California Stem Cell Agency Budget Up 4.6 Percent, Topping $17 Million

At one point a few years back, its
operational budget was often all but incoherent to the public and to
at least some members of its governing board. (See here, here and
here.) But times have changed. The process for its operational
budget, which amounts to about $17 million for the 2013-14 fiscal
year, is now more transparent and better organized.

The long overdue improvements can be
credited to the hiring of Matt Plunkett in December 2011 as its first
chief financial officer in its eight-year history, as well as the
efforts of CIRM directors Michael Goldberg and Marcy Feit. Goldberg,
a venture capitalist, is chairman of the board's Finance Subcommittee
and Feit, CEO of Valley Healthcare in Pleasanton, Ca., is vice chair. Plunkett, however,
left the agency suddenly last summer and the agency has no plans to
replace him. CIRM Chairman J.T. Thomas says Plunkett put new
financial systems in place that can be operated without a CFO.

Interested readers can get a glimpse of
what is upcoming for CIRM spending beginning in July in documents prepared for the Monday meeting of the governing board's Finance
Subcommittee meeting. The agenda, however, lacks a much-needed
explanation and justification for the spending. All that is presented
now for the public are raw numbers and a PowerPoint presentation,
which is no substitute for a nuanced, written overview.

Nonetheless, here are the basics. The
budget proposed for 2013-14 stands at $17.4 million, up 4.6 percent, according to California Stem Cell Report calculations, or $771,000 from forecast expenditures for the current year. The
budget represents the cost of overseeing $1.8 billion in grants and
loans and preparing new proposals and reviews of applications for
hundreds of millions of dollars in additional awards.

The largest budget component is for
personnel – $12.1 million, up from $10.7 million. Second largest
is outside contracting at $2 million, down from $2.9 million for the
current year, continuing a trend away from outside contracts, which
once were burgeoning.

One interesting area includes “reviews,
meetings and workshops,”- which are expected to cost $1.8 million
this year. Next year, they are budgeted for $2 million. Some might
look askance at those sorts of expenditures for “meetings.”
However, that includes the fees and expenses for scientific reviewers
for multi-day meetings in the San Francisco area, which is a high
cost area, and other large gatherings. However, the figure does not
include travel for reviewers, who come from out of the state and even
from overseas.

Examples of the meeting costs include a
three-day grant review session last September at the Claremont Hotel
in Oakland that cost $44,019. A two-day meeting at the same hotel for
the 29-member CIRM governing board cost $34,424. (These figures and others involving outside contracts can be found on the agenda of the
board's Governance Subcommittee meeting April 10.)

The agency also dissected the budget
from different perspectives on expenditures. The spending plan
includes $2.0 million for the office of Chairman Thomas and $1.6
million for the office of President Alan Trounson. Comparable
figures for actual spending this fiscal year were not provided,
however, by CIRM for the Finance Subcommittee meeting. The size of
the chairman's budget reflects the controversial dual executive nature of management at CIRM, which has come under repeated
criticism, including from the recent blue-ribbon report by the
Institute of Medicine.. However, the arrangement is locked into state
law as the result of the ballot measure, Proposition 71, that created
the stem cell agency in 2004.

Legal expenses are budgeted at $2.2
million with public relations and communications running slightly
more than $1 million. The scientific office, as one might expect,
consumes much larger amounts, with basic research, translational
research, grants review and grants administration budgeted at $4.7
million. The development side of the scientific office, which
focuses on pre–clinical and clinical research, is slated for $3.4
million. The agency did not offer comparable figures for the current
year.

Under Proposition 71, the agency can
legally spend only 6 percent of its $3 billion in bond funding for operational
expenses. At one time the agency had a 50-person staff cap, but that
was altered several years ago by the legislature. The most recent
figures show it has 54 employees. However, this month's budget
documents did not list the number of staff for this year or next.

The stem cell agency also reported that
it expects to spend an additional $1 million a year for rent
beginning in 2015, when a free rent deal provided through the city of
San Francisco expires. The city put together a $18 million package to
attract the CIRM headquarters in a bidding war with other California
cities. The agency has never produced a public accounting of whether
it has received full value on the package.

The proposed budget is likely to be
approved by the Finance panel next week without significant changes
and then by the full board late in May.

The public can participate in the
Finance meeting at two locations in San Francisco one each in Irvine,
Pleasanton, La Jolla and Berkeley. Specific locations can be found onthe agenda.