“Amazon’s decision to back out of their deal with New York State clearly demonstrates their desire to work behind closed doors rather than with approval from local stakeholders, organizations and the New York Legislature as a whole. While I strongly believe that the $3 billion in publicly funded tax credits should instead go towards helping the Upstate economy and struggling business owners, I ultimately think the outcome of this deal could have been very different if the discussion was had in a more transparent manner. At the end of the day, we as legislators have the responsibility to take a hard look at whether or not we are using taxpayer dollars wisely - in this instance, and unlike other states that were offered a similar deal, we were not even given the opportunity to offer input.”