New Mexico politicians dearly love the film industry, and why wouldn’t they? It gives them everything politics likes best: celebrities, ribbon cuttings, press releases, big numbers, and a chance to stand in front of a camera while pretending the camera showed up entirely on its own. If a governor or legislator can point to a soundstage, a catered lunch, a movie star hiding behind sunglasses, and a rented van full of assistant auxiliary vice-producers, then, by golly, economic development has arrived!
Or so we are told.
But before we start polishing the Oscar and naming a new state highway after some producer from Burbank, it might be worth asking the rude question: are New Mexico taxpayers actually making money on this deal?
The answer appears to be no. Not “maybe no.” Not “no, but only if you use mean arithmetic.” More like plain, old “NO”—the kind your banker gives you when you ask whether buying a bass boat counts as retirement planning.
The film industry creates activity. Nobody seriously denies that: when a production comes to town, people rent hotel rooms, they eat meals, and they hire drivers, security guards, extras, caterers, construction workers, set dressers, location scouts, and folks whose job titles sound like they were invented during a lunch break. Trucks move around. People wear radios and look busy. A local restaurant might sell 200 breakfast burritos before sunrise. Money changes hands. That is all real.
But activity is not the same thing as profit. A fellow can set fire to his barn and create a lot of activity. Firefighters arrive, insurance adjusters appear, lumber gets ordered, contractors get hired, and everybody in the county has something to talk about at the local diner. That does not mean burning down barns is a sound rural-development strategy.
The state’s sales pitch often relies on big “economic impact” numbers. Those numbers count money moving around. What they do not necessarily show is whether the state treasury gets back what it spent. That is the difference between a business’s making money and a carnival’s coming through town. A carnival produces traffic, noise, corndog sales, and temporary employment. But if the town must pay the carnival to show up, pay for the cleanup, and then brag that the cotton-candy stand had a good weekend, somebody ought to check the books.
New Mexico’s film credit is not just a polite tax break. It is fully refundable, which is a fancy way of saying that if the credit is larger than the production company’s tax bill, the state will hand over cash. That money does not fall from the sky—it comes from New Mexico people who paid taxes, including people who will never be invited to a wrap party, who will never meet a star, and who will never get residuals when the show streams in Belgium.
That is where the whole thing starts to smell less like economic development and more like political theater.
The politicians tax a waitress in Roswell, a mechanic in Farmington, a retiree in Las Cruces, and a small-business owner in Deming, then they send part of that money to a studio. Then, when the studio hires a temporary crew in Albuquerque, the politicians hold a press conference to announce that they have created jobs. This is a little like stealing a man’s cow, selling him a glass of milk, and then asking him to applaud your dairy program.
And what kind of jobs are we buying? Some are good jobs. To be fair, New Mexico does have a few skilled film workers: grips, electricians, carpenters, camera people, wardrobe people, set builders, production accountants, and other craftspeople who know their trades. Those jobs can be skilled, respectable, and well-paid…when the work is steady.
But that little phrase—when the work is steady—is where the mule bogs down in the arroyo.
Film work is project work: the production arrives, spends money, hires people, shoots, wraps, and leaves. It is not the same as a factory that opens, runs year-round, trains workers, buys supplies, expands, and puts down roots. It is more like a cattle drive: there may be dust, payroll, and excitement, but when it passes through, the herd is gone.
The state’s own accounting shows that New Mexico is not making its money back from the film subsidy. According to the Legislative Finance Committee, the film production tax credit returned only about 6 cents in state tax revenue for every $1.00 spent in FY25 — meaning state government recovered roughly six percent of what it paid out, while losing the other ninety-four cents from the treasury. That does not mean no one made money; hotels, caterers, drivers, extras, crew members, and vendors certainly did. But it does mean the state’s “return on investment” argument depends on counting economic activity, not actual money returning to the state budget. In plain English, New Mexico is paying Hollywood a dollar, getting back about six cents in tax revenue, and calling the noise in between prosperity.
If you could make a state rich by using tax money to hire citizens…. You could fly by pulling on your bootstraps.
The state also loves to talk about local jobs. Fine. But headcounts can be slippery. When someone says most workers are local, are we talking about total people, total hours, or total payroll? A local extra who works two days and earns pocket money counts as a job. So does a driver. So does a hotel clerk indirectly serving the production. Meanwhile, the larger checks may go to stars, directors, producers, editors, specialists, and imported crew, all of whom show up temporarily, spend some time under our painfully blue sky, and then go home to wherever people say “the industry” without irony.
