NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – Louisiana lieutenant governor Jay Dardenne is taking a stand and aligning himself with the film industry.
After Governor Bobby Jindal signed house bill 829 into law last week, capping the film tax credit at $180 million, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne was told by Celtic Studios‘ Patrick Mulhearn that “ABC/Disney has placed a moratorium on sending new projects to Louisiana until this is resolved.”
“There were a lot of different things that were incorporated into the bill at the last minute to cover a lot of areas of the film tax credit program,” Dardenne said.
Dardenne went on to say that he thought the two biggest things incorporated into the bill were the cap being a little low, and the fact that production companies have to file for the tax credit after filming. “So you have this confusing situation where somebody’s got to file a tax return not knowing whether they can claim this credit or not.”
This has ABC/Disney already asking questions about the new bill.
ABC/Disney have not moved away from the state yet, they’ve only paused production.
Some people in the industry still question why Bobby Jindal would sign the bill after all the protests and attempts to veto the bill. However, Dardenne thinks he knows why– “it was a balance budget item,” he said. “This was one of many components that balances budget this year. We had a huge deficit. There was not a lot of direction if any coming from the governor’s office. The legislator had to cobble together a whole series of fundraising mechanisms. One of which was to take away some of this film tax credit.”
The Election for governor is right around the corner, and with the Film Industry being one of the significant problem topics, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne says he will be supportive of the film industry just like he was with the tax breaks that got the films rolling into Louisiana.