Maryland leaders are ramping up pressure for President Biden to selected Prince George’s county as the new site for the FBI headquarters, saying the search criteria was updated to favor Virginia instead.
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer (D) called the selection process “not fair” in a press conference on Wednesday, because the search criteria in choosing a site heavily weighed how close the site was to Quantico’s FBI Academy. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), state officials, members of Congress and senators all echoed Hoyer’s sentiment, and declared that Maryland deserves to be selected as the new site for the building.
“All we’re asking was a fair and transparent process and one where a thumb is not being put on the scale to unfairly disadvantage a community that has already been historically disadvantaged,” Moore said on Wednesday. “And we know that with a fair process, Maryland will prevail.”
Moore also wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on Wednesday calling for the Biden administration to build the FBI headquarters in Maryland. He claimed in the piece that moving the headquarters to Maryland would help uplift the Black communities in the state and help close the racial wealth gap.
Congress had directed the General Services Administration (GSA) in 2022 to choose a site for a new FBI facility “as expeditiously as possible” from one of the three choices from the 2016 selection process: Greenbelt, Maryland, Landover, Maryland and Springfield, Virginia. Since then, Maryland leaders have banded together and they made their case to the GSA on Wednesday as to why Prince George’s county should be chosen for the next site.
The agency published five sets of criteria in September for selecting a new location for the FBI headquarters, including how well the site serves the FBI mission, like the proximity of the site to the FBI Academy in Quantico and the Justice Department, transportation access, site development flexibility, promoting equity and sustainable siting and the overall cost.
Each category was weighted differently, but the Maryland leaders said that they should all be weighed equally.
The group of Maryland state leaders said that both of the Maryland sites meet all five criteria if the the proximity to Quantico criteria is not as heavily weighted.
Maryland Lieutenant Gov. Aruna Miller pointed out that both Maryland sites have easy public transportation options, and said that the Greenbelt location provides a direct route to both Reagan National Airport and downtown Washington D.C.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) also added that the costs of building the site in either of the Maryland sites is more affordable to taxpayers than the site in Springfield, Virginia. He noted that one of the sites in Maryland is also free to the federal taxpayer because of contributions from the state and county government.
“When it comes to cost, there is no dispute,” Van Hollen said. “The Virginia costs — the cost of the Springfield site is far higher, way higher than the Maryland sites.”