Good Jobs First Blog

With the HQ2 contest now concluded, additional cities are releasing details on their Amazon HQ2 bids. Bid amounts in this blog include both city and state incentives. With the exception of HQ2 “winners” New York City, Arlington Va. and Nashville, all cities’ bids are based on Amazon’s original proposal that

A new Good Jobs First report finds that many large corporations operating in the United States have boosted their profits by forcing employees to work off the clock, cheating them out of required overtime pay and engaging in similar practices that together are known as wage theft.

In a recent update of its Implementation Guide, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) defied the recommendations of many commenters and ruled that most tax increment financing (TIF) spending will remain undisclosed.

The ruling is a major blow to GASB’s Statement 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures, the new rule that

Washington, DC—As Amazon.com conducts site visits at the 20 finalist locations for its second headquarters, or HQ2 project, little is known about most of those localities’ first-round bids, and almost nothing at all is known about six. Even though billions of dollars are at stake, few states and cities have fully disclosed their bids. Even those that have partially disclosed have not revealed the details of their tax-break offers and their costs to taxpayers.

In response to many inquiries we have received since releasing our study, Will Amazon Fool Us Twice?, about aggressive subsidy-gathering behavior by the online retail giant (and to mark Amazon's made-up "Prime Day"), Good Jobs First issued a WARN Act tip for reporters on how to add additional context to Amazon.com's claim of "creating" 100,000 jobs.