Runaway

The issue for California:

... “Producers we’ve talked to tell us the first thing they look at are the financial incentives a state is offering,”

Animation faced the runaway problem decades ago. Now live-action faces it in spades.

At this point in time, animation in Los Angeles has hit a plateau, but let's not kid ourselves. Even as animation jobs have expanded in Southern California, high-end live-action has gone, visual effects work has imploded (and dried up some of the CG talent pool). And even television animation, despite current robustness, is being impacted. Many Canadian studios are packed to the gills, and California work, from design to boards to direction, is getting outsourced to Canada.

Now. There are different solutions out there. One is to get countervailing tariffs in place. It's a worthy goal but a long-term project. Another is to expand California's entertainment tax rebates. Giving free money to large corporations is not an ideal solution, but as national and international tax policies now stand, Hollywood is getting killed by the competition.

So the question becomes: until a better solution presents itself, is it acceptable to use one that will achieve positive results even though it's less than ideal? For me the answer is a qualified yes, because "better" is an improvement over "zilch" and watching California's entertainment industry continue to get its backside kicked. Therefore I support the tax legislation titled AB 1839.