What to Know
- Two Queens politicians have expressed "serious reservations" over Amazon's reported plan to split its HQ2 between Queens and Virginia
- The New York Times reported that Amazon was "nearing a deal" to split the headquarters between Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City
- In a joint statement, Sen. Michael Gianaris and NYC Council member Jimmy Van Bramer said they were "not elected to serve as Amazon drones"
A pair of New York City politicians expressed “serious reservations” over Amazon’s reported plan to split its new headquarters between Crystal City in Virginia and Long Island City in Queens.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the e-commerce behemoth was “nearing a deal” to split the headquarters, known as HQ2, between the two cities, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying the state had “a great incentive package” to entice the company to New York.
In a joint statement on Sunday, however, Sen. Michael Gianaris and New York City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, whose districts include Long Island City, maintained that “[o]ffering massive corporate welfare from scarce public resources to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world at a time of great need in our state is just wrong.”
The Times reported that New York had “offered potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies” to Amazon.
“If public reports about this deal prove true, we cannot support a giveaway of this magnitude, a process that circumvents community review through the use of a GPP [General Project Plan] or the inevitable stress on the infrastructure of a community already stretched to its limits,” Gianaris and Van Bramer said in their statement.
“We were not elected to serve as Amazon drones,” they added. “The burden should not be on the 99 percent to prove we are worthy of the 1 percent’s presence in our communities, but rather on Amazon to prove it would be a responsible corporate neighbor.”
Local
NBC 4 New York has reached out to Amazon for comment.
