Hawai‘i lawmakers questioned a state agency this week about why a fund created two years ago to support local filmmakers has not been spent.
In a step toward speeding up the distribution of grants, the House Committee on Culture Arts and International Affairs on Wednesday advanced a measure that would create a new fund under a different agency.
The money would be transferred from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s creative industries division to the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the agency that runs the public museum.
Georja Skinner, the chief officer of DBEDT, said staffing has been a challenge.
“That's not an excuse,” she told lawmakers. “I think that the issue for all of us is that it never moved out fast enough, and I take responsibility for that.”
The filmmakers special fund, which was set up to receive additional revenue from renting film facilities, has about $1 million to assist filmmakers through state grants.
Rep. Adrian Tam, who chairs the committee, said it’s not just a matter of staffing.
“I’m pretty sure everyone else faces the same problem. It just seems to be an issue with our department,” Tam said. “That makes me really concerned whether or not we can basically trust this department to move quickly on these funds.”
House Bill 2747, introduced by Rep. Sonny Ganaden, creates a new fund under the SFCA, which would administer grants to filmmakers.
“Whether the funds stay with DBEDT or the SFCA, we just want to see it going to developing filmmakers,” Ganaden said.
More than 20 pages of written testimony were mainly in support of the measure.
Karen Ewald, the executive director of the SFCA, said that her agency doesn’t have expertise in filmmaking but would work with the creative industries to administer the grants.
The bill now needs a hearing from the House Committee on Economic Development.
