State stem cell firm uses tax dollars for nonpublic campuses

California taxpayers have spent $135 million in recent years building state-of-the-art research facilities on four private campuses for stem cell research — an expense some critics have questioned in the face of California’s budget crisis.

In 2008, the state’s publicly funded stem cell research agency approved $270 million for 12 research facilities around the state. About half that money went to eight new buildings constructed on University of California system campuses, including one that officially opened earlier this month at UC San Francisco. The other half went to new buildings on four private campuses, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California.

At the time, due to a ban on embryonic cell research, many thought it was prudent to build seperate facilities to preserve federal grants for projects that may have been put in jeopardy by an association with embryos.

Six of the 12 new buildings have already been completed and are now supporting research teams that hope to find treatments and cures for some of medicine’s most unforgiving diseases.

But the state’s financial crisis has led some longtime...