On Tuesday, Amazon announced that it would split its much-ballyhooed HQ2 between two cities: New York and Crystal City, an area just outside Washington, D.C. New York is obviously heavy Democratic territory; the headquarters will be located in Queens, for whom the congressperson is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And Northern Virginia is a similarly Democratic area.
So, what goodies did Democrats give Jeff Bezos and Amazon for the privilege of hosting their new headquarters? According to Jim Geraghty of National Review, the state of Virginia will give Amazon some $573 million to produce some 25,000 jobs, and Arlington will give Amazon $23 million over 15 years. As Geraghty points out, “Arlington is raising taxes in order to pay Amazon to locate there.” Meanwhile, New York opened its goodie bag as well, with Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio grinning through the announcement that the state would give Amazon some $2 billion in tax credits and other incentives. They will receive direct incentives of $1.525 billion for creating 25,000 jobs — an average of $61,000 per job created. As The New York Times reports:
The state also offered a capital grant to the company that could total as much as $500 million that Amazon can use to build new offices. It will also apply for additional incentives through existing city programs available to any company, Amazon said. Tax experts said those programs, for hiring workers in boroughs outside Manhattan and for commercial development, could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. – READ MORE