Keeping Film Jobs Here

Here's a better idea to help our marquee industry stay in town.

California has a $100 million film tax credit program that is expiring next year. The California Assembly passed a bill to renew it while also expanding it so more productions can take advantage of the multi-million-dollar taxpayer subsidies.

There's just one problem.

The bill is blank on the line with the dollar sign.

AB 1839 went through committee votes and was cheerfully passed along to the full Assembly, where it passed unanimously.

How much will it cost taxpayers? Four hundred million? Eight hundred million? A billion and a half?

No one will say. No one knows. The bill is blank on the line with the dollar sign.

I have an alternative proposal to help keep Hollywood jobs in Hollywood. I think the subsidy should go to the consumer of motion pictures, not to the producer. I think we should subsidize the ticket price of movies that are made in California, both principal photography and post-production, so that Californians who go to the box office have the option of paying a lower price to see a movie made in our state.

You can read my proposal in this op-ed article in the Los Angeles Daily News: "A Better Way to Stop Runaway Production."