State Files Bid for Collider Without Legislature’s OK : Beats U.S. Deadline by Minutes

Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders fashioned a delicate compromise today that allowed California to submit a bid for a $4.4-billion federal atom smasher project at literally the 11th hour.

With the clock ticking toward an 11 a.m. PDT deadline set by the U.S. Department of Energy, members of the California Collider Commission held an emergency meeting in Deukmejian’s office that allowed the state to submit its bid for the Superconducting Super Collider project with only 15 minutes to spare.

“We’re in,” declared Paul Sweet, a University of California official, who delivered the bid at Department of Energy offices in Washington moments before the deadline.

Even with the bid in, California still faces an uphill battle in its effort to be selected by the Department of Energy as the site for the super collider project, which if approved by Congress and ultimately built will be the world’s largest atom smasher.

The bid merely enters California in a sweepstakes with at least two dozen other states, including New York, Illinois, Texas and North Carolina, for a project that will mean an economic bonanza for whichever state is chosen.

The political agreement between the governor and legislative leaders came after the state’s bid seemed to collapse Tuesday night because of partisan fighting over affirmative action goals that Democrats insisted be part of the proposal.

Assembly Democrats on Tuesday night refused to vote on the $560-million bond issue necessary to finance the state’s share of the project because they felt that a Republican proposal that would have steered just less than 15% of the state contracts to firms owned by minorities and women did not go far enough to advance their affirmative action goals.

Deukmejian subsequently agreed to raise the affirmative action goals to a mix that will steer 15% of the contracts to minority-owned firms and 5% to firms owned by women.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) accepted the compromise.

Key lawmakers from both houses then scrambled to piece together new legislation containing the compromise, which still needs to be approved by both houses.

Just before the Collider Commission called an “emergency” meeting in Deukmejian’s office this morning, a Brown spokesman said, “The Assembly leadership has asked the commission to go ahead and file the application in anticipation of the resolution of the political problem.”

Minutes later, the commission met and approved the bid. Michael Frost, Deukmejian’s chief of staff, called the meeting to order at 10:40 a.m., 20 minutes before the deadline.

The actual meeting lasted only about two minutes.

Financing of the project will come from the $560-million bond issue. The money will pay for the purchase of land and a variety of site improvements specified by the federal government.

State officials said the economic windfall that the project would bring to the state--at least 3,000 permanent jobs for scientists, technicians and others who will work at the facility and as many as 25,000 temporary construction jobs--will generate more than enough new tax revenue to pay for the project.

As envisioned by the Department of Energy, the super collider will be the world’s largest scientific instrument. It will be built underground, an oval tunnel that will be buried at least 50 feet below the earth’s surface. It will be 53 miles in diameter.

The state’s bid proposed two sites, both within an hour’s drive of the Capitol. One of the sites would encircle the city of Davis, just west of Sacramento. The other proposed site is east of Stockton.