Maxwell: Film tax incentive flaws

Despite positives of bringing movies to Florida, method isn’t the best.

On any given day, the state of Georgia is chock full of movie stars and big-budget film productions.

Iron Man and Thor battle in downtown Atlanta. The “Walking Dead” zombies roam through the suburb of Senoia. And the “Stranger Things” teens shoot scenes in a mall off Interstate 85.

Collectively, the Peach State attracted 455 productions that spent a total of $2.7 billion last year.

Meanwhile in Florida, local officials celebrated Home Depot’s decision to shoot a commercial near Tampa. Yay, plywood. Most of Florida’s big entertainment and production jobs fled north of the St. Marys River after the state ended its film incentives program in 2015. And many industry and economicdevelopment types are sick of it.

That’s why Orlando Democrat Linda Stewart has filed Senate Bill 726 to allow counties to spend a portion of their existing hotel taxes on film incentives.

“We really need to bring these jobs back to Florida instead of giving up all our economic development to Georgia, Louisiana and California, too,” Stewart said. Sure. Let’s do it. But now let me also make an odd disclosure: I don’t really support the idea I am proposing in this column.

Yes, you read that correctly. See, I dislike corporate welfare of all kinds. Hollywood execs and should finance their own movies. And I’ve never been one who subscribes to the everyone-elsedoes-it excuse for incentives. Or any other bad idea.

But for all the problems I have with this idea, it’s better than the status quo way this state spends hotel taxes — which is also corporate welfare, except reserved primarily for the low-wage tourism industry.

So if we can redirect a tiny portion of the subsidies we’re now spending on low-wage jobs (the average hotel desk clerk in America makes about $24,000 a year) for subsidies meant to attract higher-wage jobs (the average cameraman makes $61,000), bring it on.

Sometimes in Florida, you have to root for the best bad idea you can find.

Under current Florida law, most hotel taxes must be spent on things that attract more hotel guests.

In Orange County alone, the 6 percent room tax generates about $280 million a year. Yes, more than a quarter-billion dollars. Every year. All to subsidize tourism. “They have tons of money,” Stewart said. “Tons of it.”

Other tourism communities, such as Las Vegas, use hotel taxes to pay for things such as roads, which tourists use and residents need.

I’ve long advocated for Florida to do the same. Hotel taxes should be used to help pay for the cops that patrol International Drive and the buses and transit systems that shuttle hotel workers to their jobs and visitors to their resorts.

Instead, we keep funding tourism advertising campaigns, building sports stadiums and expanding the county’s 7 million-square-foot convention

center … and then wonder why we’re stuck with such a low-wage economy.

It’s like repeatedly hitting yourself in the head with a sledgehammer and then wondering why your noggin’s sore.

It’s worth noting that many of the allegedly “free market” politicians who decry corporate welfare for movies and other industries are noticeably silent when it comes to taxpayer subsidies for the tourism companies that fund their campaigns. (For reference: See last week’s column on legislators holding their annual comped retreat at Universal Orlando.)

I still think hotel taxes should pay for cops and transit. (In fact, I’ll have part two to that proposal later this week.) This community needs those services. Tourists should pay for them. And local taxpayers deserve more of a break.

Stewart agrees, but hopes the film-incentive idea will appeal to the tourism bosses because it has a direct impact on hotel revenues. After all, when a big-budget production comes to town, everyone who comes with it needs a place to stay.

I’m more interested in the jobs created for the people who actually live here — the sound engineers, video editors, production staff and creative types who often leave the state to find work. But if this plan helps hotel execs make sure they keep getting theirs, amen.

The bill probably needs some tinkering, including spending caps and accountability and transparency measures. But it’s a good start.

Because right now, Georgia is getting most of the Southeast’s movies — even the ones audiences think were shot in Florida.

That includes Ben Affleck’s “Live By Night” — a story set in Tampa’s Ybor City that was actually filmed on the Georgia coast — as well as a film about the famous Florida Highwaymen artists that staged casting calls far from Florida’s highways … in Savannah.