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Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

governor.ny.gov

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Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#21

Post by thoughtstheseus »

sp332 wrote: post #16
tehlike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant see why hq2 location cannot be based on bidding. Tax breaks are part of negotiation. Math is clear.

Well the laws should be applied equally to everyone, including tax laws. That's a pretty simple principle. If you're going to make an exception, you need to reassure people that rule of law is still a thing and you're not just letting a company buy a different set of laws for themselves, which is kinda what this looks like.

Yeah, hopefully the next time an $800B company developing cutting edge software/tech wants to locate in an economically stressed area stakeholders do better job reassuring people the rule of law still applies.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#22

Post by markkanof »

tehlike wrote: post #11
unethical_ban wrote: post #7

I understand the tragedy of the commons, cities' race to the bottom, Amazon not needing breaks, so on. I also think some of this could have been avoided if people felt like they were part of the process, instead of being told by the state "Hey we negotiated with a behemoth company for them to take over your community - trust me, you'll like it".

You cant involve public with everything, or it would lead to big overhead

Very true, but we aren’t talking about involving the public in every single decision that government makes. But some of these significant ones might make sense. Especially if the outcome was that the deal went through.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#23

Post by spamizbad »

smallgovt wrote: post #2

I think it's sad that the vocal minority was able to alter this decision. As the letter mentions, the project would have brought $27b in revenue to the state. This magnitude of revenue is material considering the fact that the state only collected $76b in taxes in the last reported fiscal year. I think there's reason to debate whether large corps should be able to hold an auction like this, but given the place we fin…

I'm glad they dropped it. There are some grounded concerns:

* Amazon is one of the most successful enterprises in human history and should not require support from taxpayers beyond their voluntary patronage of Amazon itself.

* Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight

* While amazon is talking about bringing middle and upper-income jobs to these communities, overall amazon has a documented history of paying poverty wages despite its tremendous financial success

* State and local governments probably shouldn't be diverting billions of their citizen's tax revenue to lure corporations who will only impact a tiny subset of their citizenry. Does the taxpayer in Buffalo New York benefit if their tax money goes to fund some HQ in Queens, if the bulk of the state's tax capture is just "handed" right back to Amazon?

With that said, there's nothing wrong with large organizations asking state and local governments to expedite things like site identification, planning, zoning, permitting, licensing, environmental studies, etc since you're talking about a MASSIVE undertaking during a short window of time. But beyond that, governments should avoid a race to the bottom with this stuff.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#24

Post by berberous »

ddebernardy wrote: post #3

I suspect I'll never get why the notion of giving a tax handout to a company that's one of the most valuable in the world shouldn't be a non-starter. > Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental…

If you want to somehow ban the concept nationally, fine, but otherwise if a city/state doesn't play the incentive game they will probably just lose out to others that will.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#26

Post by graeme »

ddebernardy wrote: post #10
graeme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google creates jobs in long island city, they would get the same handout though. Any company locating there does: it's a program NY state and NYC made to encourage development outside of Manhattan.

So in other words, you're suggesting that the handout was baked in from the get go because the HQ was in Queens, and Amazon being Amazon had nothing to do with it? If that's the case, the media have done a terrible job reporting this.

Yup, that's exactly it. As others mentioned, $2.5 billion of the three billion were credits any company can access. $500 million was related to the site amazon chose, a dilapidated area which the state wanted to encourage development of.

(I mean the specific HQ site within LIC)

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#27

Post by tombert »

As someone who actually lives in NYC and would probably benefit personally from their HQ2 opening since my property-value would probably go up, I honestly wasn't terribly upset to hear that Amazon was leaving.

I am a little annoyed that only New Yorkers are paying the brunt of criticism on this. "If NYers hadn't complained so much then we'd have $27billion of revenue!!". But that's ridiculous; Amazon left NY because they felt like they had resistance, but you wouldn't know this based on the follow-up conversations.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#28

Post by tehlike »

sp332 wrote: post #16
tehlike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant see why hq2 location cannot be based on bidding. Tax breaks are part of negotiation. Math is clear.

Well the laws should be applied equally to everyone, including tax laws. That's a pretty simple principle. If you're going to make an exception, you need to reassure people that rule of law is still a thing and you're not just letting a company buy a different set of laws for themselves, which is kinda what this looks like.

I get the rule of law aspect, but law leaves room for negotiation for this, otherwise someone woyld have sued the city, no?

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#29

Post by noahA »

spamizbad wrote: post #23
smallgovt wrote: post #2

I think it's sad that the vocal minority was able to alter this decision. As the letter mentions, the project would have brought $27b in revenue to the state. This magnitude of revenue is material considering the fact that the state only collected $76b in taxes in the last reported fiscal year. I think there's reason to debate whether large corps should be able to hold an auction like this, but given the place we fin…

I'm glad they dropped it. There are some grounded concerns: * Amazon is one of the most successful enterprises in human history and should not require support from taxpayers beyond their voluntary patronage of Amazon itself. * Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight…

Would the bulk of the taxes paid by Amazon be paid back? The article said that Amazon would get $3 billion in existing credits (i.e. not deal specific, just business tax credits) and would be paying ~$27 billion. Seems like a steal for NY.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#30

Post by throwaway0220 »

graeme wrote: post #5
ddebernardy wrote: post #3

I suspect I'll never get why the notion of giving a tax handout to a company that's one of the most valuable in the world shouldn't be a non-starter. > Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental…

If google creates jobs in long island city, they would get the same handout though. Any company locating there does: it's a program NY state and NYC made to encourage development outside of Manhattan.

> If google creates jobs in long island city, they would get the same handout though.

Nops [1][2].

[1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/google-to-invest-usd1...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plans-large-new-york-cit...

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