City Council To Hold Hearings on Amazon Deal

The fight over the deal to bring Amazon to Long Island City continues. City Council members plan to grill top officials from the city, state and Amazon at a series of hearings starting next month.

Council speaker Corey Johnson said the first hearing, at City Hall on Dec. 12, will review how the deal unfolded; a second hearing in January will look at the nearly $3 billion Amazon is getting in city and state incentives; and a third hearing in February will look at the impact on the local neighborhood.

"Our goal with the Amazon hearings is to provide a public forum and a level of transparency — so we can ask the questions that have been avoided by not having a public process, by having government officials sign non-disclosure agreements —and ensure that this is a good deal for New York City, New York State and New York taxpayers," Johnson said. "If this deal was done in a transparent way, we wouldn't have to do these hearings." 

Queens Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, whose district includes the site, is one of the deal's most vocal opponents. He said council lawyers are working around the clock to review the agreement, and will be listening closely to the hearings. "They are anxious to delve into some of these things a lot further because there are a lot of questions that need to be answered," he said.

For example, council members said they'll be looking at the privately-owned Plaxall site, which they say was taken out of the regular zoning review and folded into the Amazon deal.

It's also likely that the project will have to come before the Public Authorities Control Board, an obscure board that oversees certain projects financed by the state. The governor, State Assembly majority and minority, and Senate majority each appoint a board member. The board rejected plans for the West Side Stadium a decade ago.

But Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio are sticking to their positions: that Amazon is a really good deal for New York and will bring at least 25,000 jobs and pump nearly 30 billion dollars into the tax base.