Comment by elliotpage

As you say, the distrust is backed up by evidence and by their own personal experience of the same promises getting trotted out time after time, generation after generation.

These people, these communities, have been promised these same things before (or things adjacent to them) and have seen them not deliver, or even make their situation worse.

This is especially true of the tax income and job generation elements. The estimates provided as part of the deal are utterly divorced from reality- people know it and refuse to take part in the kayfabe that surrounds it.