Sundancing on Colorado taxpayers with ‘economic development’.

By Jon Caldara

Hollywood is coming to my hometown. By now you’ve heard the Sundance Film Festival is moving to Boulder.

What a relief! Finally, some common folk are coming to town. As you know, Boulder is home to the state’s most smug elite, those who know how the rest of us should live, what we should value.

And they are thrilled to use government to mandate it upon us.

But starting in 2027, for one glorious week a year, Hollywood types, with their humble, live-and-let-live, limited government views will descend on my little hamlet of progressive hate. People with more common sense and basic American values will finally be walking the streets of my neighborhood. Boulder’s level of arrogance should be cut in half.

It will be so refreshing to hang with thousands of Harvey Weinstein types, who have so much more respect for people.

For one week my hometown won’t be all about virtue signaling. My little metropolis will be visited by normal folks like George Clooney who, next to the average Boulderite, doesn’t need to constantly emote his beliefs and political desires.

Sundance said they moved to Boulder because of its “welcoming environment.” 

Don’t need to be a codebreaker to read between the lines. They wanted to move out of a red state to a pronoun-policed, righteousness infatuated city nestled in a Trump Derangement Syndrome state.

And I don’t mind my wacky town getting wackier for a week. Tens of thousands of mega-wealthy, moralistic, image-obsessed progressives will descend upon the town of mega-wealthy, moralistic, image-obsessed progressives. Maybe I’ll Airbnb my house and make a few bucks. After all the governor’s office says this party will bring in $2 billion of revenue over 10 years. That’s a lot of cheddar.

In fact, that’s why he just signed a bill to give Sundance $35 million out of our massively underfunded state budget.

Wow! Only $35 million to bring in $2 billion! We should make that deal all day long. That’s a 57-fold return on investment. How many of your investments are paying 5700%? I’m guessing less than half?

A 5700% return is known as “economic development math,” which also goes by the street name “complete fiction.”

Before special interests can extract that kind of payoff, they need to give elected officials some political coverage. Economists come up with “multiplier effects” to show us taxpayers we’re not just giving our money to the politically connected, especially during a state budget shortfall.

But wait a second. If the economic benefit is going to bring in $2 billion, why would taxpayers have to put in a penny? Boulder hotels, restaurants, and movie houses would be more than happy to scrape together the kickback for that kind of payout. For $2 billion it’s a no-brainer.

So, either they don’t want to pay it because they can use other people’s money, or they know the return on investment might not actually be 5700%. (It’s both.)

Diffused taxpayers getting their money confiscated and bundled then given to concentrated politically tied special interests is how cronyism works. Thus, the code name “economic development.”

And might there be some conflicts of interest here?

Jared Polis owns property in downtown Boulder, and purportedly income property as well. Instead of tapping taxpayers across the state, our near-billionaire governor could pay a good share of the ransom if he’s getting some of the benefit.

Among all the economic development scams, subsidies to film makers are notoriously the worst. Analysis from New Mexico’s own government discovered their “films subsidies have a negative return on investment.” Now, I’m not a mathematician, but a “negative return on investment” sounds like less than a 5700% return.

New Jersey found that of the $430 million in taxpayer subsidies looked like more than the $300 million earned by all film and video production employees. But then again, Jersey isn’t known for math. Well, maybe the mob accountants.

On behalf of the governor and all the economic winners in Boulder, I like to thank the taxpayers from all the far-flung corners of Colorado who will get almost nothing out of this corporate welfare except some pictures of celebrities in the news. Taxpayers in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Grand Junction, and every little town in between are paying Robert Redford’s organization to make the state’s richest city just a little more wealthy.

Sounds fair.