While some local opposition was to be expected, Cuomo said, the project’s political opponents were being unreasonable. “I’ve never seen a more absurd situation,” the governor said at an unrelated event on Long Island.
Cuomo’s comments came as tensions over the deal for Amazon to build a vast corporate campus in Queens have been simmering for days.
The selection of a vocal Amazon opponent to a crucial state board with potential veto power over the deal riled those inside Amazon — and inside of the governor’s mansion — according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Executives have grown increasingly frustrated that the company is not being welcomed in New York as it has been in Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee, two other places where Amazon is adding corporate offices.
Those tensions spilled into public view Friday when The Washington Post published an article that said the company was reconsidering its plans to come to Queens. But the two people with direct knowledge of the company’s thinking said Amazon had no plans to back out.
An Amazon spokesman declined to respond to the report.
Inside the company, discussions have intensified about political developments in New York since the selection by Democrats in the state Senate of Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens to the Public Authorities Control Board, a little-known entity that could eventually block the development plan.
Amazon executives are concerned the company will have invested significant money and time on the plan only to have it shot down by the board, said one of the people, who like others familiar with the internal conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings.
But company executives did not share those concerns with the Democratic majority leader of the state Senate, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, when they met with her Tuesday. The executives gave no indication that they were changing their plans to come to New York City, according to a person who was briefed on the meeting.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.