Kentucky’s new film council is playing the same old insider’s game

Less than a year ago, the General Assembly created the Kentucky Film Leadership Council, giving it the responsibility of reviewing and approving taxpayer subsidies for projects filmed in the state. The film council held its first meeting in July.

The owner of the Lexington-based studio Wrigley Media, Misdee Wrigley Miller, was out front advocating for the council’s creation. In 2017, Wrigley Miller acquired a majority share of Post Time Productions, renamed it and transformed a former multiplex movie theater into a 50,000-square-foot production studio.

Wrigley Miller has been a generous campaign contributor, donating a total of $44,800 to various Kentucky political campaigns and legislative caucus committees since 2020. So, when it came time for Gov. Andy Beshear to appoint the film council’s new members, it should come as no surprise that she got the gig.

One of the film council’s first actions was adopting bylaws that prescribe how it would conduct its business. A standard feature of an organization’s bylaws is a conflict-of-interest policy, which the film council included as part of theirs.

The policy states that no member of the film council “shall have ownership in any firm … interested in a contract or agreement with the council.” Pretty strong stuff — negated, more or less, by the next provision requiring only that a member with a financial interest in a project being considered for subsidies disclose their interest and refrain from discussing or voting on the project’s application.

The film council’s meeting packets and minutes are posted online. Twenty-nine projects have been approved for financial awards since August. Of those, Wrigley Miller disclosed a financial interest in eight of the projects and left the room while they were being discussed and voted on. All eight were approved, qualifying for a total of $8,318,260 in subsidies.

Another film council member, Jeremy Winton, the co-founder of the Kentucky Sound Stage in Owensboro, appears to be feeding from the same trough. In accordance with the bylaws, Winton has removed himself nine times from the council’s discussion of projects he was involved with.

I’d say this kind of thing happens all the time in Frankfort, but this is pretty brazen. The film council has only seven members. Three are state employees — political appointees working in the Beshear administration.

See this link for the complete op-ed in the Kentucky Lantern.