inaccurate to compare either fund with the Obama administration's loan program that backed Solyndra and other green-tech companies. Republicans have criticized Obama's program as a costly boondoggle that rewarded politically connected businesses and interfered with market forces. Romney campaign officials point out that both funds were overseen by independent agencies, not political appointees. Romney used existing money from an underused trust to set up the green-energy fund, and he vetoed the venture-capital portion of the technology fund before it was restored by the Democratic-controlled state legislature. "Governor Romney is proud of the record he had of making Massachusetts a pro-business environment that added jobs," said a Romney campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Romney also centered a 2003 economic-development bill around tax credits for biotech and medical-device manufacturers that create jobs. It is hard to tell if they had an impact. Employment in the biotech sector rose 25 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a trade group. But federal statistics indicate that the state lost 4 percent of its pharmaceutical-manufacturing jobs and 20 percent of its medical-equipment manufacturing jobs during that period. Romney's economic-development efforts did not move the needle much one way or the other, said Leigh McIlvaine, an analyst with Good Jobs First, a left-leaning research group that tracks economic-development subsidies. "He was betting just as blindly as anyone else was during that time," McIlvaine said. Romney backed a much bigger tax break for the movie industry in November 2005, signing