House panel kills film-incentives bill
By Joanne Kelley, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published March 18, 2008 at 2:36 p.m.
A Colorado House panel today killed a proposed bill that would have offered up to $25 million in financial incentives to entice producers to shoot movies in Colorado.
After more than two hours of testimony and debate about whether the measure would help Colorado compete with other states to attract films or merely give public subsidies to wealthy Hollywood producers, the House Finance Committee voted it down 6-5.
“We had a chance to bring an industry back to Colorado, but the Finance Committee could not get past seeing it as a subsidy,” said Rep. Cheri Jahn, D-Lakewood, one of the bill’s chief’s sponsors. “They apparently don’t get it.”
Jahn said the vote against the legislation effectively kills off the state’s nascent film commission as of July 1 because continued funding for the agency had been contained in the proposed bill.
New Mexico and most others states have stepped up film incentive programs, bringing in many films that had originally been written with Colorado in mind. Actors, producers and other film industry executives lined up to testify on the bill’s behalf.
Colorado had approved much smaller programs in recent years, offering about $600,000 in film production incentives that was quickly gobbled up by smaller productions this year. The film industry hoped it could push through legislation in this session by convincing lawmakers that the incentives help promote jobs and economic development.
The proposed bill would have allowed for transferrable tax credits for film or television productions that spend $250,000 or more in Colorado. The program would have been capped at $25 million a year. An initial draft of legislation had called for $10 million in cash rebates.
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