When the Texas House of Representatives come to order on Sunday, May 25, one of the first bills it will consider is Senate Bill 22 (SB 22), which creates a brand new fund called the “Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund.”

While Texas property tax owners are bleeding cash through higher and higher property taxes, the Texas electric grid is being overrun by renewables, and China is buying land all over Texas, bills that do anything meaningful to address these and many other conservative priorities are dead or on life support as the session draws to a close. However, legislation to make Texas more like Hollywood is one of the priorities of the leadership of the Texas Legislature.

SB 22, by State Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), sets up a massive, taxpayer-funded grant program to subsidize movies, TV shows, and digital media projects made in Texas. It takes $500 million every two years from state sales taxes and deposits it into a special fund outside the state treasury. The Governor’s office uses this fund to hand out grants to entertainment companies. The program runs until 2035 and is projected to cost taxpayers over half a billion dollars every two years. 

The bill undermines core principles of limited government, creates a large, recurring carve-out from essential state revenues, and prioritizes corporate welfare for Hollywood-style projects over pressing taxpayer needs like tax relief. 

However, pressure is mounting on conservatives in the Legislature to vote for SB 22, with some claiming the $500 million cost of the bill is already appropriated in Senate Bill 1, the budget bill, and that at least SB 22 puts a few guardrails around how the money is spent.

The problem with that claim is that it is not true, or at best is only 20% true.

A search of both the Senate and House versions of SB 1 show no sign of this being the case. In the Senate version, there are contingency appropriations based on the passage of SB 22. However, they only total negative $42 million. The House version shows $155 million for the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program (a program that already exists, and is different than the new fund being created under SB 22), but that is in Article 11 of the bill, a section that does not actually authorize spending. Thus, if the appropriations bill does appropriate the $500 million, it will likely be in the conference committee report, a version of the bill that almost no one has seen. 

Yet, the important thing to note here is that there is no reason for SB 1 to appropriate this money because SB 22 already directs the spending of $500 million this biennium plus another $2 billion through 2035.

SB 22 makes three fundamental changes to Texas law that ensure $2.5 billion of taxpayer money will be given to Hollywood through 2035.

First, SB 22 creates “the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund … as a fund outside the state treasury to be held and invested by the trust company and administered by the office.” This is a brand new fund that puts the money largely out of reach of future Texas Legislatures and the normal accountability processes of handling state money. 

Second, SB 22 requires the Texas Comptroller to, “not later than the 30th day of each state fiscal biennium, … deposit to the credit of the Texas moving image industry incentive fund established under Section 485.0225, Government Code, $500 million of the proceeds from the collection of the” Texas sales and use tax. This provision expires on August 31, 2035, meaning that the transfer of $500 million will take place in September of 2025, 2027, 2029, 2031, and 2033, a total cost to Texas taxpayers of $2.5 billion. This directive only exists with the passage of SB 22. 

Third, SB 22 changes Texas law to allow “money in the incentive fund [to] be spent without legislative appropriation.” Thus, when the money is transferred to the Texas “Hollywood” Fund, no appropriation is required for the Governor’s Music, Film, Television, and Multimedia Office to spend the money at its discretion. A few safeguards are in the bill, but they are generally already being followed in practice by the office.

At most, some version of SB 1 might allow $500 million to be spent to make Texas like Hollywood. 

But only SB 22 ensures that $2.5 billion of Texas taxpayer money is given to the film industry for movies and other productions made in Texas. 

Texas Legislators should reject SB 22. Not just because it is corporate welfare at its worst, or its high price-tag, but because Texas taxpayers deserve to have their hard earned money respected and spent on essential services and tax relief, not Hollywood millionaires. 

Texas legislators should vote NO on SB 22, and respect the taxpayers who put them into office.

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