Lawmaker said he had concerns about film tax credit program months ago

DES MOINES – State Sen. Bill Dotzler said he raised concerns about problems in Iowa's film tax credit program as early as August and had urged the firing of the man who headed up the Iowa Film Office.

Dotzler, a Waterloo Democrat, said he sent the letter to former Iowa Department of Economic Development Director Mike Tramontina in early August about irresponsible spending after hearing about the purchase of luxury vehicles in relation to the program.

Dotzler said a few days later he urged Tramontina to fire Tom Wheeler, the former director of the Iowa Film Office. Tramontina did not dismiss Wheeler, and Gov. Chet Culver ultimately dismissed Wheeler last month.

Tramontina and his deputy director, Vince Lintz, resigned from their positions last month after problems in the program came to light. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller announced Monday a criminal probe in the matter was ongoing.

At a meeting in early August, a group of Democratic senators including Dotzler demanded an audit and asked the department to provide them with more information about the credits, according to Dotzler.

“Once we heard there were two cars, we didn't know what the hell he was approving,” Dotzler said of Wheeler. “He just kind of-you know, you couldn't get a straight answer out of him.”

Dotzler said at the time of the August meeting they didn't know Wheeler wasn't keeping records and didn't know about possible mismanagement of the office.

A review released Monday found that the film office had a number of missing records related to the tax credit program.

“It's just mind-boggling that someone could be so irresponsible,” Dotzler said.

Dotzler believes Wheeler worked to recruit films to beat a July 1 deadline when a $50 million cap on the tax credits imposed by lawmakers went into effect.

“It was kind of like he opened the barn door up and said ‘come on, stampede in,”' Dotzler said.

Dotzer said he was surprised to learn from Wheeler that the tax credits were amounting to 50 percent for productions in Iowa rather than 25 percent.

“If I'd have had false teeth, they would have been out on the table because that isn't the way he'd explained it to us, and that isn't the way anybody believed it to be originally,” Dotzler said.

Looking back, Dotzler said lawmakers should have put the cap in effect immediately.

“The plan was to grow Iowa's work force. We didn't want to have a million movies all at once,” Dotzler said.

Phil Roeder, spokesman for Culver, said Tramontina raised concerns about the purchase of the automobiles in August, but nobody brought up the depth of the program's problems until September.