Politicians on Beacon Hill are promising that they’ll vote soon on Gov. Patrick’s $1 billion life sciences plan and that’s generating a few news stories.

The Boston Herald is reporting today that the House and Senate will likely pass the bill in the next few weeks. The article quotes the Senate president saying that the bill will probably include incentives for not just the biotech industry but also technology and energy. This wouldn’t be a big surprise since many opponents have asked: why help out just one industry that by many measures is already doing pretty well on its own? (check out the NNB article on this very question.)

And the Globe takes a somewhat skeptical look at the potential impacts of large amounts of state funding for biological research, looking at the California stem cell windfall example. It makes a not-so-groundbreaking point that biology research takes time to yield results that the public can appreciate.

But it does try to delve into whether a funding bonanza results in a mass influx of researchers—a very good question that we should all be mindful of. James Thomson, the stem cell pioneer, has set up shop at UC Santa Barbara, according to the article, but still remains on faculty full-time at the U of Wisconsin, where he made his big discoveries. Advanced Cell Technology, the stem cell company, moved its headquarters to CA but it has more employees in Massachusetts where it got its start, the Globe says.

I did a Q&A with MGH’s Ken Chien a couple of years ago, not long after he moved from California to Boston to do stem cell research. When asked why he walked away from the promise of all that funding, he said:

One of the major attractions of Boston is the critical mass effort here in stem cell biology in general, and human embryonic stem cell biology in particular. From an outsider’s viewpoint, from a pure scientific stance, I would say that the Harvard and MIT communities combined are probably a minimum of two years ahead of everybody else in the area of human stem cell biology in the U.S…..I think the three most important ingredients in not just stem cell science, but almost any science, is people, people, and people.

My question is: does MA really need extra funding from the state to support the life sciences?