Port: ND Commerce Department doled out $600,000 in film grants after just 6 business days for proposals

MINOT — Public subsidies for something like filmmaking can be a heavy lift. While that art form has touched most American lives, it employs relatively few people, making it hard for most taxpayers to see a direct benefit from the spending.

Which is why proponents of these policies need to be good stewards of the money.

I’m not so sure the North Dakota Department of Commerce has been a good steward of hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent grants made available by state lawmakers. Or, at least, as good a steward as it could have been.

Earlier this year, the Legislature approved $600,000 in funding for “motion picture production and recruitment” during the 2023-2025 budget cycle. On Friday, July 21, at almost 4:00 pm, the Commerce Department announced that it

was taking applications for the grant money.

Typically, Friday afternoons are when government officials announce news they don’t want anyone to pay attention to. The infamous “Friday news dump.”

The due date for the applications was July 31, just 10 calendar days, or 6 business days, later.

That’s a tiny window for North Dakota’s filmmakers to become aware of the grant window and get their applications in. For context, Bismarck-based filmmaker Matt Fern, who flagged this issue for me, noted that a $25,000 film-related grant administered by the North Dakota Department of Commerce in 2020 consisted of two rounds of submissions, with the first round open for 50 days followed by a finalist round 25 days later.

Since we’re talking about more than a half-million in taxpayer funds, couldn’t we have provided a bit more time to ensure a robust field of applicants?

Just 14 days after the grant was first announced, the Commerce Department picked a winner,

giving all $600,000 to Bismarck-based Canticle Productions

“to produce two new films around legendary North Dakota stories,”

state tourism director Sarah Otte-Coleman said in a press announcement.

If it seems like perhaps this competitive application process wasn’t intended to be all that competitive, you may be right. There’s evidence in the public record suggesting that state officials had a destination in mind for this funding before it was even appropriated.

Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, a Republican from Williston, carried

House Bill 1018,

the Commerce Department budget which contained the funding for this grant, on the floor of the Senate.

“There’s an added funding for a Motion Picture Production and Recruitment Grant to a production company for another motion picture that’s being made in North Dakota,” he said in his floor speech. “Many of the predictions…productions from this company have been North Dakota centrist productions, and this is another one they are bringing online.”

Bekkedahl is clearly talking about Canticle Productions, which had previously received a $100,000 grant from the state of North Dakota, through the Department of Commerce, to subsidize “End of the Rope,”

a film about the 1931 lynching of Charles Bannon.

It was a very good movie if you haven’t seen it

(you can find upcoming screenings on the film’s website).

It doesn’t surprise me that state officials would be enthusiastic about helping the talented folks at Canticle make more films about our great state, but that doesn’t set aside the fact that officials put on a competitive bidding process for a grant that is supposedly about promoting the entire North Dakota film industry but was seemingly earmarked for one company from the get-go.

“It was a House conference amendment,” Bekkedahl said when I reached him for comment, referring to an amendment made during negotiations over the bill between the House and Senate chambers. “They brought up Canticle as a possibility. I think they had it in mind. From our perspective, we knew that Commerce had to do some sort of a request for a proposal. Canticle was brought up as a potential entity involved in applying for the RFP.”

“I don’t have any predispositions. I don’t really care who gets the grant,” he added, pointing out out that the Legislature has no say in how the executive branch carries out the RFP process.

“The grant process was short so awarded projects would have most of the biennium budget period (July 2023 – June 2025) to complete their films,” Commerce spokesperson Kim Schmidt told me when I inquired about the process. “This also allows filmmakers to showcase multiple seasons.”

She indicated that four production companies applied for the grant:

• C Three Media
• Canticle Productions
• Circle of Nations Entertainment LLC
• Indak Media

“Individuals that followed Commerce’s budget hearings were aware of the $600,000 added in appropriations for a Motion Picture Production and Recruitment Grant,” Schmidt told me. “Our office began receiving inquiries about the grant soon after the passing of HB 1018. The information provided at that time was that the grant required Commerce to follow state procurement laws and post for a competitive RFP process in the new biennium.”

Asked about Bekkedahl’s comments on the Senate floor, Schmidt denied that the bidding process wasn’t competitive.

“While legislators may have expected the grant money to go to Canticle Productions, which had received a previous grant and hosted the legislator at a screening of a movie supported by that grant, it was not predetermined,” she said. “If a blockbuster project had come along and scored highly with the committee, we would have consulted legislative council for clarification of legislative intent.”

It’s hard to reconcile that potential for a “blockbuster” proposal with the six-business-day window the Commerce Department gave to applicants. If they thought a “blockbuster” might be out there, why didn’t they allow more time for applications?

By the way, that $100,000 grant Canticle received for “End of the Rope?” There was no competitive process for that at all. “The dollars went through the Department of Commerce,” Schmidt told me. “That year, the legislative intent of the funding was made clear based on

legislative committee hearings

(3:17:37) and

on the house floor

(1:14:08) so the funding was granted directly to Canticle Productions through a grant agreement.”

If the goal of these public subsidies is to help spawn a thriving film industry in our state, then why isn’t the door for these grants open wider?

“Every North Dakota filmmaker I spoke to had never heard about the grant until after it was awarded,” Fern told me, referring to the recently-awarded $600,000 in grants. “This was the largest grant for filmmakers in the state’s history, so I would have expected more than six business days to get the word out and accept applications.”

Fern says he’s made a film with Canticle Productions and believes the company does good work. He also doesn’t believe anything nefarious happened with this grant. But as a filmmaker who would like to see the film industry in this state thrive, he believes the process could have been more open.

Frankly, he’s right.