Last year, as Blue Sky was preparing to shut for good, Connecticut auditors accused it of receiving almost $50 million in excess state tax credits between 2017 and 2019 (state fiscal years). They now say the Greenwich-based studio continued to receive more money than it should have for another two years.
In both 2020 and 2021, Blue Sky was granted a $32M tax credit payment, The Connecticut Mirror reports. According to the state auditors, the Disney-owned studio should have been given no more than $15M per year. By this logic, they told the Mirror, it received $34M too much in the past two years (a period which has yet to be audited), lifting Blue Sky’s excess credit toll to $83M.
What’s more, the 2021 credit was paid out less than two weeks before Disney announced it would close Blue Sky in February of that year, citing “the current economic realities.” The closure cost 469 people their jobs.