If the state counts every local extra and driver as proof of transformation, then we need to be careful. A movie set can create the same kind of service jobs that a big wedding, a rodeo, or a convention creates. That does not mean the economy has been reborn. It means visitors came to town and spent money, partly because we paid them to.
Then there is the grand dream of building a permanent cluster of film-related businesses. This is the part where the consultants get misty-eyed. We are told that, if New Mexico just keeps subsidizing Hollywood long enough, the industry will take root here. Studios will expand. Workers will train. Vendors will appear. The ecosystem will mature. One day, presumably, we will all wake up, and New Mexico will be the new Hollywood, only with better enchiladas and fewer agents named Brent. (Yeah—and the Rio Grande will have water running in it 24/7/365!)
Take, for example, the case of the Sylvester Stallone’s television series, Tulsa King. The first season was filmed in Oklahoma because the state offered sizable subsidies. The next three seasons were filmed in Georgia because Georgia offered a bigger subsidy. You don’t have to be a particularly sharp viewer to notice that “Tulsa” no longer looks like Tulsa. (The Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts reports that the state recovers only 10% of the money they spend to attract the movie industry.)
Even workforce training has a leak in the bucket. Suppose we do train New Mexicans into real film professionals. Good. Then what? A trained film worker can take those skills anywhere and when work inevitably slows down here, that person will head to Georgia, California, Texas, Oklahoma, or Canada. The state will end up subsidizing productions to train workers who become valuable enough to leave. And if they stay, then taxpayers must keep subsidizing Hollywood to make sure they have work.
That is not an industry. That is Hollywood renting New Mexico’s checkbook.
New Mexico is not merely helping local grips, drivers, caterers, and extras get work—it is also helping pay the checks of people who were never New Mexicans and may never intend to become New Mexicans. Under the film-credit system, the state can subsidize wages for certain nonresident crew, and the larger partner arrangements can reach into payments for nonresident actors, directors, producers, writers, and editors. In plain English, that means a director flies in from Los Angeles, a star arrives with an entourage, specialized crew members come for a few weeks or months, the production wraps, and then they go home — while New Mexico taxpayers help underwrite their paychecks. The state counts that as local economic activity because the work happened here, but much of the paycheck will leave on the same plane as the people who earned it.
The underlying question is simple: would the money do more economic good if left in the pockets of New Mexicans?
State government assumes that if it collects money from citizens and redistributes it to a politically favored industry, the resulting activity is proof of wisdom. But maybe the citizens would have spent that money better. Maybe they would have fixed trucks, bought appliances, paid medical bills, expanded small businesses, hired local help, repaired roofs, replaced water heaters, or just bought groceries without wincing. That spending would also create jobs, only without needing a government office to issue a press release about it.
There is an old country test for this sort of thing: if the deal is so good, why does it need my money?
If New Mexico’s scenery, light, culture, climate, and talent pool are enough to make this a natural film center, then Hollywood should come here because it makes sense. If Hollywood comes only because we pay it, then we are not selling New Mexico. We are discounting it—bribing them to come.
That does not mean film production is bad. Let them come. Let them shoot Westerns, crime dramas, science fiction, prestige miniseries, and whatever else requires a lonely road, a suspicious sheriff, or a desert sunrise. Sell them hotel rooms. Rent them warehouses. Feed them green chile. Hire local workers. Charge fair prices. Welcome them warmly.
But stop pretending that writing checks to Hollywood is the same thing as building prosperity.
New Mexico has real needs: water, roads, crime, schools, courts, healthcare, broadband, housing, and a private economy strong enough that young people do not have to leave to make a living. Against that list, subsidizing a wealthy entertainment industry starts to look less like vision and more like vanity.
The film subsidy creates smoke. Sometimes it creates a pretty flame, too. But after the crew leaves, the trailers roll out, the rented furniture is returned, and the last assistant director boards a plane, New Mexico is left with the bill and a politician pointing at the smoke as proof there was a fire.
Cecil B. DeMille supposedly said that young Hollywood actresses were called starlets because the word piglets was already taken. In a similar vein, we call an elected moron in the state house a politician because the word thief was already taken.
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