No
Rest For the Lawmaker;
No Rest For Exhibition
by Belinda Judson
Executive Director, Mid-States NATO
Have my state legislative columns started
to remind you of Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” with
the same issues being repeated over and over again? Or
perhaps
they remind you of the whack-a-mole game in which you whack
one mole and a virtually identical one pops up somewhere
else?
If so, there is an excellent reason.
We are repeatedly fighting the same issues over and over
again. Issues defeated in one legislative session too frequently
resurface in a subsequent session of the same body. And
when we defeat an issue in one state it often pops up in
another.
Currently there is state legislation pending
on admissions taxes, film rental taxes, sales and use taxes,
minimum
wage, violent or sexually explicit video games and movies,
child pornography, harmful-to-minors materials, child labor,
obesity and camcorders. Sound familiar?
A few of these items are even “pre-filed” legislative
pieces that lawmakers prepared while their states’ legislative
sessions were adjourned, so it is already obvious that
these same issues are going to be on agendas when many
states convene their 2006 legislative calendars.
I used to have two big misconceptions about
state legislation.
The first was that that once you were able
to defeat a specific bill, its issue was over and done;
you would never
have to worry about seeing it crop up again. How wrong
I was! Some recur quite frequently. Other issues, one suspects,
may never be laid to rest.
My second big misconception was that most
state legislative sessions are very short – and that at the very least
all state lawmakers took the summer off – so there
would be extended periods of time in which one did not
have to pay attention to what was transpiring at the statehouses.
This notion too was quickly dispelled as I became more
involved with the state legislative process.
State legislative calendars are actually
quite full and business is being conducted most days. Only
a few have
sessions shorter than six months. Most states have a session
of six months or longer. There are seven states that are
effectively in session year-round. (The good news, perhaps,
is that six U.S. states convene regular sessions only every
other year.)
But states can also convene special sessions,
giving legislators extra time to conduct business. This
year 26 states did
so.
And, on top of that, lawmakers in 34 states
have “pre-file” available,
so they can be preparing and filing legislation well before
their “official” sessions convene. As I write
this in August, at least one state has already been pre-filing
legislation for a session that won’t begin until
next March!
The upshot? Though some states appear to
have short sessions, the activities of state legislators
seldom abate. Which
means that those of us who monitor state legislative matters
seldom get to let our guards down.
(Municipal legislation, meanwhile, is even more difficult
to monitor, simply because thousands of municipalities
are home to cinemas. Local initiatives are plentiful, especially
in the tax arena, and we must greatly rely on cinema operators
in each city and town to alert us when legislation adverse
to exhibition rears its head.)
I know I speak for all my colleagues in
the regional units when I implore cinema operators not
to hesitate to call
on us when they hear rumblings of any kind of local or
regional legislation. Please don’t feel that you
are “bothering” us. The earlier we learn of
problem legislation, the easier it is to combat it, and
we are glad to try to help. Because legislative issues
have a tendency to spread, we are all helping one another
everywhere if we can defeat onerous legislation anywhere.
And don’t be discouraged if someone introduces essentially
the same piece of legislation the industry had to fight
off last year. The good news is you’re seeing it
again because it didn’t pass last year. With your
help the result will hopefully be the same this year!
