I think the furore was about the government giving away taxpayer money to the biggest companies, who are not particularly good tenants and tend to change the face of existing neighborhoods.
The whole HQ2 beauty pageant was a sham because no matter what incentives, Amazon ended up picking the two most obvious cities outside Seattle and SF! You don’t need incentives to pick DC and NY. You pick them because only those cities have 25,000 tech workers to hire! This was never going to happen in any other city.
People were angry because many had hoped Amazon would rescue rust belt cities or create a tech renaissance in those regions by being a strong magnet for talent. They didn’t. Instead they picked NYC and DC/Arlington.
"While we’re here, let’s clear up some GOP disinfo:
- “It’s 1500 jobs vs 25,000”: The 25,000 jobs figure was a 10-20 year fantasy # from Amazon, not a promise or agreement. In exchange for that lack of commitment, they wanted billions of public $. Their Y1 jobs projection was 700."
Ah a nice Friday afternoon news dump using the tail between their legs to brush this under the rug as much as possible.
I for one am shocked that a massive company interested in a bigger presence in one of the world's largest cities would expand there, incentives or otherwise.
My understanding was that the city and state were prepared to offer tax incentives that were common in that context and that would bring in net revenue.
I don’t think it’s clear it would bring in net revenue. Also, the idea of cities bidding for companies, using tax dollars, strikes a lot of people the wrong way.
I thought the consensus was that NYC is better off providing those incentives to smaller companies and not having hq2.
>The subsidies offered to Amazon in New York include performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on whether the company created 25,000 jobs. This included a refundable tax credit through the state's Excelsior Program of up to $1.2 billion, calculated as a percentage of the salaries Amazon expects to pay employees over the following 10 years. Additionally, the Empire State Development Corporation would give Amazon a cash grant of $325 million based on the occupancy rates of HQ2 buildings over in the following 10 years.[47][73] Under an agreement with New York City's government, half of the property taxes for the city's HQ2 campus would be waived, and the exempt amount would go to the city's PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) fund to pay for infrastructure improvements in New York City.[74][75] Both states proposed that Amazon be given access to a helipad, and the New York state government also promised to upgrade infrastructure in conjunction with HQ2's construction there.[73]
Seems completely reasonable to me.
Then, some local politicians made public statements that showed that they either did not understand how the incentives would work or that they were willing to lie to get Amazon to leave.
Ex:
>New York governor Andrew Cuomo blamed Democrats in the New York State Senate for the cancellation, and New York City mayor de Blasio said that Amazon "threw away that opportunity," by making the announcement.[84][85] In response, Ocasio-Cortez stated: "If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest $3 billion in our district ourselves if we want to. We could hire more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to."[86][87][88] Mayor de Blasio, among others, criticized her, and those who had made similar remarks, for suggesting the money, mostly in the form of tax credits, was now free to be spent elsewhere.
What about this seems reasonable? The positive ROI could easily be overwhelmed by quality of life changes for current residents. Also not clear that this type of tech hq is great for a neighborhood.
How beneficial is this kind of a deal, compared with the other options of what could be done w the resources?
There is also an ick factor of negotiations like this, between private for profit enterprises and governments. It sounds a bit like publicly funded sports stadiums, which have been very popular yet financially terrible.
quote from tweet from AOC:
"Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - without requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.
Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families."
HQ2 was going to be in Queens, not Manhattan. Even if HQ2 had gone ahead they might still have expanded their space in Manhattan right? (As others pointed out this is more like 1-2K employees rather than the 25K of HQ2)
But frankly the HQ2 pullout puzzled me from the beginning. They backed out of the deal before it had even been turned down by the city or state as I understand it.
I actually wondered at the time if they had just re-evaluated the plan of splitting HQ2 and realized they didn’t need to expand that much in two different east coast cities after all, and used the local complaints as an opportunity to back out.
18 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 47.4 ms ] threadBut Hudson Yards certainly gave them large incentives, as is customary for such anchor tenants.
People were angry because many had hoped Amazon would rescue rust belt cities or create a tech renaissance in those regions by being a strong magnet for talent. They didn’t. Instead they picked NYC and DC/Arlington.
A FAR cry from the 25,000 they were planning for HQ2.
This is just normal expansion or office moves.
"While we’re here, let’s clear up some GOP disinfo: - “It’s 1500 jobs vs 25,000”: The 25,000 jobs figure was a 10-20 year fantasy # from Amazon, not a promise or agreement. In exchange for that lack of commitment, they wanted billions of public $. Their Y1 jobs projection was 700."
I for one am shocked that a massive company interested in a bigger presence in one of the world's largest cities would expand there, incentives or otherwise.
Good on NY for calling their bluff.
My understanding was that the city and state were prepared to offer tax incentives that were common in that context and that would bring in net revenue.
I thought the consensus was that NYC is better off providing those incentives to smaller companies and not having hq2.
>The subsidies offered to Amazon in New York include performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on whether the company created 25,000 jobs. This included a refundable tax credit through the state's Excelsior Program of up to $1.2 billion, calculated as a percentage of the salaries Amazon expects to pay employees over the following 10 years. Additionally, the Empire State Development Corporation would give Amazon a cash grant of $325 million based on the occupancy rates of HQ2 buildings over in the following 10 years.[47][73] Under an agreement with New York City's government, half of the property taxes for the city's HQ2 campus would be waived, and the exempt amount would go to the city's PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) fund to pay for infrastructure improvements in New York City.[74][75] Both states proposed that Amazon be given access to a helipad, and the New York state government also promised to upgrade infrastructure in conjunction with HQ2's construction there.[73]
Seems completely reasonable to me.
Then, some local politicians made public statements that showed that they either did not understand how the incentives would work or that they were willing to lie to get Amazon to leave.
Ex:
>New York governor Andrew Cuomo blamed Democrats in the New York State Senate for the cancellation, and New York City mayor de Blasio said that Amazon "threw away that opportunity," by making the announcement.[84][85] In response, Ocasio-Cortez stated: "If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest $3 billion in our district ourselves if we want to. We could hire more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to."[86][87][88] Mayor de Blasio, among others, criticized her, and those who had made similar remarks, for suggesting the money, mostly in the form of tax credits, was now free to be spent elsewhere.
How beneficial is this kind of a deal, compared with the other options of what could be done w the resources?
There is also an ick factor of negotiations like this, between private for profit enterprises and governments. It sounds a bit like publicly funded sports stadiums, which have been very popular yet financially terrible.
quote from tweet from AOC: "Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - without requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.
Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families."
They just wanted more tax breaks.
But frankly the HQ2 pullout puzzled me from the beginning. They backed out of the deal before it had even been turned down by the city or state as I understand it.
I actually wondered at the time if they had just re-evaluated the plan of splitting HQ2 and realized they didn’t need to expand that much in two different east coast cities after all, and used the local complaints as an opportunity to back out.