Monday April 14, 2008
Well, Connecticut may have had its moment as a low-tax, movie-making destination, now that New York State last week passed legislation similar to the location-friendly, tax-soft laws that have given people like Speaker of the House Jim Amann the license to call us “Hollywood East.”
Asked to respond to the Empire State’s new law last week, Amann said it doesn’t mean there will be fewer films shot here.
“But I think, business wise, I think we’re going to see Connecticut will continue to grow, because we’re not just concentrating on tax credits,” Amann said, adding that more-recent laws pending this session would enhance.infrastructure and music projects and focus additional funding for colleges and universities.
“We’ve done a great job,” Amann said. “New York is now reacting and now we have to see what happens over the next 6 to 18 months to see if our big initiative now is losing ground, gaining ground or we’ll see what has to come next,” Amann told a couple of reporters last week. “I think it’s exciting to have that kind of competition.”
Amann said he never really thought of New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as competition, but maybe the region can work together against places like Washington State and Louisiana for the movie-making market.”I never saw the other states as competition,” he said of our neighbors. “I thought why aren’t we involved in this? That’s why we made ours the best and the first to be around. At this point now, when we get a dialogue with the different legislators from the different states that I mentioned, then we can truly be competitive with the other top-10 states.”
