New and re-elected Governors gave inaugural addresses in Alabama, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas during the past 10 days. Additionally, State of the State addresses were made in Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah. Building tech-based economies remains a high priority for many Governors, as evidenced in the following:

Nevada

At the University of New Mexico, Avi Shama has been named Special Advisor to the President on Economic Development. The new position will encourage, coordinate and promote economic development activities of various UNM units.

Bill Richardson, Governor-elect of New Mexico, has named Rick Homans as secretary of the state's Economic Development Department.

Within days of taking office in January, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. dismantled the Department of Community and Economic Development and promised to make significant changes to how Utah approaches wealth generation and economic growth.

Increased funding for equity investments and a new university-industry R&D partnership program are among the pieces of legislation New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed this week, greatly expanding New Mexico's portfolio of programs to grow a tech-based economy. Most of the initiatives were included in the economic development agenda Gov. Richardson outlined during his first State of the State address in January. They are:

In these tight state fiscal times, many government functions would view level funding with the previous year as very good news. Since tech-based economic development (TBED) programs are investments toward economic prosperity, conventional wisdom would hold that legislatures would shield these types of investments from deep cuts.

Randy Burge has announced his resignation as director of the New Mexico Department of Economic Development's Office of Science and Technology. Mike Orshan will serve as acting director beginning Sept. 29.

The Association of University Research Parks has recognized Sandia National Laboratories for the 2003 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award. Over the past five years, Sandia has participated in 183 new cooperative research and development agreements with industry partners to jointly develop technology that is incorporated into commercial products.

Deborah Fleischaker has been appointed deputy secretary for the New Mexico Department of Economic Development.

As a national security laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, Sandia’s science and technology competencies are leveraged to support several missions that are synergistic to its primary mission — to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile in the absence of underground testing, indefinitely.

New Mexico

Maria Estela de Rios has been named chairwoman of the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership Board of Directors. She is executive vice president of Orion International Technologies, which is based in Albuquerque.