SANTA FE - The great Hollywood debate turns serious today, as a bill to kill the taxpayer subsidy for moviemakers gets a hearing.

Rep. Dennis Kintigh's measure, HB19, goes before the House Labor and Human Resources Committee. His bill would eliminate the state program that gives moviemakers a 25 percent rebate on production costs.

"This is not a trivial issue by any stretch," Kintigh, R-Roswell, said Wednesday. "There's a tidal wave fighting me on the other side, but this subsidy is bad public policy."

He said the state is channeling money to moviemakers that should be spent on teachers, roads, courts and health care.

By Kintigh's accounting, subsidies for moviemakers drained $65 million from the New Mexico treasury last year and $72 million in 2009.

Opponents of Kintigh's bill say it kill the movie industry in New Mexico.

Records maintained by the New Mexico Film Office show that more than 150 movies and television series have been made in the state since 2003, including "True Grit," "No Country for Old Men," "The Flock" and "Breaking Bad."

Forty-two other states provide incentives to attract moviemakers, and eight now offer larger packages than New Mexico, said Dana Arnold, president of Albuquerque Studios.

"If this bill passes, people will pick up and move their projects to Texas or Utah or Arizona," Arnold said Wednesday.

Kintigh said the glitzy Hollywood lobby had obscured the failings of the subsidy program. He cited a series of studies by economists

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who say the benefits of moviemaking are overstated by Hollywood and its publicity machine.

One of those economists, Robert Tannenwald, said movies are more sizzle than substance for an economy.

"Movies don't translate into good, long-term jobs for residents," said Tannenwald, a senior fellow for the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priority in Washington.

A handful of other studies counter that taxpayer incentives for movies generate more money than they cost.

Arnold said Kintigh's arguments were designed to tell only part of the story about the movie business in New Mexico.

"A dollar going out of the treasury to a movie producer is real. But what he leaves out is that, for every dollar rebated, the movie industry spends $4 on supplies, equipment, services and people in New Mexico."

He said the AMC television series "Breaking Bad" pours $1 million a week into New Mexico's economy during production. Workers employed by the show, plus businesses such as dry cleaners, cafes and lumber yards, share in the money generated, Arnold said.

Republican Gov. Susana Martinez is also a critic of subsidizing filmmakers with tax dollars, but her position is not as strident as Kintigh's. She wants a bill that would cut the subsidy from 25 percent to 15 percent.

Martinez said Wednesday that the movie business existed in New Mexico before it was subsidized and it would remain after the amount was reduced.

Hollywood, she said in speeches this month, had treated itself at the expense of taxpayers. Her example was a subsidy that paid part of the $100,000 cost of chartered jet service for "a Hollywood star."

She was talking about actor Richard Gere, who filmed "The Flock" in New Mexico in 2005 and 2006.

Arnold said "the loophole" that enabled part of Gere's plane service to be charged to taxpayers was closed by the Legislature long ago.

"His infamous plane ride happened five or six years ago. The state tightened the system right after, and she knows that," Arnold said. "The truth is that New Mexico has very strict rules and audits."

But Martinez and Kintigh said they were concerned about loose accounting, in which specific claims for reimbursement by the movie industry cannot be reviewed by legislators or the public because of taxpayer privacy rights. Martinez said Wednesday that full disclosure of the industry's claimed expenses should be mandatory.

Kintigh has tried twice before to kill the movie subsidy. Neither bill made it out of committee.

He said he was optimistic that this is his year. Public opinion has changed, he said, because Martinez is questioning the industry, and because of increased discussion about whether Hollywood hurts New Mexico's economy.

Santa Fe Bureau Chief Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or (505) 820-6898. His blog is at http://elpasotimes.typepad.com/newmexico.