Gov. Deval Patrick sparked a backlash from the Legislature when he proposed cutting a multimillion-tax credit used to lure West Coast film studios to the Bay State.

I weighed in against the proposal as well in my B&T weekly column, arguing the tax credits were well worth the cost given the steady stream of blockbuster productions setting up camp in downtown Boston and across the state.

The House defeated the governor’s proposal by a lopsided margin, but the rancorous debate apparently may have been enough enough to scare out some big budget productions.

Typically, Massachusetts draws between eight and 12 major productions a year.

But this year, the number may be closer to eight, said Nick Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office.

While the Legislature was debating the proposed tax credit cuts, some studio executives may have decided to bypass the state and make plans to shoot elsewhere given the uncertainty.

Any drop in activity, in turn, could prove damaging to a number of developers – from South Boston to Plymouth - pushing plans to build movie studios locally where films from out of town can do their editing and production work.

On the good news side of the ledger, Boston is still in the running to be the host of a TV series called Boston’s Finest. ABC is expected to make a decision on that $100 million production in the next few weeks

Wow, that was fast.

My B&T column on Monday took aim at years of foot-dragging by the Legislature on a proposal that would make mortgage fraud a criminal offense in Massachusetts.

Three days later, on Thursday, the Senate passed a wide-ranging foreclosure bill that includes a new law making this destructive behavior a crime here in the Bay State.

I guess I should pat myself on the back. Just kidding, I haven’t lost my head – I just happened to hit on a timely topic.

It’s now up to the House to follow through after a big push by Sen. Susan Tucker (D-Andover) to get his bill over the top.

And, as I noted in my column, this is one badly needed and long-delayed piece of legislation.

Gov. Deval Patrick first filed legislation making mortgage fraud a crime back in the summer of 2007.

But the proposal fell into some Beacon Hill legislative black hole, only to resurface this year.

The delay has meant all sorts of fraudsters and small-time speculators for the most part have not had to worry about jail time, despite leaving a devastating trail of foreclosures in poor neighborhoods from Boston to Springfield.

One thing that’s great about the commercial real estate industry, at least from the perspective of someone who has reported on it for years, is that it’s not rocket science.

Want to figure out how long it will take for the nation’s battered office market to get back on its feet?

Well just start watching the unemployment rate. As jobs disappear, vacant space comes on the market. As companies start to hire, it fills up again.

There’s typically a lag time, but A always equals B.

With that in mind, the Jones Lang LaSalle’s spring forecast offers a sobering look at the challenges ahead.

Among the lowlights:

· The U.S. office market has shed 2.5 million office jobs over the course of the Great Recession. That’s about 8.5 percent of the total.

· We’ve gained back about 108,000 office jobs since last October.

· The financial services sector, a mainstay of Boston’s office market, continues to dole out pink slips, with another 36,000 job cuts in March alone

· But pity the construction workers. Employment in the building trades has plunged 27 percent from its peak.

It looks like the Back Bay office market has gained an edge in its long-time rivalry with the Financial District.

The Back Bay’s vacancy rate now hovers in the 12 and 13 percent range, while the Financial District just crossed the 20 percent mark, according to the first quarter market report by Jones Lang LaSalle.

More importantly, the rates are also going in two different directions, with the Back Bay vacancy rate having actually fallen from 14 percent last summer.

Not that it’s all roses over in the Back Bay, with significant blocks of empty space to be found in the Hancock tower.

But Back Bay’s wider array of amenities – from shops to hotels and restaurants – may be paying off.

A more diverse mix of corporate tenants may also be helping insulate the Back Bay, with everything from ad firms to engineering companies in the neighborhood’s towers and office buildings.

By contrast, the Financial District is still heavily dominated by financial services firms, which have also happened to bear the brunt of the Great Recession.

That’s CresaPartners’ prediction for the battered Boston office market.

Heck, we may even be headed for a double-dip recession before the economy gets back onto a firmer footing.

Not likely what tower owners want to hear, but corporate tenants looking to lock in years of savings with some shrewd lease negotiating should take notes.

According to Joe Sciolla, managing partner at CresaPartners, market trends to keep an eye on include:

· High unemployment and a still evolving global economy will keep new office demand in check. The real unemployment rate is really something like 17.2 percent, when all the underemployed are taken into account. Add to that continued outsourcing to India and other developing nations and a new generation of wired workers for whom the office might be the Starbucks down the street, and you get a no-growth office market.

· Years of stagnant rental rates. Conventional real estate market reports undercount the amount of vacant space out there, with companies hanging onto a huge overhang of unused “shadow space.’’ The amount of sublease office space marketed directly by companies may hit the 2 million mark this year – enough to fill two Prudential towers.

· As many as 20 percent of Boston area office towers and buildings could wind up in foreclosure over the next two to three years, with billions in CMBS debt coming due that can’t be refinanced.

