The fact that this guy is writing this open letter on behalf of the governor’s office, and seems to believe we still live in a 2008-esque Change-We-Can-Believe-In view of tech company largesse, shows how clueless Albany really is.
If we have ACTUALLY learned anything from the past century of corporate relationships with muncipalities, it’s that you really do NOT want to encourage corporate monocultures within your cities. It distorts the local economy, creates its own social subculture that often overtakes the town’s existing culture, and presents a giant economic and existential crisis should the corporate giant need to downsize or exit the city (which they seem to always do, and always for someplace that has far more diversity, or a new host for their parasitism).
New York State is, if anything, Exhibit A for all of this. The story of Kodak and Rochester, and the years of decline in Kodak’s absence (and before anyone mentions it, yes, I know there’s been a very recent Renaissance) is a story known to pretty much every urban planner who’s been educated in the past 25 years. Yes, you get a really easy bump in total jobs that is hard to replicate through more organic means; but you know, if you want to live in an interesting, dynamic society, you’re going to choose to go about it the hard way.
Maybe the evil labor unions ruined the deal. Maybe the politicians flip-flopped. Maybe the tax credits pencil out. It doesn’t matter. There are large numbers of people who didn’t want Long Island City to turn into another Rochester. Or, to put it in a context that might be more understandable to the crowd here, they didn’t want to see Amazon do to their neighborhood what Snapchat and Google did to Venice Beach over the past 10 years. I’m sure the tax receipts are way, way up in 90291; at the same time, it’s not really Venice anymore, and those revenues have allowed the tech firms to hold the community hostage for whatever they want (for example, Google had an arbitrarily placed stop sign and crosswalk put in for their use, and managed to get the LAPD to cart off longtime homeless residents in the process (who, by virtue of the law of unintended consequences, have been replaced by far more aggressive and transient homeless people)).
I’d love to see some of these politicians run on the “I stood firm on welcoming Amazon” platform for their next election. I don’t think the ones who flip-flopped into the negative are idiots; rather, they’re smart enough to see the writing on the wall. The tide is shifting, and fast.