A conference committee on Senate Bill 2256 voted unanimously to concur with House amendments on funding for the Research Technology Park after members debated whether the state should require a 50 percent local match to access grant funds.

The committee’s chairman said the Senate could “live with the $10,000,000” amount but asked the House conferees to drop a requirement that recipients provide a 50 percent match. “I think we can live with the 10,000,000, but we would prefer to not have the matching requirement at half of it,” the chairman said.

A senator on the committee rejected that request and urged keeping the match. “The answer would be no. We believe in this bill. We believe in its success. We believe in the process behind it. We moved everything with good faith,” the senator said, adding, “5,000,000 grant, 5,000,000 match is the perfect landing spot in our opinion, and that's our position.”

Senator Thomas moved that the committee concur with the House amendments, and a second was made. The committee then voted unanimously to accept the House changes. Committee members who registered their votes included the chairman, the senator who opposed removing the match requirement, Senator Thomas, Representative Steeman, Representative Fisher and Representative Schauer; the motion passed unanimously.

Committee members said the measure is not the final version they had hoped for but described it as a workable step forward in the current legislative environment. The chairman noted the conference process had required multiple meetings and cancellations; he thanked conferees for their work and said Senator Wolgamott would carry the bill back to the Senate. Representative Steeman said she would make the required report on the committee’s action.

The action the committee took was procedural: it agreed to accept the House amendments and return the bill to the Senate for further floor action. The transcript shows a clear distinction between discussion (the chairman’s request to remove the match requirement and the senator’s refusal) and formal action (the motion to concur and the unanimous vote).

No statutory citations or additional funding sources were specified in the committee discussion recorded in the transcript. The committee did not adopt any amendments to change the dollar split; the decision recorded in the meeting minutes is to concur with the House language and advance the bill for further consideration.