The new president of the California
stem cell agency, Randy Mills, will take a crack at the agency's
proposed, $17.9 million operational budget before sending it to
directors for approval later this month.
The budget represents a 9.5 percent
increase over estimated spending for the current fiscal year, which ends June
30. Mills has not yet had a chance to put his stamp on it. He was
appointed as CEO of the agency on April 30. He will assume his
responsibilities on Thursday.
The spending plan was examined this
afternoon by the CIRM directors' Finance Subcommittee, which is chaired by
Stephen Juelsgaard, former executive vice president of Genentech. It
was Juelsgaard's first meeting as chairman of the panel, and he
systematically sought explanations for a number of items that had
large dollar or percentage increases.
The budget did not come to a vote by
the committee. Juelsgaard said it needed a review by Mills to see if
he wants to make changes prior to submitting it to the full board May
29. Mills has given no public indication of whether he might make substantial changes in the agency's operations.
There was little discussion of a new,
$600,000 item in the agency's budget for rent costs beginning in
November 2015. The agency loses its free office space Oct. 31, 2015,
and is facing the task of finding a new headquarters in a sizzling office market in San Francisco. However, it was noted that the
$600,000 figure could change as CIRM becomes more deeply enmeshed in
a search for new space.
Currently the agency has 19,500 square
feet for 56 employees. The value of the current lease was placed at
$1.2 million annually as of June of last year.
Asked earlier today about assumptions
in the $600,000 figure, Kevin McCormack, senior director for public
communications, replied,
“The assumptions for the $600,000 are that we will have a smaller space in a less trendy neighborhood, and while it would be lovely for employees to get free parking, it's not something that we are counting on.”
Parking in San Francisco is scarce and
expensive. The public parking lot in the CIRM building charges $3.00
for every 20 minutes for ordinary customers.
During the examination of the budget,
Juelsgaard raised questions about which expenses fall within the
legal cap on operational spending. By state law, CIRM can spend no
more than 6 percent of its grant total on its
operational budget with the exception of legal expenses.
Juelsgaard and Jeff Sheehy, another
CIRM board member, both questioned whether spending for BayBio and
Biocom, biotech industry organizations, could be justified as legal
expenses and thus be exempt from the limit, according to the terms of
Proposition 71. That measure is the 2004 ballot initiative that
created CIRM. The staff indicated those expenses would be moved out
of the budget for the legal office and into another area.
Sheehy said that if CIRM has, in the past, placed such spending in the "legal" category it should retroactively correct that. Legal expenses for the coming year are budgeted at $1.9 million, including $711,200 for outside contracting, compared to $2 million for the current year.
Sheehy said that if CIRM has, in the past, placed such spending in the "legal" category it should retroactively correct that. Legal expenses for the coming year are budgeted at $1.9 million, including $711,200 for outside contracting, compared to $2 million for the current year.
Juelsgaard also asked about expenses in
a category called “reviews, meetings and workshops,” which totals
$2.5 million. It is the second largest spending category in the
budget, falling behind compensation, which is expected to total $12.1
million.
The category includes $300,000 for a
conference involving hundreds of CIRM grantees. The agency did not
stage such a conference last year, but has in previous years. The
CIRM staff also noted that grant review meetings can cost up to
$150,000. Some of the closed-door sessions last two days. All of the
scientific reviewers are scientists from out-of-state, including some
from overseas. The agency has nine reviews scheduled for the coming
year.
Today's budget session involved new figures for the estimated spending for the current year, which alters
the budget increase reported in an item Friday on the California Stem
Cell Report. The earlier increase was based on calculations based on
what then were the latest CIRM estimates for its current spending.