Legislature Cuts Cancer Research Fund by $8 Million
Posted on Aug. 5, 2013Beginning with the opening of the N.C. Cancer Hospital on the UNC campus in 2007, the state has given $50 million every year to the University Cancer Research Fund for research in the hospital and in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The funding was included in Gov. Pat McCrory’s budget, but after that proposal went to the N.C. General Assembly this summer, money for the cancer research fund was cut by almost one-sixth, to $42 million.
“This year will be one of recalibrating,” said Dr. Shelton Earp ’70 (MD, ’72 MS) director of the Lineberger center. “Just as has been in the past with the University’s cuts, that’s a very large cut.” He said that “some spectacular research projects” would be affected.
When the University Cancer Research Fund was established, the law specified that $50 million would be provided annually. In reducing the funding, the N.C. General Assembly also removed the language that specified the $50 million annual commitment.
Lineberger’s board of visitors and the GAA-sponsored Tar Heel Network worked to try to convince legislators to restore the full $50 million. “A number of people went to Raleigh and spoke about it,” Earp said. “We met with the appropriation chairs.”
Although much of the impact of state budget cuts to the University is not yet known, the School of Medicine lost $15 million in the elimination of a longstanding annual appropriation that once was as high as $47 million. The cut eliminated all direct funding to the school to support graduate medical education and help pay for care for patients who cannot afford to pay, a school spokeswoman said.
Money for the cancer research fund comes from three sources: the state’s general fund; a portion of the revenues from state taxes on non-cigarette tobacco products; and the Tobacco Trust Fund, the state’s receipts from the settlement in 1998 between 46 states and major tobacco manufacturers. The $8 million cut came from the last of those three. The state has phased out earmarks from the trust fund. According to the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, the N.C. General Assembly originally earmarked the fund for the Golden LEAF Foundation, a nonprofit that makes grants for economic development in tobacco-dependent communities; the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, which makes grants to health programs; and to the commission, which helps farmers and tobacco-related businesses.
The cut was in both the Senate and House budgets last spring. The $8 million has been moved to the state’s general fund.
According to the cancer research fund’s annual report for 2012-13, the fund “fuels a significant economic impact on the state, yielding more than four dollars in return for each dollar invested.” It said that without the cancer research fund, UNC’s ranking of ninth nationally in National Institutes of Health funding would have been 17th. Ten startup companies that created private sector jobs are a direct result of the fund, the report said.
Earp said the University gets $88 million a year for cancer research from other sources as a direct result of the cancer research fund. In addition to those monies, cancer research at UNC receives $250 million in grants brought in by Lineberger member faculty.
He said the cancer research fund has enabled UNC to “bring many [other] aspects of the campus into cancer research.” He said that even with the reduction the fund is “still a remarkable contribution.”
More online…
- General Assembly Creates University Cancer Research Fund
August 2007 news report - Senate Proposes $50 Million Lineberger Commitment
June 2007 news report - Clinical Cancer Hospital Approved
July 2004 news report
