Today, Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Krekorian sent a letter to Governor Jerry Brown, urging him sign the one-year extension of the California Film & Television Tax Credit into law. As we have said many times, writing a letter personalizes your story and demonstrates to elected officials the impact of runaway production on real people.
Councilmember Krekorian did today what any concerned citizen should do; he wrote a letter to his elected official…
Dear Governor Brown:
On September 9, 2011, the California State Legislature overwhelmingly approved Assembly Bill1069, legislation that would extend the state’s extraordinarily successful entertainment production tax incentive for one year. The original incentive was the result of legislation that I authored when I was in the Assembly and I write to urge you to sign this extension.
For more than 15 years, California had been hemorrhaging good middle class jobs as film and TV production fled to the many other states and countries that had enacted targeted tax incentives. After three years of work as Chair of the Assembly’s Select Committee on the Preservation of California’s Entertainment Industry, I authored the state’s first successful production tax incentive bill, AB 3x 15 (Krekorian) which was enacted in 2009 (along with a companion bill, SBX3 15 (Calderon)). The results of the first two years of the incentive program are now in, and there can be no question that it has been an enormously successful and cost-effective creator of jobs and generator of revenues.
The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) thoroughly analyzed the first two years of the production incentive and recently released a report demonstrating its enormous positive impact. According to the LAEDC report, the incentive sustained more than 20,000 jobs in the state and generated about $3.8 billion in direct economic output.
More than $200 million in new revenues were generated in the first two years for state and local governments in the form of income, property, insurance and sales taxes, along with permits and fees, according to the report – more than the actual cost of the tax credit.
In light of the incentive’s proven record of success in putting Californians back to work, AB1069 is vital to the continuing recovery of production in California. Without it, the incentive will expire in 2013 and our gains will evaporate. Just as importantly, failure to pass this important measure would send the wrong signal to California’s heritage industry at precisely the wrong time.
If our state government is serious about getting Californians back to work, we must be aggressive in preserving the industry that creates so many middle class jobs and supports so many local businesses both small and large. We must be willing to fight to keep the film and television production that is such an inextricable part of our identity, our history and our economy.
We must never allow the day to come when we look up at the Hollywood sign on the hill and realize that “Hollywood” is no longer here. I respectfully ask that you save thousands of good middle class jobs by signing AB 1069 into law.
Very truly yours,
PAUL KREKORIAN
Councilmember, Second District