After four days of sitting on the Senate intent calendar, House Bill 873, the film incentive reform bill, has passed through the Senate on a 27-1 vote.
Chatting briefly with bill author Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, and she put it simply. “It finally passed,” she said with a grin. She confirmed what Senate sponsor Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, said yesterday: That due to an administrative error, it had been put at the top of the Senate intent calendar, and a House bill at the top of the agenda is a blocking bill, so that had to be fixed.
The Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program was actually founded in 2005, but went unfunded until 2007, when the lege dropped $22 million into the kitty. But after criticism that applications were too complex for too little pay-out to be competitive, Dukes came back to clean up those problems. The new rules ups the biennial pay-out to $62 million, improves the pay-out, and does more to attract TV, adverts and video game production.
The bill now heads to the governor for signing.
This article appears in April 17 • 2009.