When Congressman Barney Frank isn’t busy overhauling the world financial system, he’s out there pushing to legalize – and tax and regulate – internet gambling.But his crusade by the powerful chair of the House Financial Services Committee isn’t going over so well back here in his home state.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s recently filed gambling bill would legalize casinos but outlaw online wagering of any type.

The ban comes even as Frank prepares to hold key hearings in the coming months on twin proposals that would scrap a pending federal crackdown on internet gambling and replace it with a system of licensing and taxation.

That could be an uphill battle, but if Frank’s bills pass, we could wind up with a potentially embarrassing situation for our blunt spoken, maverick congressman.

He could get his long-sought federal legalization of internet wagering, only to see his home state opt out of the new system.

So much for the supposedly liberal Bay State.

A lot of big-name developers and investors are in trouble now after buying overpriced towers at the peak of the market.As I note in my B&T column this week, it’s an increasing elite group that now includes Hub real estate tycoon Alan Leventhal and his Beacon Capital Partners.

Beacon just missed a $1.6 million payment on a 75-story Seattle tower it bought during the height of the boom.

But as some of the nation’s biggest names in real estate struggle to get out of a jam, they may end up getting some timely help from an unlikely source – banks.

After aggressively taking the keys to suburban office complexes and downtown towers alike during past downturns, banks are opting for a more restrained approach this time around, Dan Fasulo, managing director for research at Real Capital Analytics, tells me

Instead of coming down hard on investors facing a bit trouble, like Beacon, banks are more likely now to try and restructure the problem loan instead of moving to foreclosure.

After learning the hard way in past downturns, banks have learned that by directly seizing a tower or office building, they simply inherit all the headaches of managing an underperforming property.

Instead, banks are now opting to keep talented real estate firms like Beacon in place and to restructure the problem loan instead.

“We haven’t seen a lot of overleveraged assets of the type Beacon happens to have, we have not seen the banks foreclose and just liquidate,’’ Fasulo said. “That hasn’t been in the playbook so far.’’

That’s not exactly news for rejoicing in some quarters, Fasulo notes, pointing out that more than a few vulture investors have amassed big funds in hopes of picking up foreclosed towers.

Instead, they are sitting on their hands.

I say boohoo!

Boy, how times change.

It was not so long ago that some real estate experts were predicting the downtown office vacancy rate would fall short of hitting the 20 percent mark.

So much for wishful thinking.

Now I have to apologize in advance to the folks over at Jones Lang, who just sent me a report touting how the amount of empty office space in Boston actually dropped a bit in its latest report.

Sounds good, though I hardly think it’s time to break out the champagne.

Rather, the number that really grabbed me was the total amount of space downtown, but direct space being marketed by office tower owners and sublease space by companies.

The overall Financial District rate now stands at a whopping 20.4 percent, according to Jones Lang.

I’m not surprised, but maybe some others are.

I have no idea whether House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s casino and racetrack slot bill will make it.

After decades of debate over the issue, it looks like at least some of the stars are finally starting to align on Beacon Hill for gambling supporters.

That said, a lot of political horse trading is still ahead before anything passes.

But having reported on more than a few of these debates over the years, a lot of the media coverage right now is missing by a mile some key points.

· Hey stupid, it’s three racetracks, not four. DeLeo may be saying he wants slots at four racetracks, but it is really only going to be three. Everyone seems to forget that Suffolk Downs, in a story that I and others wrote, has a deal to acquire neighboring Wonderland and take over its gambling license. That means Suffolk, under the gambling bill that was just filed, could roll out 1,500 slot machines first and then have a crack at building a casino later as well.

· Gov. Deval Patrick’s phony veto threats. The governor wants to be for/against gambling. As he heads into a tough election season, he has picked the racetrack slot issue as a way of rallying his left-liberal base. But he needs the unions as well, which have lined up fanatically behind the gambling bill in hopes it may generate some badly needed jobs. This is political posturing.

· Specious moral concerns. So racetrack slot machines are bad, but casinos are good, according to Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray. Really? But both are built around slot machines, which, sadly, can be a problem for some addiction prone individuals. The only difference is that, under DeLeo’s proposal, racetracks would be capped at 750 machines, while the two casinos, when they get built, will likely have to have thousands to support all the hotels, restaurants and other amenities that lawmakers want.

· Inside maneuvering. Sure, soon we will start to see all sorts of stories about Donald Trump looking at empty mills in Lawrence and Steve Wynn scouting out Fan Pier. The real story is not as glamorous, unfortunately. There are really two major contenders right now for casino licenses, a group of high-powered casino and real estate investors that own Suffolk Downs in East Boston, and Mohegan Sun, which has locked up a development site out in the Western Massachusetts town of Palmer. While few people were paying much attention, these two would-be casino developers, each boasting potent inside political connections, spent years getting their plans in place. These guys are now the ones to beat.