Folks:

As you all know, I've been fighting for more captioned movie access in Kentucky now for over a year.  Along the way, I've pointed out the varying ways in which Hollywood has attempted to dip their hands further into the American public's till by lobbying for greater tax incentives.  Well, a recently released statement by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has shown the pervasiveness of the Hollywood industry's reach.

Governor Beshear has called our state legislature back into a special session to address the almost $1 billion dollar shortfall, and proposed a plan that would boost economic tax incentives.  Included in that, is the creation of a Kentucky Film Commission, and a plan that would allow movie or film production companies to recoup as much as 20% of "qualified expenditures" for coming to Kentucky and filming documentaries, movies, TV shows, and the like.  One of the main arguments for proposing the increased incentives is that Kentucky currently ranks approximately 45th in the nation in incentives offered for filming, and that these low incentives are dragging us down.  According to this quote from the Deputy Secretary of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet:

"Kentucky ranks 45th in the country in the incentives it provides to the film industry, just above

those state's that offer no incentives at all, Deputy Secretary David Lovelace with the Kentucky

Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet told the committee."

However, according to a recently released Motion Picture Association of America report detailing the MPAA's impact on the American economy, Kentucky actually ranks 31st (in 2007) in terms of wages paid by the motion picture and tv industry with $143,103,790.00!  This puts us ahead of such luminaries as Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Alaska in terms of money spent by these industries to film in our state.  So while it may be true that we are 45th in terms of incentives offered, we are actually 31st in terms of money gained from these industries.  I see very little reason at this time to offer incentives that would allegedly catapult us from 45th in incentives offered to 15th, especially when the most recent movie shot here was about Jefferson Davis..Remember that one?  Yeah, that is what I thought, I didn't see it either....Stop and think about that for a minute, they spent more money HERE, in little ol' Kentucky, than they did in HAWAII ($101,539,030.000).  You can read the report by the MPAA here:  http://www.mpaa.org/EconReportLo.pdf

Along the way, they (the MPAA) have spent approximately $55,000 lobbying over the past 12 months in Kentucky.  While I think it is commendable that the Governor is attempting to find ways to bring more money to the state, given that our state is in such a precarious position due to imbalances in the tax system, among other things, I think we can ill afford to spend $60,000 per day on a special session to implement a 185 page economic incentive plan (he is also asking for expanded gambling) that has at least one portion (film industry tax breaks) that has been shown to be hit or miss in terms of the return on investment.  Even the Legislative Research Commission has not been able to nail down exactly how much this would benefit the state (if it would at all).  There IS a sunset provision in the plan that would enable the incentive to die after 5 years if it is not shown to be a positive effect to the bottom line, but one wonders if we can ill afford to take a gamble for 5 years when we are in such a precarious budgetary position?

According to the MPAA's report, they have the largest positive trade imbalance of any industry, bringing in tremendous sums of money from foreign distributions with a relatively low output in terms of costs associated with exporting their wares.  I say, until the tv and film industry demonstrates more good faith in terms of working with their theater owner partners here in the US to be quicker in regards to providing more captioned products, we should be hesitant to offer them more public money.  Money that can be better spent on providing quality services in the form of better education, etc. 

Nice try, Governor...the effort is appreciated, but lets focus more on taking care of our citizens than doling out more tax breaks for an industry that saw an INCREASE in revenue in 2008.