Kim Zentz, executive director of the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, got a surprise Tuesday.

That’s the day she learned that the state budget being developed by the House Appropriations Committee in Olympia would move her agency’s funding under the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, or CTED. That’s the day a lot of other people learned about the shift, too, including the folks at CTED.

There doesn’t seem to be any immediate reason to fear that SIRTI will be harmed by getting its state money through another agency rather than directly from the Legislature as it has for the past three bienniums. But the handling of the change is odd, and that in itself triggers a certain amount of anxiety.

Normally, you’d think that the two agencies involved would have been alerted the move was coming. They might even have been consulted as to whether it was wanted or wise. They might even have been asked for input.

Those things didn’t happen, though.

The language was incorporated in the budget by Rep. Phyllis Kenney, D-Seattle, whose stated concern is consistency, and there apparently was no point in consulting with either SIRTI or the state trade agency about that. Kenney notes that the legislation establishing SIRTI as a state technology development entity and business incubator in Spokane put it under Community, Trade and Economic Development from the beginning in 1998. Since 2001, however, the Legislature has consistently funded SIRTI as a separate line item in the budget.

An informal attorney general’s opinion, requested last year, acknowledged that the law makes SIRTI accountable to the umbrella trade agency. It also conceded that the Legislature has the authority to fund SIRTI directly anyway, which it has been doing for most of SIRTI’s brief but productive life.

If anybody involved in this abrupt change of direction has concerns about SIRTI’s performance, no one is saying so.

There are those who would like to see greater coordination between SIRTI, the Washington Technology Center and the Life Sciences Fund, but that isn’t dependent on SIRTI’s being treated differently than it has been in the budget. And there is nothing to preclude those agencies – which already have intermingled boards – from staying in close communication with one another.

Some have expressed interest that SIRTI should be reporting on its activities to Community, Trade and Economic Development – but SIRTI does that now annually.

And if consistency is a strong concern, the Legislature has the option pointed out in the attorney general’s opinion of revising the 1998 law to conform to reality rather than the other way around.

Meanwhile, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee is conducting a study of business incubators in the state. It would be wise to at least wait until those conclusions are announced before making hasty changes in what has been an effective program.

SIRTI is playing the very role that was envisioned for it a decade ago, allowing research opportunities that can be translated into economic development in a community that needs it. Tinkering with the administrative structure without greater cause than Kenney has offered seems risky.