Films are fun and a great part of American pop culture. Creative talent expressed through film is one of America’s gifts to the world. And movies are even better with a stunning Colorado backdrop. Why wouldn’t they be? We live in a beautiful state that looks great on the big screen.

Under pressure from powerful Hollywood lobbyists, movie production companies are lured to states through tax incentives. Well, we happen to agree with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ complaint that “big-money interests have undue influences over the political process.” Ten states have ditched their film incentive programs since 2009 because they realized it’s bad public policy.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has recommended maintaining Colorado’s $3 million taxpayer funded film-incentive program for next year. We should instead break up this unhealthy relationship between big business and government.

While the legislature debates the state budget, a common refrain heard from both sides of the aisle is “every dollar matters.” We agree. This is why the $3 million per year for film incentives should be left out of the budget. As Joint Budget Committee member Sen. Kent Lambert once expressed, “If you’re looking at bread-and-butter issues, it’s hard to say to teachers that we don’t have money for you but we do for movies.” Indeed, the needs in K-12 and transportation are calling for attention while the state funds movie projects.

So, case closed.

Actually, there’s an even bigger case to make. There’s a dangerous inclination to believe that the role of government is to spend tax dollars in pursuit of bolstering jobs in our state. The reality is, government best creates jobs when it stays out of the way and allows the free-market to flourish – and that costs taxpayers nothing.

Elected officials often wonder why there is so little faith in state government. Challenging the wisdom of subsidizing the movie The Hateful Eight might be a good place to start.

In a blatant act of cronyism — where government picks winners and losers within an industry — Colorado gave over 80 percent of its film subsidy budget to this one movie. (The film did pretty poorly, so their ‘winner’ turned out to be a ‘loser,’ a perfect example of what can happen when government meddles in the free-market.)

Still, the head of the bureaucracy created by our state government to manage these Hollywood handouts, Donald Zuckerman, told the Denver Business Journal, “People are coming here to film because they say our crews are terrific. Well, if the incentive ends, those terrific crews are going to move.” Just because a bad incentive system attracts “terrific crews” doesn’t make it a good system. Through film subsidies, everyone involved may be extremely talented at their craft, yet the relationship is still unhealthy since it has been built on a faulty foundation.

It’s not the job of the government to pick winners and losers — that’s something the market does when all of us choose which movies to see. Production companies should fail or succeed without millions of dollars of subsidies. As Sen. Lambert points out, aggressive lobbying is feeding an already-profitable film industry, while other industries that can’t afford lobbying falter.

While some make a “return on investment” argument in support of these subsidies, others claim that a better return comes from transportation or education spending. Regardless, this isn’t just about how many dollars a film is receiving — or how much profit a film stands to make in Colorado or any other state — it’s about ending the dangerous relationship between government and big business. Hollywood handouts result in a Fatal Attraction, and we all know-how that movie turned out.