My cynical side says that this is a feature, not a bug - a litmus test to see whether or not the selected city will be politically pliable under Amazon's significant financial leverage.

Any city that can't pass (or force through) favorable legislation isn't one that Amazon would want to choose long-term anyway, especially viewed in the context of their relationships with local governments in Seattle [0]. The key point here is that this is a descriptive feature that's hard to ask about, but easy to test for.

0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2018/07/31/good-new...