By Lindy Washburn and Patricia Alex, Staff Writers, The Record
State taxpayers would pay most of the start-up costs for a private medical school planned for the former Hoffmann-La Roche campus on Route 3, if a $20 million amendment to the upcoming state budget by Sen. Paul A. Sarlo, the Senate budget committee chairman, is approved.
“It would be a straight-up appropriation for Hackensack,” the Wood-Ridge Democrat said, referring to the proposal by Hackensack University Medical Center’s parent and Seton Hall University to open the state’s first private medical school in 50 years. The appropriation is to be added as a line item to the state budget under discussion for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.
Sarlo said using public money for the private venture is justified because the grant will boost the local economy, which lost thousands of jobs when Roche closed its headquarters and research site on the border of Clifton and Nutley in 2013. He also believes the school will help alleviate a projected shortage of doctors in New Jersey, he added.
The money for the medical school was part of a higher-education funding package announced Monday. It included an additional $10 million to start a branch of the Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. The school will educate primary-care doctors, while Hackensack’s program is more likely to educate physician specialists, Sarlo said.
The amendment included no additional funding for Rutgers University, which has borne $51 million in costs associated with the absorption of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the state’s public medical university.
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