That’s what comes across from the
revelation
that the hit television show (although the ratings
are beginning to erode from all-time record highs for a nonfiction series in TV
history) Duck Dynasty pockets an
estimated cool $70,000 an episode from Louisiana taxpayers – and it now is in
its sixth season. Having completed 61 episodes through season 5, by the end of
this season (just kicked off with a special guest appearance by Gov. Bobby
Jindal), taxpayers will be estimated to have plunked down over $5 million
to subsidize the show.
Courtesy, of course, of the film
and television tax credits that the state has given away now for a dozen years
where the total amount forgone is approaching $1 billion. The Robertson clan
that heads the Duck Commander franchise on which the show is based (and who
dabble in politics) gets $200,000 an episode for its participation, but
chances are that would include no taxpayer dollars without the subsidy because,
hey, with their northeast Louisiana home base if you want to do a series about
them, the producers and A&E network have to come to the state anyway to do
it regardless of any subsidy.
In other words, that 70 grand
likely has nothing to do with the decision to produce the popular series and
needn’t have been paid in the first place. On the flip side of the coin, there
are a number of films and series that one day will be lionized canonically (the
heavy sarcasm – The Skeleton Key, Drive Angry, The
Governor’s Wife, anybody? – is entirely intentional) that probably
never would have gotten made in Louisiana without these credits, which can kick
back to the moneyed backers of these efforts as much as 30 percent of costs in forgone
taxes and/or selling of these credits at 75 cents to the buck or better.
Which demonstrates the idiocy of
it all when understanding that, over this time span, the state has gotten back
roughly one in seven dollars paid out. While it’s not the largest state tax
credit paid out that denies the state revenues, dollar-for-dollar it’s probably
the most wasteful. Further, it distorts the marketplace by sucking in dollars to an activity that the market otherwise wouldn't support and away from other activities that would be more productive.
Unfortunately, this past regular
session being a “general” session where constitutionally the Legislature cannot
consider decreases in tax credits, this waste could not be corrected in 2014. And
while 2015 allows for that, constitutionally any reduction in this requires a two-thirds
supermajority, an especially difficult standard to attain in an election year
where the special interests that profit from this massive transfer of wealth
from alternative uses on functions such as health care and higher education into
the pockets of a few thousand people, the majority of that accruing to just a
handful of already well-off folks, will lobby like mad to prevent their rollback (which only has been done to minor degree ever since they were made permanent, despite may proposals to go farther) through promises of campaign
cash and votes.
Perhaps the most compelling
testimony against the continuation of these is that the blind pig known as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, joined
with its subsidiary and equally sightless hog the Louisiana Budget Project,
finds by their condemnation of these credits axiomatic opposition to big government and
its spending that occasional acorn. Even in non-election years, far-sighted legislators
have whiffed in trying to get their less courageous colleagues to circumscribe the program, but
with costs in so many other areas of state government continuing to escalate,
one can dream that enough of them next year will get it together enough at
least to modify in generosity, if not outright ending, this farcical giveaway.
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