Spare us the silver linings
Wake up, Pittsburgh. Stop selling the store to give big corporations an advantage over local businesses, urges ROBERT B. ENGEL of Free & Fair Markets
Amazon settled on New York City and northern Virginia for its second headquarters, so cue months of face-saving from Pittsburgh policymakers who offered up a whopping $9.6 billion for HQ2 by one estimate. But don’t they know that residents can see through it? It’s clear as day that the entire HQ2 process was a charade from the get-go, and that Amazon walked away with sensitive city data on economic development plans and infrastructure investments that is sure to give the company a giant leg up over Steel City businesses for decades to come.
Here’s a thought: Rather than serving up half-baked justifications and silver linings, Pittsburgh lawmakers should promise to never again volunteer billions of dollars and troves of economic development and infrastructure information in attempts to lure any corporation to put down roots in the city. This give-away-the-store approach makes it nearly impossible for local companies to compete.
By fielding bids from 238 municipalities, Amazon obtained details about public education and transportation systems, local talent pools and unoccupied real estate. For example, San Francisco’s 160-page proposal describes major housing development plans and offers a chart with a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown. Wisconsin’s bid includes statistics about university and college graduates and what kinds of degrees they got. Toledo’s bid provides details about possible sites
for a major corporate headquarters, including zoning, ownership and even the utility companies that deliver services to each site.
Pittsburgh’s voluminous proposal for HQ2 is a data dump that rivals the rest. In includes information about labor and wage rates, universities’ programs and partnerships, transportation systems, housing capacity, crime rates, health care costs and energy costs. Armed with this amount of information on the city and local communities, Amazon could quickly leap into a neighborhood of its choice and force out small businesses that have no way to see the tech giant coming.
The toll on businesses and local economies across the country could be disastrous. Benefiting from seemingly endless special treatment, Amazon already has rapidly expanded its shipping and distribution network and gained an unprecedented competitive edge.
Now, because of the HQ2 bidding process, Amazon knows when, where and how communities plan to invest — data every local business should have access to as well. It is outrageous that Amazon has insider information.
Pittsburgh leaders need to swear off giving away massive amounts of data in desperate attempts to get major corporations to do business in the city. And while they are at it, they should tell Amazon that they can well afford to build future facilities on their own dime — taxpayers are tired of underwriting Amazon’s growth and record profits by giving up their hard-earned tax dollars through subsidies and giveaways.
The ugly truth is that there is no silver lining to the HQ2 process, but it should serve as a wake-up call that corporate kowtowing is a loser’s game.