The Hillsborough County Commission is trying to bring a piece of Hollywood to the Bay area.

Later today, the commission is expected to pass a financial incentive so portions of a major motion picture can be shot in downtown Tampa.

That is good news by all accounts, but it highlights a larger problem for the Bay area and the state of Florida.

The movie production coming to the Bay area is The Infiltrator, based on a book by Tampa author Bob Mazur. A former federal agent, Mazur lived a double life embedded in the Colombian drug cartel. He will be portrayed in the film by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston.

Commissioners are expected to pass a financial incentive to attract the production.

"This is a great thing for Tampa and Hillsborough (County) to have secured this project," said Dale Gordon, the director of the Tampa/Hillsborough Film Commission. "Yet it could have been greater."

Gordon said about 90 percent of the film was supposed to be shot in Tampa but instead will be shot in England. That's because state funds set aside for projects like this dried up three years ahead of schedule. Gordon said a feature film like The Infiltrator could have contributed up to $20 million to the local economy.

Now, the county is trying to hang on to its small piece of the production by offering producers a $250,000 incentive, plus local crew members to aid with production. That is far short of the $4 million the production team was expecting from the state. As an example, Dolphin Tale received a $5 million incentive to shoot in Pinellas County.

"It just shows the vital necessity of these tax credits," said Gordon, who is lobbying state lawmakers to refund the program next year so she can lure more productions to the area.

"We're so grateful to the county for saying, 'You know what, we want this here,' " Gordon said. "This is an industry we are being proactive about recruiting and we're going to do something about this."