“They realize that part of the site selection process now is creating goodwill among the public and among lawmakers,” he said.
Meanwhile, opponents of the subsidies are feeling emboldened by what they are calling Amazon’s “defeat.”
“This is a huge victory for community organizing that is strengthening the efforts underway in Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of the watchdog group Good Jobs First, in a statement.
Arlington and Nashville were the other two winners in the HQ2 sweepstakes, with 25,000 jobs slated to go to Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood, and 5,000 jobs going to a new operations center in Nashville. Both locations could get some of the jobs that were to go to New York, but now activist groups in both cities are intensifying their efforts to win concessions from Amazon.
“Together, we will continue pressing our demands that Amazon show up in our communities to listen to community members about real concerns regarding jobs, displacement, rising costs, lack of transparency, and shutting communities out of processes,” said a statement by an as-yet-unnamed coalition of more than 20 community groups including the Center for Popular Democracy, New Virginia Majority, and Stand Up Nashville.
Boyd said Amazon simply overplayed its hand.
“A lot of this backlash I think was foreseeable,” he said.
That is not to say that the whole concept of states and municipalities offering incentives for corporate relocations is dead. On the contrary. It is just that the process normally plays out much more quietly. Governments have also become more aggressive about inserting provisions in incentive deals to protect taxpayers if companies do not keep their promises about adding jobs.
“That has been the trend over the past decade,” Boyd said. “Clawback provisions are crafted very carefully.”
Another trend is that incentive packages are less focused on pure giveaways like tax breaks, and more geared toward things like workforce development and infrastructure improvements, which companies prize, and the public is more likely to support.
“An argument can be made that incentives actually serve a public good in some way,” Boyd said.
from Viral News Updates http://bit.ly/2EdiRmy
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