NYC lawmakers who led a resistance campaign against HQ2 are declaring victory. And they have plans to escalate opposition to tax incentives

Amazon has pulled out of plans to build an office in Long Island City, Queens, the company announced Thursday. The decision comes after months of opposition from city council members, state legislators, and local activists who condemned the $3 billion in tax incentives the company would have received from New York.

Not everyone is happy with the company’s decision to retreat, rather than negotiate.

© Bebeto Matthews/AP

“Governor [Cuomo] kept saying over and over, ‘I didn’t have a choice, this is how the game is set up.’ He had to compete, and he won, and he was so proud of the fact that we won,” said Kim. “But the fact is, the game is rigged. And it takes leadership to call that out and figure out how to un-rig this game, and hold these mega-corporations accountable.”

Economic experts and politicians have long argued that absent federal intervention, cross-country collective action is the best way to stop states and cities from participating in this once-obscure but common economic incentive process. The economic incentive system that exists now—designed to push “footloose companies” to the jurisdiction that pays them the most—is broken, says Joe Parilla, a fellow in the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program. Already, Kim says, 12 legislators from states from Texas to Florida, and Connecticut to Illinois have committed to introducing anti-tax incentive bills of their own.

Before Amazon, perhaps the highest-profile example of a state using tax incentives to woo a company was Wisconsin’s courtship of technology company Foxconn: For its commitment to create 13,000 local jobs, former Governor Scott Walker promised Foxconn a $4 billion tax break. Last month, the deal started unraveling, with Reuters reporting that, even as Wisconsin invested heavily in infrastructure in anticipation of the company’s move, Foxconn was reconsidering the nature of its expansion. Instead of employing 5,200 people by the end of 2020, a company source said that “that figure now looks likely to be closer to 1,000 workers.” And instead of hiring mostly manufacturing staff, the company said it was pivoting to engineers and researchers.

That deal’s demise, along with Amazon’s November announcement that it would split its 50,000-job HQ2 into two—and now, the company’s about-face—has rattled legislators’ faith in these kinds of projects. “You had the perfect media storm,” said Parilla.

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