Secrecy

What to Know: Amazon’s high-profile search for a new headquarters site brought attention to secrecy in negotiating economic incentive deals. Some companies are now asking for non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), though the incentives in question are funded by taxpayers.

“The competition for HQ2, one of the biggest local development projects in years, with 50,000 jobs and $5 billion of potential investment, thrust NDAs into the spotlight,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Amazon decided this month to split the new headquarters between New York City and Northern Virginia, ending a process that started in 2017. Amazon required many of the 238 bidders to sign one-page NDAs that barred local officials from revealing ‘all nonpublic information relating to Amazon or disclosed by Amazon…that is designated as confidential or that…reasonably should be considered as confidential,’ according to three such agreements reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.”

The TPPF Take: Taxpayer funds should never be committed in secret.

“Secrecy has no place in state and local economic development,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “People should be privy to every detail of how officials are committing public money, land, and other resources. Period.”

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