By Peter Berton
LOS ANGELES – Adult content production in Los Angeles County continues to decline, thanks to Measure B, the notorious local ordinance that attempts to force performers to wear protection and studios to fund testing and onerous licensing fees.
L.A. County voters approved Measure B November 2012. By December 2014, film permits for X-rated productions had plummeted by 90 percent, to just 40 permits for the entire year. Through the end of July 2014, only 20 permits had been issued.
The numbers were provided by FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit group that issues film permits for the city and county. According to a spokesman for the organization, Measure B is proving the law of unintended consequences: Where the adult industry goes, so do jobs and tax revenues.
“We’ve seen a dramatic drop in permits,” FilmL.A. President Paul Audlrey told the Los Angeles Times. “It is a cause for concern that people who are manning the cameras, lights and other things on those sets are not working anymore.”
To save their businesses, porn producers have moved their operations to Orange County, San Francisco and other to less-regulated parts of California. Some have left the state entirely, resettling in areas including Florida, Nevada and Eastern Europe.
“We’d like to stay here [in L.A.],” Vivid Entertainment co-founder and co-chairman Steven Hirsch told the Times. “This is our home, where we’ve produced for the last 30 years. But if we’re forced to move, we will.”
Some studios and individuals are so attached to their Los Angeles digs and the production talent in the area that they’ve moved their operations underground, producing content without permits and risking sizable fines in the process.
“There is no question people are filming without permits,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the Times.
Weinstein has been one of the most vocal proponents of extending the Los Angeles ordinance statewide. A bill pending before the state legislature, AB 1576, would do exactly that. Weinstein and his organization allegedly drafted the bill.
Nevertheless, “we’re not against porn,” he said. “We’re not trying to drive [adult producers] out of business. We want to protect the performers, and we want [adult entertainment] to be a safe industry like any other industry.”
