So Deval’s hero, Michael Bloomberg, said the film and TV industry subsidy is a “race to the bottom” and “a waste.” Will Deval emulate the politician he said during his campaign that he most would want to be? Or will he continue to give away tens of millions in this faux “economic development” boondoggle while he cuts essential services? Stay tuned.
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Probably not the optimal investment, sure, but we have benefited from having films made here. And a longstanding problem (“You can’t make a movie in Massachusetts because of the unions”) was solved. It may sound trivial, but many people tried for many years, and failed. Paul Cellucci was particularly attentive to it.
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p>Bloomberg, being mayor of New York, has a much more popular movie set at his disposal. So the comparison with Boston isn’t quite fair.
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NYC has 13 times the population of Boston. Has it had 13 times the number of major motion pictures made in it over the past decade?
Definitely 13 times as many movies set there, if not 20. Don’t forget NYU.
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p>But frequently, in major films, Toronto plays the role of New York,
had snow-capped mountains in the backgrounds….
The recent Department of Revenue study of the film tax credit concluded that
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A barrier came down. What happens next year?
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p>That said, I do think the credit is too high.
Except, maybe, a few more films decide to take advantage of our generosity. Free money, whee!
You have to do something that really gets businesses to come to an area and stay. What are those somethings? Infrastructure and experienced potential employees seem to be the winning two. Our infrastructure of top-notch research institutions is why so many companies have research centers in the area; our smart and intelligent work force is why financial institutions and tech companies have bases in Massachusetts. Etc.
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p>LA and NYC are not the cheapest places for films or television anymore, so why do studios and TV networks maintain presences there at all, anymore? Simply put, they have the infrastructures and people for those jobs. We don’t.
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p>Free $$ by the tens of millions may lure in studios to come to Massachusetts to film on location, shipping in most of their own people at the same time (on our dimes, no less, and who won’t pay Massachusetts taxes), but that’s not going to generate nearly as much income for us as we spend — by any stretch of the imagination.
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p>At best, we can all get a little tickle out of seeing movies with a Massachusetts flavor, at worst we can recognize the fact that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of state and municipal employees are being put out of their jobs for the hundreds of millions of free cash we’ve given movie studios — and our state and local services are all the worse for it. How does that help us?
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p>Moreover, with fewer and fewer films being produced every year (the drop in the # of films being made is actually quite precipitous), and more and more competition for those films, does it even make sense to try to craft the strategy to get those studios here on a permanent basis — basing their actual resources here? Is there even enough that we could do on the infrastructure and people front to get them here in the first place? And could we do it in a way that our state is able to break even in the process? I don’t think the answers to those questions are going to be very positive. We’d be better off to focus in other areas, or to focus on some kind of entertainment niche in which we could break even.
in the cultural sense, maybe, but not at all in the ‘bang for your buck’ sense, or even, ‘the state breaking even’ sense.
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p>We’re putting town employees, teachers, police officers, firefighters and important state service employees out of work every single day — tens of thousands of them over the past few years, likely — we can’t just be happy with any cultural benefit, in a ‘look, I saw the Hancock tower in that scene,’ kind of way. The tax credits have to at least be revenue nuetral, but by all accounts, we spend about $3 to get $1 in state revenue doing things these ways — and that’s upwards of a hundred million bucks every year that we’re throwing at the wall, hoping for a teeny, tiny bit of it to stick.
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p>And, finally, let’s remember that about 50% of the reason we ever did this venture was for Senate President Murray to get a movie studio in her district, one that would become “Hollywood East,” if you remember. Turns out it will never be built, not in a million years. I hope no one was shocked. That’s what we get for getting ourselves involved with an industry that is notoriously untrustworthy when it comes to these sorts of things.
It’s a big, big tax expenditure, and it really doesn’t make much sense for the Commonwealth to pay 25% of Tom Cruise’s and Cameron Diaz’s contracts. But members of the Legislature, like the Senate President, like it.
They’re pledge to not raise taxes is going to have to collide with the film tax credit at some point, and the Senate President’s little studio project in her district is almost certain to never happen at this point, and she must know that by now. If the governor got a spine on this issue, I think he’d be able to shame them all to at least reform the tax credit so it starts to make at least some kind of sense, like getting rid of the exemption to state income taxes.
It seems the Lege has the upper hand on this issue.
California passed a measure which funded stem cell research because the Bush administration had refused to do so. After that the biotech industry started pressuring other states to give them similar subsidies with the threat of “moving to California” if they didn’t comply. It ends up being a shell game that pits the states against each other benefiting no one, except the industry fat cats who pull this trick off.
I may be biased, but I see these as very different animals. One industry has significant potential to benefit all of mankind, particular people who are currently among the worst-off in our society, with severe disabilities that leave them unable to find jobs and leave them in poverty, supported by bare-bones programs that are on the cutting block every time someone decides to “balance the budget” or “cut the deficit”.
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p>The other makes movies.
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p>I agree that the shell game does not benefit any of the states individually; there is too much gaming the system and competition and not enough effective funding, and I wish there were alternate (and more effective) ways of funding it… But at least the money is going to a good purpose, one that could end cancer, restore Alzheimer’s patients, cure the common cold, and get my son to walk.
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p>I don’t think you can rightfully say that that benefits no one.
While subsidizing the biotech industry does presumably cause some increase in research activities, (the cynic in me says they will only use it to pad their profit margins), it doesn’t change the equation that private industry will only pursue things they believe will turn a profit in the near to moderate term. What government dollars we have should be used for is to fund those activities that will pay long term benefits but are too far off for private capital to go after.
Just because biotech may one day lead to great treatments, or even cures, for our society, that doesn’t mean what we spend on the tax credits is worth it. Bio research is a very complicated business, with many different, wide-ranging players. At the very least, we should be demanding complete transparency on where the money goes, the jobs they create and the research that gets done because of it.
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p>Remember, there’s plenty of good causes the hundreds of millions we’ve put into this can be used for — in tangible ways that helps people desperate for it today. The Governor’s been talking about having to eliminate emergency shelter, create drastic changes to public defense and all kinds of other bad ideas trying to save a couple million here or there, and our state’s health care plans for people who can’t afford coverage have taken huge hits that have had a huge effect on quality of care for these people. Are the tax credits for biotech more important than any of those things? And how much of this research will be done here regardless of what we’re putting in, given the mix of federal, corporate and non-profit $$ going into the research? We can’t just believe the industry — any industry — when they say they’ll leave if we don’t give them free cash, particularly when there’s only so many other places for them to go to if they leave. Simply put, we have the people who are skilled enough to do the work — and there’s not a whole lot of other places that do.
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p>None of this is to suggest that I think the biotech tax credits are a bad idea, or not worth it. I think its money that’s better spent than the film tax credits, for starters. At least the jobs it may or may not create in and of itself are based in Massachusetts, paying Massachusetts taxes. However, we don’t really have the kind of transparency in our tax credit system to ensure the money we spend on tax credits makes sense — so we don’t know how much of that research is getting done in Massachusetts because of our dollars, or because of the much larger chunk of funding they’re getting from federal, corporate and other sources.
Movies are important.
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p>Culturally and economically.
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p>As important as life-saving drugs? No, of course not, but such comparisons are off the mark. We are a society, not an economy — as Tom Birmingham used to say. Movies enrich our lives.
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p>Just saying.
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