typically these massive corporate incentives are just a part of the corporatist strategy of pitting all American cities against each other in order to get a com

typically these massive corporate incentives are just a part of the corporatist strategy of pitting all American cities against each other in order to get a company to set up shop there (look no further than Amazon's scheme from this summer accepting 'applications' (per-se) from different cities for HQ2 - many suspect this is just a scheme to force Seattle into more favorable tax incentives, etc which they previously were unwilling to offer). Whether the city's leadership truly believe the corporation will aid them is up in the air, most of the time the city loses out, and the corporation leaves when the incentives dry up. If you're optimistic, than many city council members just get unlucky because it is 100% 'beneficial in theory and just not in practice'. If you're a little more skeptical, given this corporatist strong arming happens nationwide constantly, it is just the reality of corporations exploiting cities.