[arjie]

The common dangers are:

* you offer a tax break to a guy who was going to come anyway

* you give away the entire surplus - i.e. the sales tax is how you were going to see things anyway

* you don't capture any of the non-tax surplus (i.e. not many jobs, or jobs are all across county lines)

Some of these are fine because states should make cross-county decisions but the others are a matter of negotiation and I think states find they see more money if they advertise willingness a priori with a durable promise. Overall, I think it's hard to be in the position. I would probably also do what they did, but if someone used any of those justifications to not do it, I would probably also understand.