Mayor Bill de Blasio strongly defended New York City’s incentive package for Amazon to build its second headquarters and bring thousands of jobs in Long Island City.
On Monday, during the New York State Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee hearing, de Blasio said Amazon asked for additional and specific, tailored made incentives.” His administration “refused” and explained to the e-commerce giant that they “not doing that anymore in New York City.”
“The incentives they got were through existing state incentive programs that any company could access… We did not offer any additional incentives, period. Everything was pre-existent,” said de Blasio.
In addition, he pointed out that it was important for New York City to get the tech jobs that Amazon is bringing to the area.
Amazon jobs will create “seismic impact”
According to him, “We had a real live choice to make — 25,000 to 40,000 jobs, many of them good paying, that New Yorkers really want and that would be available to a wide range of New Yorkers. We want to build up our tech community, so to me it was mission critical that this city get those jobs rather than other cities.”
