Get Sick of ‘Winning’

New York is offering vastly more than Virginia for its half of the new Amazon headquarters. What’s up with that? The city and state ponied up nearly $3 billion in grants, credits and so on over 25 years. Down south, Amazon is getting $573 million plus $195 million in infrastructure upgrades. Sure looks like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos just fleeced Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio as rubes.

On the preceding page, E.J. McMahon notes one possible explanation: New York had to pay more to cover Amazon’s added costs for using all-union construction workers. If that’s the deal — and the praise from building-trades honcho Gary LaBarbera suggests it is — then it’s the taxpayers who are getting fleeced.

Most important, Amazon simply isn’t that big a “get.” As Nicole Gelinas notes, it’s offering to create 2,500 jobs a year — a drop in the bucket of the city’s employment growth since 2008. Meaning “the city, as a whole, will barely notice these new jobs.”

Plus, she points out: “Google has hired 10,000 people in New York without massive subsidies.”

Yes, Cuomo and de Blasio get bragging rights: They “won” Amazon’s competition. But it’s likely the company always wanted to come to the nation’s media and finance capital — and a metro area that ranks fifth in the nation in Recode’s rankings for tech-talent pools. (DC, the other winner, is third.)

The competition was just a way to maximize its “development” bribes — and both “winners” overpaid.

State Sen. Cathy Young (R-Allegany) contrasted the Amazon deal with news that the Erie County-based New Era Cap will close its Derby plant next March. More than 200 workers will lose their jobs in 2019. Why celebrate a gift to a corporate giant to locate in a part of the state “where job opportunities are plentiful?”

It’s hard to argue with her conclusion: “The winner in this deal isn’t New York, and it certainly isn’t the taxpayers.”