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Tuesday, July 22, 2025State Continues To Founder In Enforcing Court Ruling To Improve Public Ed Seven Years After The Fact; New Approach Offered, Plus: Reader React On NM Film Decline Seven years is the entire lifespan of the MLG administration. The state continues to rank 50th in the nation in public education. We've reported on Yazzie since the beginning and have not wavered in our belief that the state and PED can do a turnaround. But we're throwing in the towel now because we're losing another generation of young New Mexicans. The time has arrived to inject competition into the system. The Legislature should authorize a limited school voucher program that would allow parents to choose a private school to send their kids to. Voucher programs vary by state. For ours, targeting low-income families. students with disabilities and those in under performing schools seems to make the most sense. Not that vouchers are a a panacea. Reviews are mixed. But at this point in the state's history something must change. All the money pumped into the system during this long oil boom has not done the trick. Alternatives now demand legislators full attention. Republicans have been pushing vouchers for years. Their time has finally come. SHRINKING FILMS ABQ reader Cheryl Haaker has this on our Monday blog detailing the recent decline in film production in the state: I appreciated your discussion of the shrinking film presence here in New Mexico. A factor that I suspect contributed significantly to New Mexico falling out of favor is the prosecutorial circus in the Alec Baldwin "Rust" shooting case. Not only was Mr. Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter for what was an accident but it was over a year after the event before the person actually responsible for preparing (and providing security) for the guns was charged. Misjudgement? Incompetence? Publicity seeking? Any way you stack it, it doesn't look good for the judicial system in Santa Fe. So any movie involving the reckless and excessive use of firearms (that's nearly 100% of 'em) would think twice about filming in New Mexico, particularly in the Santa Fe area.
And along those same lines from reader Ron Nelson:
Maybe if New Mexico didn’t have such an over zealous prosecutor that went after the key players in the Rust production, things would be different. You don’t think Hollywood wasn’t watching? We can’t keep blaming COVID for systemic failures.
On a different note, reader David Buchholtz writes: Your story on the state of the film industry here resonated. You might want to check out Eddington, filmed primarily in T or C, which opened this weekend. It is a neo-noir, Western, political satire, among other things, getting a great deal of national publicity and has significant New Mexico overtones.
This is the Home of New Mexico Politics. Monday, July 21, 2025Glamour Deficit: Film Productions In State Sliced In Half As Industry Wrestles With Ever Changing Media Landscape; Even Big Incentives Don't Stop The Dive; That Story And A Proposal To Reshape The Biz Here New Mexicans are spoiled by the glamorous industry as the state has some of the most generous film incentives in the nation. But even that can not stop the decline. From the NM Film Office: In fiscal year 2025, output economic impact of the state’s film tax credit dropped to $475.5 million while gross value added (GVA) dropped to $348.2 million. The year before, the output was at $1.089 billion and the GVA was at $797.9 million. In fiscal year 2022, the output peaked at $1.258 billion and the GVA peaked at $921.7 million. That's an awful lot of dollars streaming out of here and Film Office Director Steve Graham explains: (He) cited contraction in the industry after double strikes, slow COVID-19 recovery and mergers and acquisitions across the entertainment industry as primary indicators for the slump in production. He noted that his state is currently shooting 10 projects – film and series alike – down from 20 last spring. That reality has apparently hit Santa Fe Film Studios which has been put up for sale. The state's film incentives have a $130 million annual cap for fiscal year 2025, with $101 million remaining as of the latest update. Netflix and NBCUniversal, called Film Partners for their lomg-term commitments to the state, are not subject to the cap so the actual amount going out the door is millions more. WHAT TO DO? Other states are now ramping up their incentives and giving New Mexico more competition. That adds to the reasons why the heyday may have been seen here for film production. That leads us to one of our industry experts who speaks off the record about a new direction the state may want to take: The slowdown isn’t just here but nationwide. Texas, California, Louisiana and others have responded by upping their incentives. I wouldn’t recommend that for New Mexico. We’ve gone as far as we should with the “partners” and it’s time to get back to what made us number one in the first place.  Let’s not go further down the rabbit hole to compete with the bigger states. We invented film incentives. We can reinvent them to work better for us at a lower cost. We’ve reached the tipping point. We can do this ourselves and say thanks to our Film Partners for the boost but we'll take it from here. A longer term issue is the overall state budget--specifically federal funding for Medicaid and food stamps. If those items start eating away at the big surpluses, the film incentives could look like a luxury. All the more reason perhaps to reshape the industry now rather that losing an even larger piece of Hollywood down the road. (A complete list of movies shot in the state since 1897 is here.) Covering the campaigns, politics and government of New Mexico and generating new ideas for the future. This is the Home of New Mexico Politics. E-mail your news and comments. (newsguy@yahoo.com) Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here. |
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