Most of the tax benefits are performance-based and only kick in if Amazon meets certain thresholds for job creation, increases in local hotel stays, and total office space square footage used.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/arlington...

Well, my pessimism got the best of me. I'm guessing states are getting wise to these sorts of things and putting making the incentives performance based now which is encouraging!

Incentives have always largely been performance-based, I believe, but the cases you really hear about are the ones where the jurisdictions are desperate for the investment, and that desperation may make them extremely willing to renegotiate incentives to keep the company from picking up and moving.

The most notable case in recent memory of outlandish incentives is the Foxconn plant in WI, where the original incentives were not paid out as Foxconn failed to meet even the lowest tranche of requisite investment. Wisconsin refused to pay, but this intersected with political sniping (as the Republicans, voted out of office, criticized the new Democratic administration for not paying up). The contract appears to have been renegotiated back to "normal" levels of incentives, which have been paid out as Foxconn has met those levels of investment.

not true

Those are contingent on Amazon actually following thru with their investment

Virginia didn't offer them much, except Arlington County, which through a few hotel tax breaks at them.

VA got the nod because it's right outside of DC and the Pentagon. AWS wants that GovCloud money, and Bezos wants to be near the Washington Post / Congressmen. And for that reason VA didn't have to pander too hard.