of changes the IOM recommends would require legislative action, which probably would take a minimum of a year. Timing is important as well. The current leaders in the state Senate and Assembly will be termed out in 2014. Starting all over with novice leadership, changes in key committee chairmanships and so forth would make the task even more difficult. Then there is the need to address strategies for continued financial support. Should the agency seek a new statewide bond measure (the current funding mechanism)? If so campaign committees need to be formed, electoral strategies planned and tested and tens of millions of dollars raised for campaign expenses. If private funds instead are to be raised to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars(the agency spends about $300 million a year), such an effort would also require considerable time. To keep the funding pipeline full, all of this should be completed well before the money runs out in 2017.

Dilly-dallying this year in drawn-out, fruitless debate over the IOM proposals would be an unfortunate beginning should CIRM directors actually want to continue the existence of the organization.

In his blog item, Thomas sounded this final note.

“It’s likely the debate will be passionate – everyone involved in this work cares deeply about it – and there will undoubtedly be disagreements, but ultimately we all share the same goal, a desire to make sure that whatever we decide helps make the stem cell agency even stronger and more effective, and is in the best interests of the people of California.”

Excerpts from the IOM Report on the California Stem Cell agency

Here are excerpts from the $700,000 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on the $3 billion California stem cell agency -- the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Overall Comments

“Improvements to CIRM’s governance structure, scientific program, and policies are critical to bet­ter serving California taxpayers who elected to devote funding to promote stem cell research in the state. The necessary changes outlined by the IOM committee, if enacted by the state and/or the institute, would help to instill confidence among the scientific community and California residents in the vital work that CIRM is accomplishing.”

“It is the committee’s judgment that overall, CIRM has done a very good job of initially establishing and then updating the strategic plans that have set priorities for and guided its programs, and of taking advantage of its guaranteed flow of $300 million a year for 10 years to establish a sustainable position in regenerative medicine for California. The challenge of moving its research programs closer to the clinic and California’s large biotechnology sector is certainly on CIRM’s agenda, but substantial achievements in this arena remain to be made.

“Despite its demonstrable achievements to date, as well as the largely positive independent reports covering various aspects of its operations, no one would claim that CIRM is a perfect organization or that it should adhere slavishly to its initial form of organization, set of regulations, or pattern of priorities. The field of regenerative medicine has advanced rapidly since November 2004, and CIRM itself has seen the need to alter its activities and approaches in some areas. The committee believes the same should be true of its governance structure, some of its administrative practices, and its use of external perspectives on strategic scientific priorities and on the evaluation of other key policies, such as intellectual property, to ensure that they continue to encourage the development and deployment of new treatments.”

“While the restrictions on amending the administrative structure of CIRM established in Proposition 71 had the advantage of protecting the institute’s ongoing operations from outside interference in an ethically controversial arena, they also made it difficult to modify the organization’s structure in response to experience and/or changing circumstances. Moreover, these protections, whatever their benefits, appear to some to shield CIRM from the normal accountability mechanisms in place for state agencies.”

Conflicts of Interest

“Far too many board mem­bers represent organizations that receive CIRM funding or benefit from that funding. These com­peting personal and professional interests com­promise the perceived independence of the ICOC, introduce potential bias into the board’s decision making, and threaten to undermine confidence in the board. Neither the board chair nor board members should serve on any working group. The board itself should include representatives of the diverse constituencies that have an interest in stem cell research, but no institution or organiza­tion should be guaranteed a seat.”

“The problematic perception of conflicts of interest has persisted for as long as CIRM has existed. The IOM committee would be less concerned about individual board members with actual or perceived conflicts of interest if the board membership included more truly independent members. The majority of board members should be independent, with no competing or conflicting personal or professional interest. Broader representation from a wider variety of stakeholders will inject new perspectives into the panel and will help to dispel the perception of conflicts of interest.

“CIRM also should revise its conflict of interest definitions to include non-financial interests, such as the potential for personal conflicts of interest to arise from one’s own affliction with a disease or personal advocacy on behalf of that disease. CIRM policies for managing conflicts of interest should apply to that broader definition.”

Structure and Governance

“Currently, the ICOC (the agency's governing board) functions both as an executor and as an overseer—competing duties that compromise the ICOC’s critical role of pro­viding independent oversight and strategic direc­tion. The IOM committee recommends that CIRM’s operations be separated from its over­sight. The board should delegate more author­ity and responsibility for day-to-day affairs to the president and senior management, and the ICOC’s three working groups should report to senior management within CIRM, rather than to the ICOC. The moves would permit the board to better focus its energy and collective talent on strategic planning, overseeing financial perfor­mance, ensuring legal compliance, assessing the president’s performance, and devising a plan for preserving and expanding its considerable assets to permit the institute to continue its important work after the bond measures end.”

