Premier piece of legislation is one step closer to final passage.

Senate Bill one would create a pool of money for research at Kentucky's public universities to access the money.

Universities would have to partner up and use the money in joint research ventures.

The sponsor, Senate President Robert Stivers, says the bill would foster cooperation and hopefully lead to cutting edge research.

His comments began tonight's legislative update.

That they were working with the University of Louisville in the STEM Cell Research Group to put various experiments up through Moorhead's Aerospace House on Space Station to see what weightless environment has to do with the tissue regeneration, the impacts on Alzheimer's of all types of different scenarios.

But since this many groups have come to me saying, Wow, this is an opportunity for us to do cutting edge research that you may see Eastern with their aviation program, Moorhead, with their aerospace and maybe the University of Kentucky with their engineering, do something in the way of three years, five years of study that they would use the proceeds of these various tranches of trust money.

It is something that would behoove the whole state commonwealth.

Each university, instead of being competitors as they should be on the athletic fields, they would be collaborators and we wouldn't here be sitting here every year trying to figure out who gets what.

We would basically force them into cooperative types of ventures.

Senate Bill one passed out of committee unanimously with only four days left in the legislative session.

Its next stop is a full vote on the House floor.