A bill that would repeal Alaska’s film tax credit program progressed through the House Finance Committee today and heard both support and opposition.
Lawmakers reauthorized the program in 2012 in hopes of an additional $200 million in credits to be issued through June 30, 2023, according to an Alaska Film Office report.
Anchorage Rep. Les Gara opposed the repeal of the program, saying Alaska benefits from being showcased.
Rep. Gara: “This helps move the economy forward. We’ve heard testimony that this program has created many many desirable good paying jobs in Alaska, mostly for Alaskans. We don’t have a lot of those programs in Alaska.”
Rep. Mark Neuman of Mat Su supported the repeal and questioned the program’s benefit to Alaska, quoting from a legislative audit report.
Rep. Neuman: “We looked at the wages that were spent on Alaskans and if I may just kind of look to read from those numbers Mr. Chair, 84% of the direct wages for productions approved for credits was paid to non-Alaskan residents, most highly paid production employees were out of state residents, the total amount of qualified direct spending on wages for productions approved was about $52 million, nearly $44 million of that was paid to non-residents.”
He added that consultants found the program did not pay for itself and estimated that $21.2 million of the tax credits issued by the state generated only $1.2 million in economic activity.