Motion Picture Editors Guild<\/a> and the California Post Alliance have been pushing for the bill, arguing that California is losing jobs to other states and countries that provide their own subsidies.<\/p>\n\n\tThe bill cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 5-1 vote, and next heads to the Senate floor. Assuming the bill passes, it would still require funding. Advocates are hoping for $100 million that would come through a separate budget trailer bill. The legislation faces an Aug. 31 deadline.<\/p>\n
\n\tMeanwhile, a bill to create a new $15 million subsidy for commercial production was held in the committee, and will not advance this year. That bill, AB 2403, would have allowed commercial producers to recoup 20%-30% of eligible costs.<\/p>\n
\n\tCalifornia expanded its primary tax incentive for film and TV production to $750 million last year, and expanded it to include half-hour shows, animation and large-scale competition shows. That expansion, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, more than doubled the state program in response to a dramatic downturn in production jobs.<\/p>\n
\n\tNewsom has not weighed in on the post-production bill, but supporters are urging his office to back the measure.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the Legislature, a key issue has been ensuring that the lion\u2019s share of any funding would go to support union jobs. The VFX industry is largely non-union, and Democratic lawmakers are generally reluctant to use public funds to support jobs that might undercut union labor.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn June, the bill was amended to require that 85% of the funding go to jobs with above-average wages for the industry and that provide pension and health benefits \u2014 essentially a requirement that the jobs meet union standards.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe bill was amended again on Thursday to eliminate a minimum spending requirement for VFX work, which would allow funding for smaller projects and smaller VFX firms.<\/p>\n
\n\tIndustry stakeholders are also pushing for a separate measure that would exempt<\/a> film and TV tax credits from a $5 million annual cap on business credits. The supporters of that exemption argue that the cap hamstrings the state\u2019s film incentive by preventing studios from fully monetizing their credits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bill to subsidize post-production in California cleared a hurdle in the state Senate on Thursday, while a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,112919],"class_list":["post-433033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-motion-picture-editors-guild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}