In the midst of mergers that are causing thousands of job cuts and empty facilities throughout New Jersey (see here), Governor Chris Christie is proposing budget cuts that have the state’s biotechs in a frenzy. And so one big trade group, BioNJ, is testifying today before the assembly budget committee in hopes of preventing moves that some fear would further deplete what was once proudly called the nation’s medicine chest.

One of Christie’s ideas is to cut in half the $60 million in funding for the Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program, which enables unprofitable, but promising biotechs to turn net operating losses and R&D tax credits into capital. The other proposal causing a stir is the planned elimination of all funding for the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, which runs a widely tapped incubator program.

In her testimony, BioNJ’s Debbie Hart argues that, on average, for each dollar a company received under TBTCT program, it generated $10 in venture capital and another $5 in collaborative research and government grants, a 1:15 ratio. She also cites another estimating claiming that for every biotech job, an additional 5.8 jobs are created. “The bottom line is that the cutting of a total of $40 million from the state budget will result in missed opportunities and missed revenues to the State Budget in an amount greater than the savings,” she says.

New Jersey is home to such big drugmakers as Merck and Johnson & Johnson, boasts US headquarters for Novartis and houses research facilities for Bristol-Myers Squibb. But the Garden State is quickly losing ground to other states in terms of industry payrolls, the number of employees and the growth in the number of companies. New Jersey shows flat or declining figures, while Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Massachusetts all report growth in all three categories (see the chart).