Martinez: State takes ‘great pride’ in movie industry
Governor says $387M was pumped into N.M. economy, changes tone on incentives
ALBUQUERQUE — The movie and television industry pumped a record $387 million into New Mexico’s economy during the past year, an increase of nearly $100 million from the previous 12 months, Gov. Susana Martinez said Monday.
Martinez, speaking on a soundstage at I-25 Studios against a backdrop of movieset prop pieces from such New Mexico productions as Transcendence, The Space Between Us and Independence Day: Resurgence, said the state takes “great pride” in its movie industry.
Her comments reflected a change from early in her tenure as governor, when Martinez said the state’s film incentives were taking money away
from schools and the children they serve.
Filmmakers and television companies countered that they only received tax rebates on money they spent in New Mexico for their productions. For example, a moviemaker who had $10 million in qualified expenditures for a production would receive a $2.5 million rebate from the state. But that money was available only because the filmmaker brought his project to New Mexico.
Martinez on Monday defended her earlier stance, saying that because of the state’s fiscal challenges some years ago, “Education was being threatened. It was a choice between going forward with Hollywood [incentives] or keep it, cap it and keep [funding for] the education we need for our kids.”
New Mexico’s incentives for the film industry include tax rebates of up to 30 percent for qualifying productions. In 2011, Martinez’s first year in office, legislators, at her urging, limited rebates to $50 million a year.
Martinez, though, said the incentives help the state remain competitive with other locations trying to attract the movie business.
A total of 63 productions were filmed in New Mexico in the last fiscal year, the governor said, creating a total of 260,000 “worker days.”
Among the film and television series currently filming in the state are Granite Mountain, based on the true story of the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona, the Western drama Hostiles, starring Christian Bale, and Godless, a Netflix Western series set in a fictional New Mexico mining town.
Nick Maniatis, head of the state’s film office, said the number of productions isn’t nearly as important as the amount of money they bring into New Mexico. Television series benefit the state more because they stay in New Mexico longer and thus generate more long-term jobs and inject money into local communities that house those productions, he said.
The data used by the New Mexico Film Office to determine the fiscal impact of the movie business is based on its analysis of a year’s worth of expenses that qualified under the state’s incentive program. Productions receive rebates on qualified expenses of filming in New Mexico, such as crew salaries, car rentals, hotel rooms and equipment and location rentals.
The incentive program was signed into law in 2003 by former Gov. Gary Johnson, then a Republican, and was greatly expanded by former Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat.
Many states have approved production incentive programs in the past decade or so. But several, including Michigan, have since eliminated them because they were not paying off or state governments wanted to redirect money to more pressing needs. California, still the heart of the industry, has increased its financial incentives to fight off competition from other states.
State Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, said the announcement of a second record-breaking year for the industry, “adds a tremendous amount of pride to New Mexicans that we’re just as cool as anywhere else in the country.”
“Every kid in New Mexico can dream of being a Hollywood big shot, and those dreams can become a reality because of the film incentive,” Maestas said.
Though Maestas said he supports increasing the $50 million cap on incentives, he said he would not attempt to remove it without assurance from fellow lawmakers and the Governor’s Office that there is a consensus to do so. Maestas said he does not want to disrupt the film market with a similar political debate that policymakers had in 2011 when Martinez was “pandering” to end the film tax credit.
“All they know is, ‘Do we have unity or are we fighting?’ ” Maestas said of Hollywood. “And we can’t be fighting.”
Maestas in 2013 crafted what became known as the Breaking Bad bill that increased incentives to 30 percent from 25 percent for long-term television productions. Breaking Bad was a television series that had a five-year run in Albuquerque.
Unlike 2011, Maestas said, state politicians are united now on the benefits of recruiting movie and television productions.
“Currently, there is unity among the executive branch and the legislative branch — Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House — that New Mexico is rolling out the red carpet for the film industry. And we would not want to do anything to dampen that carpet,” Maestas said.
Rick Clemente, head of I-25 Studios, and Lance and Conrad Hool, who run Santa Fe Studios, all said they would like to see the $50 million cap lifted. Eventually, they said, the demand for that money will exceed the cap. Clemente said perhaps, as a compromise, the state could lift the cap on television productions.
But Maestas said there is no appetite for increasing the cap now because revenues from the oil and gas industry are down, and the Legislature might have to dip into a fund supplied by tobacco companies to balance its budget.
In addition, Maniatis said he doesn’t believe New Mexico will hit the $50 million cap this year. “There is a possibility we will hit it next year.”
New Mexican staff reporter Justin Horwath contributed to this report.