K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: NY State Fast Tracks $26 million Tax Break For Sony, Cuomo Gets $300,000 From Sony Execs

Perdido Street School:

Just weeks before a California fund-raiser with Sony executives that netted Governor Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign $300,000, a Sony executive requested the fast-tracking of $26 million in film credits from New York State.

Keith Weaver, executive vice president for worldwide government affairs at Sony Pictures Entertainment, wrote to an Empire State Development employee about some “pending production tax credits.”

“I need your help, as we need to resolve a number of pending production tax credits by 1/15/14 in order to realize the benefit this year. Our tax and production finance folks were steadfastly working the process, but now we have approximately $26M in tax credits outstanding… We most assuredly can’t leave $26M hanging out there for another full year (i.e., next tax filing period),” he wrote on Dec. 20, 2013, according to emails obtained by hackers and published in searchable form Thursday by Wikileaks.

Related: a change to Wisconsin arbitration rules.