As efforts ramp up in Sacramento to expand California’s film and TV production tax incentive program, the Entertainment Union Coalition has launched a new campaign that will rally Hollywood labor to lobby for the expansion.
The new program, titled “Keep California Rolling,” is kicking off in advance of the Oscars and will have its first major action on March 5, when 100 union workers will travel with EUC leaders to Sacramento. The workers will lobby members of the state legislature to support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed expansion of the tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million.
“California’s entertainment industry sustains hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs across every sector and in every corner the state,” said EUC President and Directors Guild of America Western Executive Director Rebecca Rhine.
The Entertainment Union Coalition includes all of the top entertainment unions in California, including WGA West, SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild, Hollywood Teamsters 399, the California IATSE Council, LiUNA 724, and the American Federation of Musicians. Workers from all member unions are expected to attend the lobbying session in Sacramento.
“It’s essential that the expansion of the Film & TV tax credit program prioritizes workers rather than corporate profits,” she continued. “The EUC fully supports the governor’s proposal, marking the most significant expansion to the program in decades, but we must ensure it delivers on its promise: keeping production, and the jobs it creates, right here in California, where workers and their families can thrive in their own communities.”
The launch of “Keep California Rolling” comes a day after several Los Angeles-based state lawmakers unveiled a pair of bills, Assembly Bill 1138 and Senate Bill 630, intended to make significant changes to the tax credit program.
Details of those bills are still forthcoming pending meetings between the bill’s authors and major stakeholders — including the EUC and Hollywood studios — but a major expected change is a drastic expansion of the types of productions that would be eligible for tax credits. This could possibly include categories like reality TV, which saw a near 46% year-over-year decline in shoot days in Los Angeles, according to FilmLA.
“77% of the projects that are unable to secure a tax credit here in the state end up going elsewhere. These are productions that wanted to do the work here,” State Sen. Ben Allen said Wednesday. “This has led to a loss of nearly a billion dollars in production spending which leads to lost jobs, lost economic gains.”
