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I mostly agree with your sentiment (as I understand it), but I think your approach is overly simplistic. Specifically, this: > If communities want to mortgage

by ptero 8y ago

I mostly agree with your sentiment (as I understand it), but I think your approach is overly simplistic. Specifically, this: > If communities want to mortgage certain parts of their cities, that is their prerogative. That (usually) works OK for small communities with residents paying for their decision, for example a condo complex community debating whether to build a pool or a playground. For HQ2-scale projects the decision to mortgage parts of a city is done by bureaucrats that have no long-term financial stake in the result: they are here today, gone tomorrow. Letting them decide such things (often in secrecy) is way too cavalier. My 2c.

kodablah 8y ago
> is done by bureaucrats that have no long-term financial stake in the result This is true in many cases (and not in others, such as sports team funding which are often voted on). If we want to have a more nuanced discussion about transparency and direct representation on financial decisions of a certain size (a hot button issue concerning being able to vote on property taxes in my state), that would be reasonable. But it's hard to have these kinds of discussions with pro-tax/anti-company-concession advocates shouting so loudly. In the meantime, on the scale of politicians with less representation to their constituency, using a federal level mallet is the exact opposite of representative. The city I live in gave large tax breaks and land to companies moving in, seemingly unfairly so compared to existing local companies, but if most of us didn't like the outcome (which most of us do and applaud their appetite for growth/prosperity) we'd have no problem running the mayor and councilmen out of town.
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  And with the mayor run out of town, you'd still be left holding the bill.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kodablah 8y ago
    Of course, as I might be with a new road project or any other commitment. As is Amazon even if their CEO is fired. I suppose I don't understand the relevance of pointing out the obvious here. If we're asserting fraud, that is a different discussion, otherwise we live with decisions by decision makers, some beyond their term.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> For HQ2-scale projects the decision to mortgage parts of a city is done by bureaucrats Requiring these sorts of subsidies to be approved by a majority of a city's voters wouldn't be a bad restriction to put in place. I'm a New Yorker, and I'm fine with the blood money we had to pay to ensure we got Amazon. But I'd feel much better if I knew it was supported by a majority of voting New Yorkers.
- count 8y ago
  You voted on it by proxy: electing your officials who approved the deal.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jimbobimbo 8y ago
If local officials, elected by local residents, are not allowed to make such decisions, then who is?
- 1ris 8y ago
  What about residents? Olympic bids for example have been way less popular with the residents then with the officials, recently.
  - jimbobimbo 8y ago
    Local officials are not coming out of thin air - local residents are the ones who are electing local officials.
    - 1ris 8y ago
      You are moving gloal posts. Residents have more legitimacy than officials. And often differen views, cf. Olympic applications.
      - jimbobimbo 8y ago
        I'm not sure how did you reach this conclusion. My position is: locality needs to be in charge of these decisions. From my perspective, the easiest way to that is to treat local officials as a proxy to local residents. Now, you can argue that "some decisions" must be subject to a popular vote of local residents, but this is not the argument that I was engaging with - it's more of an implementation detail of "locality needs to be in charge of these decisions" principle.

by ptero 8y ago

kodablah 8y ago

> is done by bureaucrats that have no long-term financial stake in the result This is true in many cases (and not in others, such as sports team funding which are often voted on). If we want to have a more nuanced discussion about transparency and direct representation on financial decisions of a certain size (a hot button issue concerning being able to vote on property taxes in my state), that would be reasonable. But it's hard to have these kinds of discussions with pro-tax/anti-company-concession advocates shouting so loudly. In the meantime, on the scale of politicians with less representation to their constituency, using a federal level mallet is the exact opposite of representative. The city I live in gave large tax breaks and land to companies moving in, seemingly unfairly so compared to existing local companies, but if most of us didn't like the outcome (which most of us do and applaud their appetite for growth/prosperity) we'd have no problem running the mayor and councilmen out of town.

metalliqaz 8y ago
And with the mayor run out of town, you'd still be left holding the bill.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kodablah 8y ago
  Of course, as I might be with a new road project or any other commitment. As is Amazon even if their CEO is fired. I suppose I don't understand the relevance of pointing out the obvious here. If we're asserting fraud, that is a different discussion, otherwise we live with decisions by decision makers, some beyond their term.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> For HQ2-scale projects the decision to mortgage parts of a city is done by bureaucrats Requiring these sorts of subsidies to be approved by a majority of a city's voters wouldn't be a bad restriction to put in place. I'm a New Yorker, and I'm fine with the blood money we had to pay to ensure we got Amazon. But I'd feel much better if I knew it was supported by a majority of voting New Yorkers.

count 8y ago
You voted on it by proxy: electing your officials who approved the deal.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

jimbobimbo 8y ago

If local officials, elected by local residents, are not allowed to make such decisions, then who is?

1ris 8y ago
What about residents? Olympic bids for example have been way less popular with the residents then with the officials, recently.
- jimbobimbo 8y ago
  Local officials are not coming out of thin air - local residents are the ones who are electing local officials.
  - 1ris 8y ago
    You are moving gloal posts. Residents have more legitimacy than officials. And often differen views, cf. Olympic applications.
    - jimbobimbo 8y ago
      I'm not sure how did you reach this conclusion. My position is: locality needs to be in charge of these decisions. From my perspective, the easiest way to that is to treat local officials as a proxy to local residents. Now, you can argue that "some decisions" must be subject to a popular vote of local residents, but this is not the argument that I was engaging with - it's more of an implementation detail of "locality needs to be in charge of these decisions" principle.