Let's hope USTAR outshines cold fusion

Everyone likes to invest money. All of us want economic development, higher wages, full employment and a growing tax base.

This past week, state legislative leaders were told an investment of a few hundred million dollars over the next 10 years could yield huge benefits: smarter and better educated public school students, billions of dollars in economic growth, Utah leading the world in several high-tech areas — like personalized medical care based on an individual's genetic makeup.

For a guy who doesn't have an iPod, has a hard time logging on to a wireless system and still can't figure out on-demand cable, it's hard to adequately analyze how much of this can become reality, how much of it is really "cold fusion."

You remember cold fusion.

It became one of the great scientific, public relations and political embarrassments for Utah leaders and the University of Utah in the 1980s.

USTAR — Utah Science, Technology and Research — the combined high-tech development project among the Legislature, governor, the U. and Utah State University and the state's top-flight business leaders is no cold fusion.

The U.'s Research Park has already had hundreds of business spin-offs — some very successful through efforts in turning basic research into profitable enterprises.

Cold fusion experiments burned a hole in chemist Stanley Pons' lab table and kind of went downhill from there, even though the Legislature and the U. spent millions of dollars trying to develop the still-unexplained phenomenon into some kind of working, commercial system.

USTAR's request for upward of $300 million is coming at the right time, at least.

So is the request from the state Office of Education for nearly $26 million.

While Utah's GOP-controlled Legislature doesn't like to couch it in these terms (makes their fiscally conservative base anxious), state revenues came in $400 million higher in the fiscal 2004-05 year than was originally budgeted for by the 2004 Legislature.

Some of that money was spent by the 2005 Legislature, some of it automatically went into rainy day savings accounts. Lawmakers still ended the fiscal year June 30 with $172 million in extra cash.

With only three months into the fiscal 2005-06 year, State Tax Commission chief economist Doug Macdonald says the state is running a $55.07 million surplus in general taxes and an extra $8.58 million in the special Transportation Fund.

If this keeps up, there could be another $400 million surplus this year.