There probably wasn't much reason to hope that California's new embryonic stem cell institute, the offspring of perhaps the most misleading initiative campaign of 2004, would be a model of circumspection and openness as it geared up to spend $6 billion of taxpayers' money.
But did it have to live down to our expectations so quickly?
In the months since its creation by Proposition 71 on last November's ballot, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has behaved not like the state agency it is, but with the arrogance of a private corporation that happens to be playing with the taxpayers' cash.
For instance, the institute staged an elaborate "search" for a headquarters city, playing San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento off against each other like Walt Disney Co. dangling a theme park project in front of a bunch of rube mayors. San Francisco won -- which sure looked preordained, given its proximity to the homes of the agency's chairman, interim president and the venture capitalists who donated millions to pass Proposition 71.
It has largely refused to cooperate with state Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento), a supporter of stem cell research who is trying to create the public accountability for the agency that was left out of Proposition 71, along with a set of ethical rules and financial disclosure requirements for all agency employees and board members. Instead, it hired a lobbying firm for a reported fee of nearly $10,000 a month, thus becoming perhaps the only state agency that pays an outside lobbyist to battle the Legislature.
Most troubling is the agency's overwrought reaction to two state court lawsuits aimed at halting the sale of $3 billion in bonds designed to fund its program. The litigants contend that providing public bond proceeds to an entity subject to virtually no public oversight is unconstitutional.
It's true that the lawyers behind the litigation oppose the institute's work on religious and moral grounds. But their concerns about the gifting of taxpayer funds to this unique agency are shared by many supporters of stem cell research. By any legitimate legislative standard, Proposition 71 was a mess, rife with opportunities for conflicts of interest and the misuse of public funds, vague on how taxpayers would profit from their unprecedented largesse and almost impervious to amendment.
