By: Danielle Ulman

The age-old Annapolis debate on stem cell funding is back.

Gov. Martin O’Malley has proposed funding research with $12.4 million in fiscal 2011 — the same amount it ended up getting last year — but with a major budget issue on the state’s hands, legislators are starting to argue over just how much money should be ponied up by the state.

Knowing that stem cell research is always a target that can easily get slashed during the session and in mid-year budget cuts, the Maryland Technology Development Corp., the quasi-public organization in charge of doling out the research grants, hired Baltimore’s Sage Policy Group to determine the impact of the grants on Maryland.

The study found that based on data from 2008, Maryland is already feeling an economic impact from the program, which was launched in 2006.

Up through 2008, $38 million in funding for the research translated into business sales of $71.3 million, 514 direct and indirect jobs and more than $34 million in income at about $64,000 per job. Maryland also benefited from $2.7 million in state and local taxes.

And a larger economic impact could be on the way as the research moves from the lab to the market and becomes more commercialized.

Of course President Obama’s announcement last year that the National Institutes of Health would lift some Bush-era restrictions on funding embryonic stem cell research has raised questions in Annapolis about whether Maryland needs to pump money into funding the research at all.

But the report cautions that a lack of state-level support could mean a shortage of local knowledge, federal dollars and economic impact.