This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: November 28, 2017 at 8:28:52 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend Steve Schear.  DLH]
>
> This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon
> 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
> Nov 24 2017
> <https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/this-city-hall-brought-to-you-by-amazon/>
>
> 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 taxespaid 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.”
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
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