When Amazon abandoned its plans to build a new headquarters in New York, the foes of corporate greed declared victory. Yet, should all the outrage be aimed at Amazon?

Certainly, in an era of concentrated wealth, taxpayers in big cities and small towns like Elwood, Ill., are rightly fed up with companies for accepting tax incentives in exchange for investments they most likely would have made anyway or that result in empty job promises. Amazon faced blistering criticism for pitting cities against one another in a bidding war for such incentives, and even more criticism for accepting a $3 billion subsidy package from the winner of that bidding war, New York.

But the role of public officials in this controversy deserves more scrutiny. Too often, they agree to economic development deals that fail to protect the interests of their constituents and negotiate through a process that is closed door and top down. State and local officials continue to hand out goodies even though evidence suggests that such subsidies have little effect on jobs.

In New York, the governor and mayor structured an agreement with Amazon using policy tools already established in the law. Amazon received “as-of-right” incentives, which are given automatically when a company wants to expand or relocate its facilities. New York’s as-of-right incentives, which are available to any company in a priority industry for the state that goes to a borough outside Manhattan , have been widely criticized as flawed and outdated. The amount of incentives offered ballooned to billions of dollars because of the proposed job count. Additionally, the city and state agreed that Amazon would not need to go through a local land-use review process, prompting the City Council to cry foul. Soon, a vocal minority of elected officials, labor leaders, and community activists revolted against the deal.