The Stem Cell Chair to the Highest Bidder?

As the media, elected officials and even supporters of Proposition 71 -- the stem cell initiative -- are now recognizing, we Californians have just passed a highly flawed law. Concerns about transparency, accountability and conflicts of interest abound. California, the largest blue state, voted overwhelmingly to send a raspberry to Washington on stem cell research. We are the Golden State, the Left Coast, the cutting edge, and our next horizon, we decided, is embryonic stem cell research. And true to form, we didn’t use the normal avenues to get there, preferring the initiative route to the legislative process.

Today, the newly formed Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, or ICOC, meets to take its first public step: electing a chair and vice chair. This is the opportunity to show leadership, to elect a person who has a record of serving the public interest, who will ensure the highest levels of scientific integrity and stewardship of the enormous amounts of public money -- $3 billion -- provided by the law.

But instead, the state is stumbling right out of the gate as all four of the elected officials charged with nominating the chairman lined up to reward Bob Klein, Proposition 71’s chief author, campaigner and financier, by handing him the plum job -- no competition, no public debate, no choices.

It comes as no surprise that the “mandatory criteria for chairperson” mirrors Klein’s own resume: After all, he wrote the law, designed the process and determined the criteria by which he would be nominated.

What is surprising is that our elected officials are willing to anoint him. The law requires that the chairperson and vice chairperson be elected by a majority of the 27 members of the ICOC. Nowhere in the initiative does it say that the chair should go to the highest bidder (in this case, the man who ran and helped finance the initiative campaign).

Shouldn’t the ICOC be electing the most qualified person to head this critically important new institute? This is an enormous program, through which $300 million will be given out each year for the next decade; shouldn’t the person who runs it be someone with management experience in projects of this scale and importance?

Given the complicated scientific, medical and ethical ramifications, should the top job really be held by someone with no technical or scientific background whatsoever?

Finally, we don’t understand why there has been no competition for such a powerful and important position.

There is still time for the initiative to start off on a strong footing. Klein could accept the public gratitude for having birthed the program and, in the interest of ensuring its success, decline the nomination. The governor and the other three elected officials who nominated him could name other candidates, giving the ICOC a choice. And the members of the committee could show some independence and not vote for Klein. Now that would be leadership.