Gov

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday called for a significant expansion of the state’s film and TV tax incentives in the face of mounting evidence that producers are fleeing California in search of cheaper locales.

Newsom said in a statement Monday that he favors expanding California’s current Film and Television Tax Credit Program from $750 million to at least $1 billion annually.

Notably, Newsom’s proposal would include credits for actors and other above-the-line talent and extend the tax credit through 2040, according to the statement. That would make California’s program more competitive with those of other states such as Georgia and New York that allow tax credits to offset the cost of actors’ salaries.

If approved by the state Legislature, the credit would be the country’s largest capped film and TV tax credit, Newsom’s office said.

“We’re the capital of entertainment and we’re going to keep it here,” Newsom said in the statement. “Through this expansion, we will maintain the momentum and success of our historic expansion last year.”

Newsom’s announcement comes as the outgoing California governor and possible presidential candidate is looking to burnish his image as a champion of Hollywood as the state is increasingly losing production to other hubs in the U.S. and abroad, where tax incentives are higher and production costs lower.

The proposal puts pressure on fellow Democrat Xavier Becerra, who is widely expected to be California’s next governor, to take up the mantle of helping Hollywood at a time when the state faces rising financial pressures.

Newsom expanded the program last year, when the annual credit was raised from $330 million to $750 million through 2030. Since then, the credit has generated more than $8 billion in direct production spending and over 43,000 jobs, according to the governor’s office.

Newsom also recently signed California’s first stand-alone postproduction credit to bring back jobs for the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists.

With a budget of $10 million, the program will allow a 35% to 50% credit on qualified expenses related specifically to postproduction work done in California, even for productions that don’t shoot in the state.

Despite the expanded incentives, local film and TV production in the Los Angeles area continues on a downward trend.

On-location shoot days in the Los Angeles area fell nearly 5% between July and September from the same period a year earlier, and were 29% below the five-year average, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that handles film permits for city and county.

Newsom said the expanded credits would address some of California’s limitations.

For example, the new incentives would allow companies that commit to shooting two different productions in California to get a 5% boost in credits. Independent productions would be eligible for $100 million in annual funding, up from $26 million.

Steve Kang, president and chief film liaison for the city’s Board of Public Works, welcomed the proposed enhancements.

“This is a huge win because the current expanded program is helpful, but there were a lot of exceptions and caveats, which limited its full potential,” Kang said.

Others welcomed Newsom’s proposal as “a good start,” but said more was needed to keep the industry in Southern California.

Many productions that shoot locally still face logistical and operational problems with permitting and specific shoot requirements, said Cale Thomas, policy legislative director for Stay in L.A., a grassroots coalition.

“We just need to make it cheaper and easier to shoot here,” Thomas said. “A multifaceted problem takes multifaceted solutions.”

Scott Budnick, a producer of the successful “The Hangover” franchise who lobbied for the state’s enhanced film tax credits last year, also praised Newsom’s proposal, but said the state needs to remove a cap on funding that has created significant hurdles for filmmakers.

“I feel very strongly that the biggest problem with the current credit is because we have a cap,” Budnick said. “It makes every piece of the credit 10 times harder.”

The effort in California comes after congressional leaders introduced the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act in September. The bill would establish a 20% federal tax credit on U.S. labor for eligible film and TV productions, including postproduction and visual effects work.

If the federal incentive passes, the hope is for U.S. productions to stack incentives and make the U.S. more attractive for major studio shoots. The federal incentive, however, also is likely to raise the competitive stakes for California as other states compete for Hollywood’s business.

“This is about protecting the future of an industry that has helped define California for generations,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) said in response to Newsom’s proposal. It would ensure “the next generation of creative workers and small business owners can raise their families right here at home,” he said.

Newsom has faced tense relations with Hollywood. Many in the industry remain angry with Newsom over his role in the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Newsom was instrumental in behind-the-scenes lobbying to get state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to abandon the court fight challenging Paramount-Skydance’s takeover of the legacy studio, which is expected to lead to widespread layoffs.

Newsom’s support for the deal came after Paramount threatened to move operations to Tennessee or Texas, placing more pressure on Bonta to come to an agreement and blunt efforts to lose California’s signature industry.

WASHINGTON — It is a heated debate in the struggling Republican Party: whether to broaden its ideology or follow the advice of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and others who argue against deviating from core conservative principles.

