This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon
This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon
Originally published November 24, 2017 at 7:50 pm Updated
November 24, 2017 at 8:35 pm
A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other
cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy
itself is a bargaining chip.
By Danny Westneat November 24, 2017
There’s rising worry that corporations are taking over
America. But after reviewing a slew of the bids by cities and states wooing
Amazon’s massive second headquarters, I don’t think “takeover” quite captures
what’s going on.
More like “surrender.”
Last month Amazon announced it got 238 offers for its
new, proposed 50,000-employee HQ2. I set out to see what’s in them, but only
about 30 have been released so far under public-record acts.
Those 30, though, amply demonstrate our capitulation to
corporate influence in politics. There’s a new wave, in which some City Halls
seem willing to go beyond just throwing money at Amazon. They’re turning over
the keys to the democracy.
Coming from the home of the largest corporate tax-break
package in U.S. history, which our state gave to Boeing, I figured I was well
acquainted with the dark arts of economic-incentive deals.
But still I was surprised to see the lengths to which
some cities and states will go to get a piece of that high-tech glory.
Example: Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32
billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called
a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but
instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever,
Amazon would get to keep it all instead.
“The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes
to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think
tank critical of many corporate subsidies.
Most of the HQ2 bids had more traditional sweeteners.
Such as Chula Vista, California, which offered to give Amazon 85 acres of land
for free (value: $100 million) and to excuse any property taxes on HQ2 for 30
years ($300 million). New Jersey remains the dollar king of the subsidy
sweepstakes, having offered Amazon $7 billion to build in Newark.
But more of a bellwether to me are proposals that
effectively would put Amazon inside the government.
Some are small. Boston has offered to set up an “Amazon
Task Force” of city employees working on the company’s behalf. These would
include a workforce coordinator, to help with Amazon’s employment needs, as
well as a community relations official to smooth over Amazon conflicts
throughout Boston. (Surely Amazon can handle these things itself?)
But the most far-reaching offer is from Fresno, California.
That city of half a million isn’t offering any tax breaks. Instead it has a
novel plan to give Amazon special authority over how the company’s taxes are
spent.
Fresno promises to funnel 85 percent of all taxes and
fees generated by Amazon into a special fund. That money would be overseen by a
board, half made up of Amazon officers, half from the city. They’re supposed to
spend the money on housing, roads and parks in and around Amazon.
The proposal shows a park with a sign: “This park brought
to you by Amazon,” with the company’s smiling arrow corporate logo.
“The community fund projects would give Amazon credit for
the funding of each project,” the proposal says. “The potential negative
impacts from a project would be turned into positives, giving Amazon credit for
mitigating it.”
Is it even legal to give a company direct sway over civic
spending like that?
When asked about it, Fresno’s economic-development
director threw the public interest under the bus.
“Rather than the money disappearing into a civic black
hole, Amazon would have a say on where it will go,” he told the Los Angeles
Times. “Not for the fire department on the fringe of town, but to enhance their
own investment in Fresno.”
You poor fools out on the fringe of town. All this time
you’ve been paying your taxes, thinking it was for the broader public good.
Suckers.
Seriously, we’ve got Congress slashing corporate taxes,
business cash overwhelming elections and the Federal Communications Commission
poised to turn control of the internet over to a few private companies. Now a
single company is viewed as such a shiny prize that some seem ready to wave the
white flag on the whole “for the people, by the people” experiment.
It feels like a dicey moment for the “civic black hole.“
Also known as democracy.
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