Unrealistic Goals

“While the latest round of awards challenge teams to have filed a request to begin clinical trials or to have completed early-stage trials in patients within four years, the committee feels these ambi­tious goals are unrealistic. New therapies take more time to progress to federal approval, and early-stage clinical trials are beset by a stagger­ingly high failure rate. Rather than judging suc­cess by simply tallying the number of active clini­cal trials, the IOM committee suggests that CIRM also continue its focus on underlying biological mechanisms that drive the success or failure of a promising therapy and on careful design of clini­cal trials. Advances in these areas will help the entire field progress, even if a specific drug candi­date is not approved." 

Economic Impact

“In the short term, CIRM’s expenditures are supporting approximately 3,400 jobs and their innovative efforts have also attracted substantial additional private and institutional resources to this research arena in California CIRM’s long-term impact on such critical aspects of the California economy as state tax revenues and health care costs beyond the shorter-term and temporary impact of its direct expenditures cannot be reliably estimated at this point in CIRM’s history.... (T)he estimate of the Analysis Group (2008) that the CIRM program alone would support about 3,400 jobs as long as it was allocating about $300 million per year in research and development grants appears quite reasonable to the committee. To put this estimate in context, however, total employment in California is roughly 16 million, and NIH alone provides more than $3.5 billion per year to California research institutions.”

Intellectual Property

“CIRM should propose regulations that specify who will have the power and authority to assert and enforce in the future rights retained by the state in CIRM-funded intellectual property. CIRM should seek to clarify which state agencies and actors will be responsible for the exercise of discretion currently allocated to CIRM and the ICOC (the CIRM governing board) over future determinations on issues regarding march-in rights, access plans, and revenue-sharing rights that might arise years after CIRM's initial funding period has passed.... (T)he ICOC should reconsider whether its goal of developing cures would be better served by harmonizing CIRM’s IP policies wherever possible with the more familiar policies of the Bayh-Dole Act(federal IP law).

New Figures Show CIRM Spending $1.2 Million-plus for Grant Management

In its first-ever public accounting of spending for its grant management system, the California stem cell agency this week disclosed it has already laid out more than $1.2 million, with substantially greater expenditures to come in the near future.

Overseeing CIRM's largess is no small task. The agency has approved 320 grants and one loan worth more than $1 billion. It is expected to approve another $2 billion over the next five or so years – more if it can secure funding beyond its current bonding authorization of $3 billion.

The amount CIRM is spending for grant management, not including state staff time, is tiny compared to the total portfolio. However, grant management is critical for the agency, which labelled the task as a “risk” as recently as last June.

In a new staff report prepared for a meeting Wednesday of the CIRM directors' Governance Subcommittee, the agency said it has made “considerable headway” since last spring. But CIRM said additional work will be needed, including a decision on whether to buy additional software or develop it in-house with the use of more consultants.

More immediately, the staff asked directors for approval of an additional $300,000 for technology assistance, extending and expanding two existing contracts with Turner Consulting of Washington, D.C., and 25by7 of Santa Monica, Ca. Some of the increases will cover costs in addition to grant management.

CIRM did not offer a total for past grant management spending in the documents it prepared for its directors. Nor did it predict the ultimate cost. The California Stem Cell Report compiled the $1.2 million figure from two new documents on the CIRM Web site. The first was a report on grants managements expenditures through June 30, 2009. The second was a report on all spending on outside contracts through Sept. 30, 2009, including additional funds for grant management.

The report on grant management is the most complete explanation of the status of the system, which was supposed to cost no more than $757,000, directors were told in October of 2007. But by spring of 2008, CIRM began hiring outside consultants to deal with the issue.

The contract at that time involved Grantium of Ottowa, Canda. CIRM staff said.

“However, that effort failed because CIRM's needs continued to evolve rapidly beyond the original scope, so the two parties mutual agreed to terminate the contract in 2009.”

CIRM cannot solve its technology issues in-house because Prop. 71, written by CIRM Chairman Robert Klein and others, capped the CIRM staff at 50 employees. The grant report said that “it has long been clear” that the agency faced critical problems because of the hiring cap.

Currently, 48 percent of CIRM's staff (20 out of the current 42 employees) is involved “centrally in some part of the grant life-cycle,” which includes everything from applications to standards enforcement,

The agency, however, does not have a single information technology staff person dedicated to grants management, according to its report. It had one in 2005-6, but he resigned. Currently CIRM has five grant management officers compared to one in 2006-7.

CIRM staff began “compliance site visits” in 2008-9 when it had 295 grants awarded, completing eight visits that fiscal year. CIRM expects to see 230 progress reports from grant recipients during the current fiscal year, compared to 16 in 2006-7.

