State Film Industry Loses in Nevada’s Tesla Deal

Tesla Motors scored a big win with a $1.25 billion subsidy package that brought its first gigabattery factory—with 6,500 jobs and up to $100 billion in economic activity—to the state of Nevada. But the state’s film industry was not amused. At issue was a $70-million movie production tax abatement program, adopted by state Senate Democrats in 2013, that Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval wanted to plough into the Tesla deal. Senators initially tried to block the deal, but in the end, Sandoval prevailed. “Senate Democrats – mostly from Clark County – were upset to lose the film-production tax credit battle because it was a program that primarily helped unemployment in Southern Nevada,” the Gazette-Journal reports. “If NV Senate Dems want to see film-production tax credit restored in 2015 #nvleg, they need strong data to show how many jobs it has created,” Hagar later tweeted.