Tennessee wants to keep its incentives offer for Amazon's HQ2 secret for 5 years

Tennessee state officials have refused to release information about the state's incentives pitch to Amazon for the company's second headquarters.

A spokesman for the Department of Economic and Community Development, citing an exception to the state public records law, said the attorney general plans to keep the records sealed for five years.

Open records laws are meant to allow the public to scrutinize government operations. In this case, hundreds of millions of tax dollars were likely at stake.

Seeing how much Tennessee offered would help taxpayers understand public officials' fiscal priorities, and how Amazon was treated compared to other companies looking to locate or expand in Tennessee.

"I think that this administration should explain why they think it would be harmful to release the details of the proposal," said Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, which advocates for open records. "They are no longer in negotiations."

Typically, the state keeps secret its negotiations with companies, but once a deal has been signed, information about the incentives becomes public.

The Tennessean and other media outlets requested records after Amazon announced its new Nashville logistics center in November.

Economic and Community Development spokesman Scott Harrison on Friday released a statement saying details about the pitch would be sealed. The state code he cited allows department Commissioner Bob Rolfe to keep records confidential because of their "sensitive nature," as long as state attorney general agrees.

Instead, Harrison provided a promotional video about Tennessee produced for Amazon that starred Gov. Bill Haslam, and a few other related records. It did not show any financial offers.

What the Amazon pitch included

Ultimately, state and Metro Nashville officials agreed to $102 million in combined grants and tax credits for a scaled-down Amazon office building. The "Operations Center of Excellence" is planned for 5,000 jobs, while the "HQ2" search held out the prospect of 50,000 new jobs. 

Unlike the state, Metro Nashville released the details of its original pitch to Amazon in late November.

At the time of the ptich, then-Mayor Megan Barry offered the company a jobs grant and a property tax break, known as a "payment in lieu of taxes" package that would have allowed the company to avoid paying half of new property taxes generated at its site for 15 years. Nashville's final agreement did not include the tax incentive, which could have amounted to $375 million.

Nashville job grants provide large companies $500 cash per new job created, over a set period of time. Metro offered that subsidy to Amazon, both for the HQ2 deal and the smaller logistics hub. For the new hub, the city is offering Amazon $500 per job for seven years, or $15 million. The Metro Council still has to approve the deal.

For the 5,000 jobs, the state agreed to award Amazon a $65 million cash grant for capital expenditures, as long as Amazon creates the jobs over the next seven years. Also, the state would provide an additional $21.7 million in job tax credits, to offset state franchise and excises taxes.

Reach Mike Reicher at mreicher@tennessean.com or 615-259-8228 and on Twitter @mreicher.