When science gets mixed up with politics, interesting things happen. Massachusetts Gov. Patrick’s $1 billion bill promoting the life sciences is emerging from committee on Beacon Hill with more earmarks legislators, and that is making the biotech industry unhappy. Even the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UMass are weighing in with their criticisms, according to this Boston Globe story.

Among the earmarks are: “$49.5 million to build a science center at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, though the school currently has no science graduate programs” and millions for a sewage treatment plant in Framingham, which supporters say will help attract life science companies to the town, the article says.

The original bill called for a panel of industry and academic scientists to decide how the money was spent. But in the new version of the bill, the recipients of most of the funds have already been designated.

While peer review doesn’t seem to be a priority for state lawmakers, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center—which is running the $12 million life sciences matching grant program —earlier this month named the members of its scientific advisory board, which is chaired by Harvey Lodish of the Whitehead Institute and has scientists from MGH, Children’s, BU, UMass and Genzyme. Time will tell how fair and transparent this center will be in doling out the grants.

Meanwhile, another bill, this time on the clean energy front, was just filed, calling for $100 million from the state over 5 years to be invested in clean energy R&D: research grants, worker training and the establishment of a clean tech research center. Hopefully, since this is a smaller bill than the life sciences one, it won’t attract as much attention from lawmakers looking to funnel state money to their home districts.