Font ResizeSANTA FE - Hollywood won the day at the state Capitol.
Democrats on the Labor Committee closed ranks Thursday to protect a 25 percent state subsidy program for moviemakers who bring their projects to New Mexico.
In a 5-4, party-line vote, Democrats tabled a bill by Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, who wants to kill the subsidy. Instead, his proposal, HB 19, effectively is dead.
Kintigh said rebates for Hollywood drained $65 million from the state treasury last year and even more in 2009, times when New Mexico cut services and programs.
More than 80 business people, union leaders, lobbyists and actors packed the committee hearing room to rebut Kintigh. Many others were stuck in a hallway, unable to get in.
Most said Kintigh was articulate and passionate, but dead wrong on the issue.
During a barrage of testimonials, people who run hotels, rental-car companies, production units and security details said the movie industry had kept their businesses alive during an unforgiving recession.
Rick Maestas, who owns a water business in Santa Fe, said he grossed $200,000 from moviemakers last year. Without that income, he said, he would at the least have had to strip benefits for his employees.
"This bill is a job killer, a revenue killer," he said of Kintigh's proposal.
Forty other speakers made similar denunciations of Kintigh's bill.
Kintigh said the state's alignment with Hollywood was bad public policy. No other industry, he said, receives checks from the state
He said a series of economic studies showed that, for every dollar a state government provides to the movie industry, the return is a mere 7 to 28 cents.
But Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton, a Democratic committee member from Albuquerque, said Kintigh was picking on a success story. She said the industry was pouring money into New Mexico, creating jobs and tax revenues for the state, cities and counties.
In addition, she said, oil, gas and agriculture receive myriad tax breaks, yet Kintigh made no move against those industries.
Another Democrat on the committee, Rep. W. Kenneth Martinez of Grants, challenged Kintigh's logic that the movie rebate was taking money away from classrooms, courtrooms and health-care programs.
Because the state rebated $65 million to moviemakers last year, that showed that they spent four times as much - about $260 million - in New Mexico, Martinez said. The money existed only because the state lured filmmakers with the help of the subsidy, he said.
New Mexico has landed more than 150 movies since the subsidy program started in 2003. They included "True Grit," "Mall Cop" "The Longest Yard" and the AMC television series "Breaking Bad."
Forty-two states offer similar incentives to moviemakers. New Mexico's is among the 10 most generous.
Kintigh, criticized by the crowd, got a sympathetic ear from Republicans on the committee.
Reps. Candy Spence Ezzell of Roswell and Rick Little of Chaparral moved to advance his bill. Democrats then mobilized to stop it.
Ezzell said three movies had been filmed on her ranch and that moviemaking in New Mexico predated the state subsidy. She said because child-care services were cut, movie subsidies should be too.
A second part of Kintigh's bill was a bit more popular with the crowd. It would have ended a state loan program to the movie industry.
State records show that New Mexico has loaned moviemakers more than $230 million in the last nine years on the understanding that it would share in box-office profits, Kintigh said.
But all 23 movies that received the loans reported zero profits. Kintigh questioned the accounting tactics of the industry. New Mexico recovered the principal on the loans, but never shared in the proceeds that the filmmakers reaped, he said.
Had the state loaned the money to moviemakers at market interest rates, it would have made at least $28 million, he said.
Kintigh's bill was shelved, but state government's fight with Hollywood probably is not over.
Republican Gov. Susana Martinez wants to cut the movie subsidy from 25 percent to 15 percent. Like Kintigh, she said the state is subsidizing Hollywood when it should be improving public schools. A bill proposing the cut that the governor wants still could surface.
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.