Now, the GOP has a chance to see whether a moderate can become a model for Republican resurgence, with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announcing Tuesday that he will run for the U.S. Senate in that politically important state.

Crist, who has bucked the GOP’s conservative wing on voting rights, global warming and other issues, enjoys high approval ratings. But with the governor facing a conservative in the primary, Republican leaders across the country have seized on Florida as a battleground in the larger philosophical war over the party’s future.

Crist won instant endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the GOP Senate campaign committee. The two see him as the best hope for keeping a Senate seat in GOP hands as the party tries to avoid falling below the crucial number of senators needed to block legislation, an outcome that many political analysts see as likely.

Crist’s main primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, went on the attack Tuesday, releasing a video showing the governor with President Obama and criticizing Crist’s support of the Democrats’ “reckless” economic stimulus spending.

“Our primary will offer Republicans a front-row seat to a debate about the future of the Republican Party here in Florida and across the nation,” Rubio said. “My campaign will offer GOP voters a clear alternative to the direction some want to take our party.”

Rubio, 37, is little-known outside of Miami and is given steep odds of taking down Crist.

The Florida announcement comes as GOP infighting has intensified following moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats and a spate of recent surveys that show only about one-fifth of American voters consider themselves Republicans.

Last year’s elections almost wiped Republicans off the map in the Northeast and Southwest. The party won only a fraction of Latinos and other minorities that once were seen as building blocks of a new, long-lasting majority.

Several GOP leaders — including Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — late last month announced the formation of the National Council for a New America to open a policy-focused discussion designed to help rebuild the party.

But the group has been ridiculed by leading conservatives, who complained that the rollout touched on economic and national security issues but not on social concerns such as abortion, gay marriage and guns.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wrote a derisive column on the Fox News website poking fun at the GOP leaders for needing a “listening tour” to understand the American psyche. In it, he accused the council of treating “values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren’t expected to be seen beyond that.”

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, chided the group for kicking off its campaign “devoid of the values that once caused voters to identify with the party.”

In a television interview over the weekend, former Vice President Cheney said he would “go with Rush Limbaugh” as a true Republican over former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a moderate who last year endorsed Obama’s candidacy.

Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, also has been critical of Republicans who do not adhere to core conservatism, saying recently that when Specter left the party he should have taken 2008 presidential nominee John McCain with him.

Complicating the GOP’s challenge in presenting itself as a unified party is the presence of the powerful pro-business Club for Growth, which helped push Specter out of the GOP and has been harshly critical of Crist.

Republican strategists said Tuesday that the party needed to be more concerned about picking candidates who could win than with limiting itself to pure conservatives, particularly with the GOP at risk of losing Senate seats in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

Already, the Specter defection has put the party’s Senate roster right at the crucial number of 40 — and if Democrat Al Franken is declared the winner of last year’s Minnesota Senate race, then the majority party (with the help of two independents) will have the 60 votes needed to override Republican filibuster attempts.

Grover Norquist, who as head of Americans for Tax Reform is a key leader of the conservative movement, said he had a pragmatic desire to elect “the most Reaganite Republican that can win in any given district or state.” That means, he said, that he supports electing moderates in Maine but not necessarily in Texas — and that in Florida, where Obama won last year, Crist may well be the best candidate.

Cornyn, a conservative, signaled months ago that he would take a pragmatic view on the question of ideological purity versus winning elections. Addressing a conservative conference in February, Cornyn said he would recruit moderate candidates if they matched the politics of their states, and that “a circular firing squad is no solution” to the party’s problems.

The Texas senator described Rubio, a Cuban American, as having a “very bright future,” but added that Crist was the “best candidate in 2010.”

Crist, 52, is expected to present himself as an answer to the Republican Party’s image troubles — a nonideological figure with a can-do, friendly demeanor.

He rose to prominence as a tough-on-crime Florida state lawmaker by supporting chain gangs for prisoners. As attorney general and governor, he aggressively courted Latino and black voters. Early in his term, he pushed a rule to speed the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons — a deeply unpopular move with many Republican politicians.

In February, after Obama’s stimulus plan was rejected by every House Republican and all but three Republican senators, Crist irked conservatives by joining the Democratic president at a campaign-style rally in hard-hit Fort Myers, Fla., to extol the need for the bill.

Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, said popularity always trumps ideology, and he predicted Crist easily would win the Republican nomination.

