Cavallaro: The costs involved in drawing Amazon to the region - libn.com

There’s been almost unanimous lamentation for decades about the brain drain in New York and the losing of corporate jobs etc. Now, when one of the most dynamic and prosperous companies of this era wants to bring upwards of 25,000 new high-paying jobs to New York, and possibly reverse the trend of companies leaving, both right and left find a reason to be critical.

To be sure, it would be better to attract these kinds of companies and jobs by cutting taxes and regulations. But, the fact is that New York is (and will remain) a high-cost, high-tax state. The reason that the incentives from New York were higher than Virginia and elsewhere is because they had to be. This was a highly competitive “contest” and to be competitive, New York had to give substantial incentives. Otherwise, Amazon could have just gone to one of the other hundreds of communities that wanted them.

Only in New York would you have such grousing over such a hugely economically impactful development. The impact of those 25,000 jobs, over time, will be many, many billions of dollars of accretive value to the New York economy, not to say anything of the people who will fill those jobs, some of whom will be New York natives. As someone who, at a very low level, thinks about and is worried about the sustainability of one community, this is a home run.

In the final analysis, the cost of drawing them here was very substantial. But the cost of not drawing them here was bigger. New York has to start being competitive in terms of drawing these kinds of jobs and companies. More important than housing, job creation is the number one need. Bring the jobs and the housing and young professionals etc. will follow.

To me, the reaction just shows that every issue or development here is politicized. It just so happens that each side (right and left) in this case has their own reasons for opposing this. That rarely happens, but the reasons that they oppose are political, not substantive and, also, a philosophical ivory tower. The reality is that we should embrace, even at the high cost, this development. It will be a net positive, despite the issues that it creates. But, in New York, nothing that is self-evident is ever self-evident.

In my limited experience in government, at the lowest level, it is apparent to me that you need to deal in realities and not in theoretical exercises, and the reality is that New York will always be a high tax/cost state, so if you want to compete for these kinds of opportunities, if you consider it that, you need to play the game. If you don’t want to compete in this kind of environment, then the reality is that New York will continue to lose jobs and the only people left here will be the poor and those who can’t afford to go elsewhere.

It is a double-edged sword, but to do nothing and just knee-jerk say ‘no’ to this sort of thing, hoping for the paradigm to shift is to see New York doomed for ultimate failure. I guess in my old age I have become less tolerant of the ivory tower, philosophical boxes we put ourselves in, that, I believe, make people take sides and politicize everything just for the sake of ideological purity. That’s OK for college classes and debate teams, but I’d rather get things done.

Peter Cavallaro is the mayor of the Village of Westbury.

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