At the first public meeting since the announcement of the new Amazon HQ2 location in Crystal City, Arlington County Board members disclosed that it took a backseat to Virginia state government in negotiations to clench the deal with the online retail giant. The Board also said that Virginia limited the information and documents it shared with the county.
Crystal City in Arlington, Va., and Long Island, N.Y., prevailed over 238 applicant cities in a 14-month selection process to land the new divided Amazon headquarters. The company plans to employ 25,000 workers in both locations. Amazon will establish a smaller “Operations Center of Excellence” in Nashville, Tenn.
Amazon was not on the agenda for Saturday morning’s regularly scheduled Board meeting, but Board members addressed some aspects of the huge news, which drew dozens of protesters to the meeting with signs and banners.
The Board described many of the local infrastructure projects promised to Amazon as long-planned but unfunded. Board member Libby Garvey said Arlington was getting state money for projects already approved in the Capital Improvement Plan, which will “make life better for people here in Arlington,” she said. “There will be new problems, but overall, they’re good problems to have.”
Virginia handled nearly all the negotiations with Amazon and took the lead in forming the incentive package, Board members said.
“The reality is, there really wasn’t a whole lot that was actually coming to the Board. It was all being driven by the state, and what did come to the board is now completely public knowledge,” Board member Erik Gutshall said.
They appeared to be unconcerned about mostly being excluded from a process that could have a major impact on the County’s housing market, infrastructure, population, schools and culture. Arlington and Alexandria have already re-branded the area to be occupied by Amazon’s new headquarters–which includes Crystal City and parts of Pentagon City and Potomac Yard–as “National Landing.”
Garvey said she had encountered assumptions that she was “arm-wrestling Amazon at the table,” but this wasn’t so. “Most of this was done on the state level. We really don’t, didn’t know much,” she said.
Vice Chair Christian Dorsey described a “firewall” between the Commonwealth and the county. “The State did what it did, and we have done what we have done,” he said. “We will transparently reveal what we have done. The easy part of it … is, it’s not much.”
All Board members tried to assuage transparency concerns. “There just isn’t some treasure trove of information that if only you could lay your hands on, there would be this kind of aha, I knew it, they were all in cahoots with each other,” Gutshall said.
County Attorney Steve MacIsaac said that Virginia was forthcoming with information and “strategies,” but not documents. “The state has been very close to the vest on a lot of this stuff,” he said.
The state’s tight-fistedness with documents might have had a purpose. Virginia officials signed on to an agreement that the state will withhold as much information as it legally can about the Crystal City headquarters and even warn Amazon when state public records laws would fail to prevent disclosure.
The Board said that it had not signed such an agreement with Amazon, but MacIsaac was asked to give his opinion on whether Arlington was under the same obligations. The agreement between the state and Amazon, he said, did not “preclude our ability to do something.” But, without possession of documents, the county’s ability to respond to FOIA requests “simply doesn’t exist.”
There were hints that the Board still might not know everything. “Information we don’t have and never had, we can’t share, because we don’t have it,” Garvey said. “And everything that we do have and that we’re working through, we will share, and it will come down to that vote [on the incentive package] in February.”
Dozens of protestors from Our Revolution Arlington, the Green Party of Arlington and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) showed up at the meeting to register their discontent at being left in the dark during deal-making with Amazon. Virginia crafted an incentive package of $550 million, and Arlington offered $51 million in direct subsidies with no public input. They were gagged on Saturday by a rule preventing them from mentioning Amazon by name during public comments.
“We’ve come before the Board on several occasions to express our concerns about the economic wisdom of incentive packages for large corporations and the potential negative impacts on the most vulnerable communities in our county,” Tim Dempsey of Our Revolution Arlington said.
He advocated for a private community benefits agreement that would include funding for affordable housing, a continuing land trust, local hiring and procurement partners and a project labor agreement. “It is not too late for the county to turn this deal into a community wealth-building opportunity … instead of extractive economic development,” he said.
In general, Board members agreed that using a land trust as a vehicle for funding affordable housing was a good idea.
The possibility that an influx of Amazon workers would raise rents and housing prices even higher in Arlington was a big concern. Haydn Dooth told the Board that he and his wife had lived in Crystal City, and he had even proposed to her there, but they were “priced out” a year ago. With tears in his eyes, he said he would love to come back to Arlington but couldn’t afford it. Board Chair Katie Cristol suggested that he look into an affordable housing program that the county offers.
Josh Folb, Chair of the Arlington Education Association Compensation Committee, urged the Board to increase staff salaries at county schools. Without competitive salaries that offset cost increases, he said, it will be difficult to attract and retain teachers and staff. As it is, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and administrative assistants can’t afford to live in Arlington.
A man who said he was a disabled veteran disrupted the meeting and stormed out, angry that he was prevented from speaking about Amazon directly.
James McCormack of Democratic Socialists of America called the procedural rule to bar comments on topics not on the meeting agenda a “bureaucratic maneuver to deflect, delay and discredit voices that are in opposition to them.”
“They want to ignore the voices of people, don’t want to hear how their decisions are negatively impacting thousands of people,” he said.
He was also skeptical of the Board’s claims that Virginia made the crucial calls when it came to the Amazon deal, while its own involvement was minimal. “It was typical buck-passing,” McCormack said. “[If we talked to Ralph Northam, he] would say Arlington County was really in the driver’s seat. … It’s the equivalent of calling the DMV and getting passed to another department when you have a complaint.”
Arlington County will hold a virtual townhall meeting on Monday, November 26 at 7 pm and will schedule in-person townhalls on the Amazon incentives before the February Board vote on the package.
