On Thursday, July 28 at 1 p.m. ET, Rep. Eskamani joined the American Economic Liberties Project, New York Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris and other state and community leaders for an important conversation and workshop about the harms of secret deals and why states must ban them to protect workers, consumers, local economies, and democracies.
You can watch the full conversation here and check out some of the examples Rep. Eskamani outlined below.
- St. Johns County (Jacksonville suburbs) approved a $24 million package last year for an “unidentified tech firm”: Read more here
- The city of Tallahassee negotiated a secret multimillion-dollar incentive package for Amazon under the code name “Project Cyprus”: Read more here
- Pasco County (Tampa suburbs) just approved nearly $1 million in incentives for an unidentified manufacturing company under the code name “Project Lexus”: Read more here
- Last year, the Florida Legislature extended a data center subsidy that was supposed to expire for after five years. The Legislature extended it for another five years even though we STILL don’t know the intended recipient of this subsidy. We do know that whoever it is will buy land from a company owned by sugar giant Florida Crystals, though. Read more here.
And some closing points:
- Secrecy leads to taxpayers paying for things that would happen anyway: A couple of years ago, Universal Studios was able to negotiate a $350 million corporate tax break with the state of Florida without anyone from the public ever knowing about it. This money was to incentive Universal to build another *theme park* in *Orlando*. Universal would not, and could not, have built this theme park anywhere else. And the public only learned about it because a reporter happened to stumble into an email about it in a records request seeking other records. Read more here.
- Secrecy hides the fact that it is big businesses and giant multinational corporations that swallow up most of these deals – the sort of companies that are LEAST in need of being propped up by taxpayers: Over the past few years, the state of Florida has awarded “Job Growth” grants that were ostensibly for Orange County, the tiny town of Callahan in North Florida, Sumter County, the city of Melbourne and the city of Lakeland. But these grants were ultimately spent on projects propping up Universal Studios, Florida Power & Light, The Villages, Embraer and Amazon. Read more here.
- Secrecy leads to governments making more deals that they later come to regret: In December, Daytona Beach city commissioners approved a bunch of land-use changes for a company despite not being told what was prompting the changes. A month later, they learned it was for an Amazon warehouse that would generate 630 truck trips a day. Now, they – and their constituents – are angry and want to undo the deal. Read more here.