Research bond favored by slight margin

A bond issue that would earmark $5 million for biomedical and marine research was squeaking by Tuesday night. Question 2 proved to be the most closely contested of the six bond issues on the ballot.

With 93 percent of precincts reporting, 52.6 percent of voters supported Question 2 while 47.4 percent opposed it. Early results included more city tallies than rural vote counts.

The measure was more heavily favored in urban than rural areas.

Voters in Hancock County, home to two of the laboratories that could have received money from the bond, favored the measure, but even there the margin was slim.

Results late Tuesday night showed the measure being defeated in Aroostook, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Waldo and Washington counties.

“This is a victory for Maine leading the way in discoveries of disease treatment and prevention in the next decade,” said John Forrest, the director of the Mount Desert Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove.

The bond issue, which will leverage millions more in federal research dollars, will bring high-quality jobs to the state, he said.

The institutions that promoted passage of the bond issue are The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough, Foundation for Blood Research in Scarborough and the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford. Together they form the Maine Biomedical Research Coalition.

They, along with other research labs, would be eligible to receive some of the $5 million. The University of Maine was not included because of past infusions of bond money for research.

Of the money requested, $4 million would go toward biomedical research and $1 million to marine research.

The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, for example, would use its share of the funds to help pay for an 80,000-square-foot expansion. The lab, which does genetics research, expects to add 200 jobs with the addition to its building. It now employs 1,050 people.

Last year, the Legislature gave $10 million to the Maine Biomedical Research Coalition. With that money, the institutions secured $47 million in outside grants. Jackson Laboratory’s share was $6.1 million, which it leveraged into $30 million, primarily from the National Institutes of Health, said lab spokeswoman Joyce Peterson.

The coalition had asked lawmakers for another $10 million but instead received a $4 million allocation and the placement of the $5 million bond issue on the ballot.

No specific formula has been devised to divvy up the money from the bond issue, Peterson said, but it would be allocated to the different institutions based on their past success in winning federal grants.