Hollywood South’s movie marquee has already dimmed because of a convoluted cap on the state’s film tax credits approved in 2015 that led to an industry exodus to Georgia.
Now, as The USA Today Network of Louisiana reports, a Democratic lawmaker from Alexandria will file a bill this week to make sure there’s no sequel to the program in Louisiana.
“How can we subsidize rich movie stars when we can’t fund TOPS?” says Sen. Jay Luneau, a member of the state Senate’s Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee. “Is it just because it’s cool to see Tom Cruise in Baton Rouge at an LSU game?”
Louisiana, he says, can’t keep giving away money.
Luneau and other critics point to independent studies showing Louisiana loses money on movies. The most damning report came from LSU economist Loren Scott, whose data showed the state received just 23 cents in taxes for every $1 of taxpayer money spent on the program.
If accurate, that would add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over the past 10 years, when the film industry cashed in on more than $1 billion in credits for filming productions like Duck Dynasty in Monroe and Jack Reacher in Baton Rouge.
Film industry advocates are anticipating extra scrutiny of the tax credit program during the upcoming session. They’ve launched the “Fight for Film” campaign which kicked off earlier this month in New Orleans.
They dispute Scott’s study, which Celtic Studios Executive Director Patrick Mulhearn calls “something between flawed and hot garbage.”
“If the (study) was a film it would score less than 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes,” says Mulhearn, relating it to the popular movie review website.