CIRM posted the reports on the grant management system and the contract extensions on its Web site last Wednesday. The public can participate in next Wednesday's Governance meeting at teleconference locations in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles(2), Stanford, Irvine and La Jolla. Specific addresses can be found on the agenda.

The item below contains additional links to additional information concerning CIRM grant management.

CIRM Grant Management Info and Costs

Here is a rundown on key documents related to CIRM's $1.2 million-plus expenditures on its grant management system.

Articles from the California Stem Cell Report

Cost Overruns and Candor from CIRM – May 29, 2008

Vagueness in CIRM budget, June 2009, with some info on the system:“The budget does not appear to contain a straight-forward accounting of all the past costs associated with the Grantium program or the projected cost of the new system. It appears to be something in the neighborhood of $610,000.”

CIRM's Troubled Grant Management System: A $1 Billion Oversight Matter – July 13, 2009

CIRM Grant Oversight Receives $150,000 Boost – July 22, 2009

California Courts and CIRM: Both Troubled by Technology Problems – Oct. 25, 2009

CIRM Documents

Transcript, CIRM directors meeting, October 2007, during which CIRM staff said the cost would not exceed $757,000

CIRM document describing grant management system as a risk – June 2009

First public accounting of CIRM expenditures on grant management system, November 2009

CIRM President to Gain More Clout in Competition for Millions in Grants

The California stem cell agency is moving to strengthen the hand of its president in the review of applications for hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.

The proposal comes before the agency's Grants Working Group tomorrow morning at a two-day meeting in San Francisco to consider applications for its ambitious $210 million disease team program, the largest single research grant round in CIRM history.

The grants group makes the de facto decisions on CIRM grants, which will total about $1 billion by the end of this year.

The group operates behind closed doors for review of applications, but the move to alter CIRM's review process will be considered and voted on in public.

According to a staff memo, the new procedures would allow CIRM President Alan Trounson to pick “acting” chairs to head each grant review session. The selection would be made from either regular or alternate members of the grants group.

It was not clear what responsibilities would remain in the hands of the existing chair position. The exact language of the proposed changes in the group's bylaws was not available on the CIRM Web site at the time of this writing.

Currently the grants review chairman is appointed by the CIRM board of directors and has sole authority to preside over scientific evaluation of grants. The position of chairman has been vacant since last November.

The CIRM staff memo said changes are called for because the $3 billion agency is broadening its research to include translational, preclinical and clinical trial programs.

CIRM said,

“Consequently, there is an important need to have chairs of CIRM review panels with the expertise and seniority that is complementary to the type of RFA being considered.”

The agency also said it is impractical to have one person lead the five to seven review meetings in San Francisco each year. CIRM said similar NIH review groups rarely meet more than twice a year.

The proposal follows CIRM board approval of changes last month in compensation for review group members that could provide perhaps $4,500 or so per grant round per scientist, depending on payment decisions by CIRM staff.

(Editor's note: Based on inaccurate information on the CIRM Web site, an earlier version of this item incorrectly stated that Stuart Orkin was chairman of the Grants Working Group. Orkin says he resigned as chairman last November and is no longer on the panel. At the time of this posting, CIRM said that the position remains vacant and has been filled over the last 10 months by others on an "acting" basis. CIRM has also corrected the information on its Web site.

(The earlier item also incorrectly stated that Trounson would appoint the administrative chair. That responsibility will remain with the CIRM board. )

Overseeing Top CIRM Execs: A Reading of the Tea Leaves

Next Thursday, a key panel of the directors of the world's largest source of funding for human embryonic stem cell research will consider a matter that could give some indication of its future direction,

Nominally, the issue seems less than controversial. The agenda says it involves “consideration of policy/procedure for performance evaluation” of the chairman, vice chairman and president of the $3 billion stem cell agency.

But lying behind that bland language are such matters as the political and lobbying efforts of CIRM, its connections to industry and the election of a vice chairman to assist in those endeavors. Will the agency continue pushing hard to become a global powerhouse for stem cell research, pleading for billions from Congress for industry? Will it embrace the biomedical industry ever more closely, funding its efforts to bring products to markets? Or both, for that matter?

The agency could get to those issues through more closely defining the position of the vice chairman, which is now vacant, and discussion of related matters. The two contenders for the post come from radically different backgrounds. One is Art Torres, now the head of the California State Democratic Party and a former state lawmaker with good connections in the nation's capital. The other is Duane Roth, an executive with biomedical industry ties and head of Connect business development organization in La Jolla, Ca.

