The Not-So-Public Public Meeting
Inconvenient public meetings are convenient for extractive corporations.
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The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency (which goes by the acronym NCIDA) today approved about $123 million in tax breaks for a new Amazon warehouse in Niagara, New York, officially sealing one of the largest handouts Amazon has received in the Empire State. The deal is not a good one for the local community, as Amazon will be paying substandard wages for the area and refused to enter into any sort of agreement guaranteeing the use of local labor.
There’s been some pushback against the deal from local residents, even as the political machine in Niagara County has gone all in on Amazon. And those politicos used a key tactic to get Amazon’s handout across the finish line: A “public” meeting where the community can supposedly provide input that isn’t very public at all. This trick is a common one for those who want to push out corporate subsidies without having to worry about public accountability.
Last Wednesday, NCIDA held what was billed as a “public hearing” for the Amazon project, at which residents could testify. But it was held at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, a time that made it functionally impossible for anyone who works during regular hours to attend.
As George Maziarz, a former Republican state senator who made it to the meeting to testify against the deal, said, “It’s insulting from the agency to have a public hearing on a major project that’s going to affect the lives of people, neighborhoods, in Niagara County, at 2 o’clock on a beautiful August afternoon. I’m asking you, number one to reschedule another public hearing, in the evening, when people can attend, when it’s more convenient for people to attend.”
He also noted that only two of the nine NCIDA board members and no Niagara County legislators even came to the meeting, so the residents who made it weren’t able to actually speak to the people who ultimately decided the fate of Amazon’s tax break package.
Another testifier, Anthony Casilio, after noting that the board only allowed comments, not questions about the project, said, “It is truly unfair to have this meeting at this time, when people who are working and who have tax dollars going into this and potentially have significant issues, and they can’t be here to say what they want to say.”
Indeed, having a public meeting at a time when a significant swathe of the public won’t realistically be able to attend isn’t really a public meeting in any normal sense of the word. It’s a box-checking exercise by local officials who are either required or feel bound to allow for some sort of public input, but don’t want to deal with real public input.
This ploy is one of many in the mix that corporations and pliant public officials use to delay or block local residents from publicly voicing their feelings about subsidy deals until it’s too late. (Amazon’s Niagara project was, for months, only listed as “Project Fifi” on official documents, to avoid the Amazon association.)
A similar thing happened recently in Detroit: The city council there voted to provide $60 million in tax breaks to Dan Gilbert — the billionaire owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers — to support a new development called Hudson Yards. The president pro tem of the Detroit council, James Tate, voted no, saying, “it was not noticed for the public that this was going to be a vote today.”
Another council member who voted no, Angela Whitfield-Calloway, claims she didn’t even know the specifics of the deal before it was brought up for a vote — and if she didn’t, the public surely didn’t either, and without adequate public notice, didn’t know to show up to voice opposition to a giant handout to a billionaire’s project.
These faux-public meetings only ensure that extractive corporations get what they want from local leaders without having to deal with any messy opinions from the actual people who will be affected. It’s a gross but very effective tactic.
Though this is easier said than done, since the beneficiaries of the current system like it just the way it is, thank you very much, state and local officials can require real opportunities for the public to have a say on corporate subsidy deals.
This can be accomplished by, for example, requiring that public meetings be noticed well in advance and be held at a time and location when and where members of the public can realistically attend, and failing to take those steps would nullify the deal.
No time of day is ever going to be perfect, of course — having a meeting in the evening can be hard for people who have small children, for instance — but avoiding prime working hours seems like a pretty good place to start.
The Amazon deal in Niagara, and the local government’s refusal to push for substantive returns for the community, is particularly galling because just a few miles away, another community said no thanks to the same warehouse, even though Amazon was willing to commit to more community benefits. Amazon simply moved down the road, tried again, and found more amenable public officials, even though residents in Niagara voiced many of the same concerns that scuttled the earlier project.
Who knows if earlier or more public involvement could have resulted in a better deal for Niagara, but it likely wouldn’t have hurt — and I’m willing to bet that’s why Amazon and NCIDA did what they did.
As always, the secrecy and lack of transparency is the point.
SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: I talked to New York Focus about the Niagara-Amazon warehouse deal. You can read it here. I was also the guest author on Tuesday for Walt Hickey’s excellent Numlock News newsletter. You can read my edition here and subscribe to Numlock here.
ONE MORE THING: An update from Kansas’ recent deal with Panasonic.
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— Pat Garofalo