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Government

Taking Stock Of Legislative Session

By Jenny Callison, posted Oct 9, 2015
Bill Vassar, head of EUE/Screen Gems Studios, says activity is ramping up now that lawmakers have funded film grants. (Photo by Erik Maasch)
With the last gavel pounding Sept. 30 in the N.C. General Assembly, it’s time to take a look at some legislative actions from this year’s session that will have impact for the Wilmington area.
 

Film and entertainment grant Funding

Bill Vassar is cautiously optimistic about a rebound in the film business, with $30 million in film and television grant funds tucked into each year of the biennial budget. He’s even happier that a TNT television pilot, Good Behavior, is shooting at Wilmington’s EUE/Screen Gems Studios, of which he is executive vice president. TNT, Vassar said, believes the pilot has a good chance of being picked up for a series, and officials are talking to him about wanting to base that production in Wilmington.

The pilot will receive up to $1.25 million in leftover grant funds from the previous fiscal year, but there likely would be no talk about staying in the area to shoot a possible series had the General Assembly not replenished the film and entertainment grant coffers, officials have said.

The final budget document made official the $30 million per year appropriated for film and entertainment project grants. A movie can receive up to $5 million; a television project up to $9 million, according to Johnny Griffin, director of the Wilmington Regional Film Commission.

Rep. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover), who worked originally to extend the state’s incentives program past its sunset of Dec. 31, 2014 but settled for the grant program when it was clear there was not wide support for tax incentives, said overall he’s happy with the budget appropriation.

“I had hoped for more, but we’re very fortunate. We can look ahead two years,” he said. “The Senate was dead set against any kind of tax credit.”

Griffin said the state is finalizing guidelines for the film grant that will define the way applications are reviewed and grants awarded.  

“We expect everything to be final by no later than late October,” he said, adding that he’s currently getting the word out to potential applicants.
 

Business incentives

North Carolina’s Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) program is back in business. This discretionary incentive that provides “sustained annual grants to new and expanding businesses,” according to the program website, was officially out of money in late fall 2014, according to N.C. Department of Commerce spokeswoman Kim Genardo. A continuing resolution did give the program an automatic $7.5 million appropriation as of July 1, Genardo said.

The new budget appropriates nearly $58 million in JDIG funding for this fiscal year and $71.7 million for next and raises the annual total that can be provided through the grants from $15 million to $20 million.

If a so-called “high-yield” grant is made to a company making a minimum $500 million investment and creating at least 1,750 jobs, that year’s cap would increase to $35 million to accommodate other smaller grants, said Steve Yost, president of North Carolina’s Southeast, a regional economic development agency.


Historic preservation tax credits

While Yost sees JDIG as essential for growth in southeastern North Carolina, Sen. Michael Lee (R-New Hanover) said the film grants as well as the reinstatement of the Historic Preservation Tax Credit program will likely have a greater impact on the area.

The new program offers a credit of 15 percent for residential projects on certified rehabilitation expenses up to a maximum of $150,000, and 15 percent for commercial projects up to $10 million. For certified expenses above $10 million on commercial projects, the tax credit percentage is 10 percent, said George Edwards, executive director of the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

Support from appointed and elected officials was crucial to the passage of the tax credits program, Edwards said. While the new program’s tax credit percentage is lower than in the old program, he pointed out that building owners can recapture their money more quickly than before, and the threshold for qualification is lower: $10,000 for residential rehab outlay, compared with the old program’s minimum of $25,000.


Transportation funding

Lee said he was very pleased that, after slowing the annual flow of money from the Highway Trust Fund to the state’s general fund in years since 2011, the General Assembly this year managed to turn off the spigot altogether.

The ability to keep transportation funds in the highway fund resulted in the investment of “an additional $705 million over two years in transportation needs,” according to Lee’s office.

Lee said that “dramatic increase” in transportation funding, plus a new mobility formula that allocates funding to projects based largely on data, should mean some much-needed projects in New Hanover County will get attention soon. He cited as examples work to relieve congestion at the intersection of South College Road and Oleander Drive as well as at the intersection of Eastwood and Military Cutoff roads.

From the larger transportation fund also came the $70 million over two years that will be spent to modernize the ports, Lee said, adding that much of the money will be spent at the Port of Wilmington.
 

N.C. Biotechnology Center

After earlier indications that state funding could be cut for the N.C. Biotechnology Center, a private, nonprofit organization based in Raleigh with five regional offices, the biennial budget maintained the center’s funding at $13.6 million annually, its previous level, said Randall Johnson, executive director of the southeastern office in Wilmington.

“We are pleased at the outcome of the budget,” he said. “We have always had very strong support on both sides of the aisle, and we’re pleased to see this continue, bolstered by very strong industry support across the state and our region. We think that industry support was key to our continued funding.”


Connect NC bond Issue

The General Assembly approved Gov. Pat McCrory’s whittled-down $2 billion Connect NC bond package, having removed the transportation portion of the original, since some transportation needs were addressed in the budget. The measure’s fate now rests with voters: it will appear on the March ballot.

The final package contains $66 million for University of North Carolina Wilmington for a new Health and Human Services facility. It also earmarks nearly $2.9 million for Brunswick Community College and nearly $6 million for Cape Fear Community College for new construction, repairs and renovations.

Fort Fisher State Recreation Area would receive about $1.1 million for renovations and Carolina Beach State Park $855,000 for campsite upgrades, according to the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation.

While the package originally contained money for a new visitors center at the Battleship North Carolina, that was removed.
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