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No, the film credit isn't good for us

September 23, 2009

Now that every Iowan may be on the hook for $100 to Hollywood under our catastrophic film credit program -- is every Iowan getting $100 of benefit from it?

Not bloody likely. Charles Bruner of the Iowa Fiscal Partnership explains in an excellent brief column in today's Des Moines Register:

While creating some one-time economic activity, the state gets only a tiny portion back in increased sales, income or other tax revenue. The Wisconsin Department of Commerce, a state with a credit one-half the size of Iowa's, estimated it recovered less than one-tenth of the cost of the credit in increased economic activity. Further, it estimated its film credit, on a per-job basis, cost more than 20 times as much as any other state economic-development program per job created - and the film jobs created were temporary and not permanent, as other economic-development programs were designed to create.

And Mr. Bruner has a great common-sense analogy:

If Iowa established "half-priced airplane manufacturing," Boeing would be foolish not to leave Washington state to come to Iowa, but Iowa would soon be using every dollar in its state budget to subsidize that one industry - with no money left for education, health, or public safety.

There isn't a business that your couldn't attract by paying half of their production costs.