Roth was nominated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. Torres was nominated by Democratic state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, whose good offices are especially important to CIRM as it attempts to market state bonds privately. The treasurer is the ultimate arbiter on state bond deals. On the other hand, the governor loaned CIRM $150 million in state funds a couple of years ago when it had another period of financial difficulty. The loan has been paid back, but CIRM has had to seek his support on other matters, such as his veto of legislation that the agency opposed,

Also entering into the mix is the salary for the vice chairman. The job carries pay that could run as much as $332,000. Torres says he needs a salary, but has not indicated a figure. Roth says he will not accept a salary. In December, CIRM directors awarded CIRM Chairman Robert Klein a $150,000 salary and defined his job as halftime. Klein, a millionaire real estate investment banker, previously declined a salary.

Sadly, the public is pretty much out of the loop in advance of the meeting on the policy/evaluation agenda item, which first came up Dec. 22 last year. The proposal discussed at that meeting was only described orally and never publicly disclosed in written form in its entirety. The only access to what it contains is the transcript of the meeting. Given CIRM's past performance, do not expect to see any written material ahead of the upcoming meeting.

Also missing from next week's meeting are proposed changes in CIRM's internal governance policies, which are closely tied to the responsibilities of the chairman, vice chairman and president. The proposal came up at the Dec. 22 meeting, and directors said it would come up again at the next governance meeting (the one that is next week). However, it is not on the agenda, although it could be discussed.

Next week's meeting will be available to the public to hear and participate in via teleconference locations in La Jolla (Roth's office), Duarte, Sacramento, Irvine and San Francisco. But don't expect a “full and frank” discussion, The board generally deals obliquely with these sorts of issues, It could also sidestep them entirely.

The specific location for the teleconference sessions can be found on the agenda.

CIRM's $200,000 Lobbyist Could Be at Work by Friday

The California stem cell agency is on a fast track to hire a $200,000 lobbyist to secure passage of a $10 billion biomedical industry aid package being promoted by CIRM Chairman Robert Klein.

If all goes according to plan, the lobbyist's firm will be on board by the end of this week. CIRM posted the RFP only last Wednesday with a deadline of today for proposals. The skimpy advance notice indicates that Kiein probably has a particular firm ready to come aboard.

The $10 billion proposal ballyhooed by Klein was on last week's CIRM board agenda. Klein told directors then that heavy duty lobbying is needed in Washington to help provide funds to the biomedical industry in California.

But he put off more detailed discussion of the matter until March. Klein's supporting material for the industry aid package presented to directors did not mention that he plans to hire the $20,000-a-month lobbyist for 10 months. Another RFP is also promised after that period.

The proposal to hire the lobbyist, which CIRM calls a "federal government relations consultant," seeks a high-powered firm with a track record of achievement, a "strong presence" in Washington as well as a San Francisco Bay Area representative to advise Klein and other CIRM leaders on short notice.

To provide some perspective on the CIRM lobbying proposal, the state of California currently has a lobbyist, Linda Ulrich, in Washington, who is financed through the governor's office. She is a state employee with a salary of $138,276. according to a Sacramento Bee database. The Washington lobbying office obviously has additional but unknown expenses beyond Ulrich's salary, such as benefits which could run close to 50 percent of her pay.

Any CIRM lobbying effort would be substantially bolstered by the election of the politically well-connected leader of the state Democratic Party, Art Torres, as vice chairman of the CIRM board. Indeed, a lobbyist might not be necessary with Torres working for CIRM. All he would require is some staff support. But with the lobbyist and Torres together, CIRM would have considerably more clout.

Also in the running for vice chair's job is Duane Roth, a current member of the CIRM board. Current scuttlebutt has it that the election will occur at the CIRM board in March in Sacramento. (Search on items labelled "vice chair" for more background on the contest.)

At last week's meeting, John M. Simpson, stem cell project director for Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica, Ca., questioned the advisability of hiring a $200,000 lobbyist given CIRM's financial difficulties.

In response, Klein indicated no figure had been set for the contract.

Here is the language from the RFP:

"Expected Range for this Award is approximately $20,000 per month for the 10 months of the Agreement."

Simpson commented again on Monday about the lobbyist plan, Writing on his blog, he said,

"CIRM needs to ratchet back all discretionary spending.  Right now there is a request seeking proposals for a contract for a Washington lobbyist for up to $20,000 a month for 10 months. That's $200K.  And then there is still the proposal  to fund the International Stem Cell Research Committee meeting in San Francisco to the tune of $400K.

"My point is this: $100K here and $100K there and soon you're talking real money. CIRM simply doesn't have it, doesn't know where it's coming from and needs to stop spending on anything other than existing commitments until there is a clear way out of this crisis. Anything else runs the grave risk of simply digging the hole deeper."