While the fight continues over whether California will commit to maintaining a major film and TV production industry — with Governor Jerry Brown seemingly passive at best when it comes to increasing tax incentives help ailing Hollywood — things at ground level are getting more and more uncomfortable, if not desperate.

That's the picture one gets after speaking to long-time industry members such as set builder Beth Goodnight of the independent Goodnight and Company — whose work you've seen everywhere from the Academy Awards to "Ellen" to Wendy's commercials. One of her current jobs involves Nickelodeon's upcoming Kids' Choice Awards. Reports Goodnight, "A couple of the pieces for this show are huge, sculpted pieces that need to be fiberglass, and the reality is there isn't enough big-budget production in L.A. to keep those artists here. So these incredible artists I've known and worked with for years — I'm making 20 calls and everyone is out of town trying to make a living on feature films. They're up in Vancouver, or over in Atlanta, or Minnesota," she says.

"These are all family men. These are guys who don't even want to come home on weekends now, because they just want to make as much money as they can and come back here and stay with their families and try to get a job here. It's become a real gypsy-like existence for people who are so talented."

Last month, a study by the Milken Institute was released that showed film and television jobs dropped by 11 percent in California between 2004 and 2012, while New York, with three times the initiatives, saw employment in the entertainment sector grow by 25 percent. Numerous other states are energetically moving up as well, and big-budget films that once would have been made in Hollywood are now almost certain to be lensed in England, South Africa or other countries that make it less costly and more headache-free to shoot than in Los Angeles.

"We've had over a 100-year history of building the perfect infrastructure for this business, and it is heartbreaking, over the years, doing what I do, to see such absolutely amazing infrastructure falling apart," says Goodnight. "It is affecting everybody in California, and I don't think people are really aware how destructive this is, what an economic disaster this will be if we don't get this turned around quickly."

She illustrates her point, saying, "I cannot do what I do anywhere else. I'm supported by so many vendors here. I think of Jackson's Shrub greens rental house that's been around since before 'Gone With the Wind.' If they disappear, where do you get a fake palm tree if you need one by the end of next week? Where do you get dozens of Christmas trees? I work in an environment where a production designer might ask me for two chariots he needs by tomorrow. I can get them here. I can get breakaway glass. I can get almost anything, but it's changing. The infrastructure is dissipating."

Goodnight has one of the few local film-TV shops that is prospering. And yet, she very candidly tells us, "I can honestly say I've been fortunate in areas where — it's actually because other companies have not done so well. Like NBC gave up their [set building] shop and closed it down about three, four years ago — and I was able to pick up all the NBC shows outside of the 'Tonight' show. So I have 'Access Hollywood,' NBC News, Telemundo, 'Days of Our Lives,' 'Chelsea Lately.' "Yes, we do have a growing business," she says. "But I actually wish that everybody could just be doing well."

In fact, they turned off the lights for good at NBC's studios in "beautiful downtown Burbank" last week. The "Tonight" show is now in New York, and other NBC shows have shifted production to nearby Universal Studios.

Signs of the local industry's ill health are easy to find.

Hollywood visual effects workers turned out by the hundreds at Burbank rally to protest foreign subsidies last month, and are attempting legally to get the U.S. Court of International Trade to impose duties on production companies that receive tax breaks abroad.

Hollywood's problems are California's problems, more and more people in the state are realizing.

California Assemblymen Raul Bocanegra and Mike Gatto recently introduced legislation to expand and extend the state's industry tax incentives. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has made the issue one of his top priorities in Sacramento and recently appointed Ken Ziffren as his film czar, replacing the late Tom Sherak. Ziffren recently remarked that the state of film and TV production is in a "bad spiral" in Hollywood and it's going to take a lot of work to reverse it.

At least he didn't say death spiral. But stories of lost jobs, lost livelihoods and lost homes are becoming more frequent, along with reports of formerly well-paid crew people applying for help from The Actors Fund. The L.A. Times reported that the group provided emergency assistance to 1,778 people in the western region in 2013, a 45 percent jump from 2010.

Whether Sacramento will support California's signature industry or other competing economic interests will take priority remains to be seen. Goodnight intends to continue speaking out on behalf of the new legislation.

"One of my sculptors started off on 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,'" notes Goodnight. "There are such great stories, such great characters, such great people. They deserve to have people watching out for them and taking care of them, you know? Artists, you know, people who are very crazy about their art get sucked up into what they're doing. It's very hard for them to live outside of that or for them to go outside to take care of themselves because they give everything to their art."