That, he added, that might be good for the party as a whole.

“There are not enough blue-eyed, white, blond guys and girls who go to church three times on Sunday and once on Wednesday to make up a majority for the Republican Party almost anywhere,” Slade said. “If we don’t broaden the party, there won’t be much of a party left.”

—

peter.wallsten@latimes.com

SACRAMENTO — He made millions playing an indestructible action hero in the movies, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sounded altogether mortal as he talked for the first time Wednesday about the pain and frustration he has felt since his holiday skiing accident.

At a news conference where he released his new budget, Schwarzenegger told reporters that since his surgery two weeks ago he has been in continuous pain.

“The operation was a very complicated operation,” he said, “and I don’t think I can ever remember having had pain — ongoing pain, 24 hours a day — like after this operation.”

In a statement put out last month after the Dec. 23 accident, the governor’s doctor described the surgery planned for Schwarzenegger as routine.

Schwarzenegger had previously said nothing publicly about his accident, and his staff had refused to confirm reports that the governor tripped and fell while standing on a mountain slope in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Adi Erber, a ski instructor who was with the governor at the time, said Schwarzenegger’s pole got caught in one of his skis, causing the fall. Schwarzenegger was then carried down the slope on a toboggan and taken to a hospital.

Asked for his own account of how the accident happened, Schwarzenegger offered a few details about his complicated medical history, which has included steroid use, a heart valve replacement, a torn rotator cuff and broken ribs. He said that he has also had an artificial hip put in — a procedure that, he maintained, helped cause the leg break.

Schwarzenegger said that because he was moving “at a very slow speed,” his ski stayed on.

Had he been moving fast, he said, the ski would have popped off, probably sparing him any real injury.

“I had an artificial hip that was replaced around five years ago,” he said. “Because it was vulnerable, the ski torqued the leg, and it broke the femur because of that. If I were to have that accident at 50 mph — and many times I’ve crashed at that speed — nothing happens.

“So this is what the unfortunate thing was.”

Soon after the injury, speculation bubbled up that the governor’s steroid use might have left his bones weakened, making him more susceptible to a break. Schwarzenegger has admitted using steroids when he was a champion bodybuilder.

The governor’s office released a statement from his orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Kevin Ehrhart, addressing the steroid question.

“Any suggestion that Gov. Schwarzenegger’s injury was sustained as a result of anabolic steroid use is wrong and has no basis in fact,” Ehrhart said. “His bone was completely healthy and rock solid.”

Normally upbeat in his public appearances, Schwarzenegger said the accident has left him shaken. He has looked thinner and somewhat drawn since the surgery.

At his inauguration last week, First Lady Maria Shriver clutched the governor’s arm as he took the oath of office — as if holding him up — and handed him bottled water afterward. Shriver also attended the governor’s budget address.

Schwarzenegger suggested Shriver has been at the receiving end of his darkened mood.

“So it’s really annoying to me, and believe me, there’s nothing I hate more than having an obstacle like this. So this is very frustrating to me. It’s very tough on my wife.

“When I get frustrated and have those obstacles, I’m very angry a lot of times,” he said, “and so I’m working through all of this and trying to get rid of this problem as soon as I can.”

peter.nicholas@latimes.com

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday appointed 13 judges to Superior Court seats, including four posts in Los Angeles County. All but one of the appointees are Democrats.

Brown filled the Los Angeles County Superior Court vacancies with Julie Fox Blackshaw, deputy counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; H. Jay Ford, currently a commissioner in the county court; Gregorio Roman, a deputy public defender; and private-practice lawyer Douglas Stern of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Blackshaw was a federal court special master from 2002 to 2010, and before that served as legal counsel for a Los Angeles police review commission. She takes the seat being vacated by the retirement of Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani.

In a 1992 story in The Times, Blackshaw was credited with winning the then-largest criminal fine ever levied in a defense contracting fraud case, while working part-time as an assistant U.S. attorney and taking care of her infant daughter.

Brown also named Tracie L. Brown, Harry M. Dorfman and Rochelle C. East to judgeships in the San Francisco County Superior Court, and Erin Alexander and Lisa Rogan to judgeships in the San Bernardino County Superior Court.

He appointed Patricia Guerrero and Michael Popkins to the San Diego County Superior Court.

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paige.stjohn@latimes.com