No, the FBI Headquarters Decision Should Not Be About "Equity"

There are plenty of reasons why Angela Alsobrooks should be concerned about losing the FBI Headquarters to Virginia. But making a case for “equity” is as effective as making no case at all.

Not doubt lost in the mishigas of the end of the election cycle was an op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post from Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

Alsobrooks penned a piece regarding the selection of the new site for the FBI Headquarters. Two sites in Prince George’s County, Greenbelt and Landover, are among the three being considered.

Alsobrooks’ argument, however, is not based on the merits of those two sites. It has everything to do with….equity.

Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, the selection of a location for the new FBI headquarters is again moving forward after plans were stalled in 2017 under President Donald Trump. However, I am deeply concerned with recent developments in the site-selection process that undermine the Biden administration’s commitment to advancing equity…

…The GSA recently announced new selection criteria for the FBI headquarters, in which proximity to Quantico, Va., was added. It is heavily weighted and seemingly the deciding criterion. It also undermines a key priority of the Biden administration — advancing equity — that ranked only fourth out of GSA’s five criteria and has so little weight it barely registers. This is an abrupt change that favors the site in Springfield and clearly puts the Prince George’s locations at a disadvantage. We strongly believe equity should be prioritized, and we ask that it be given equal consideration along with the other criteria.

Prince George’s County is a majority-minority community whose population is more than three-fifths Black and about one-fifth Latino, and we have historically missed out on federal investments when it comes to government office space. Though we house 20 percent of the region’s federal workforce, we host less than 5 percent of the region’s federal office space.

Now I will grant Alsobrooks contention that the newly added criteria included proximity to Quantico, Virginia disadvantages the two sites. That it was added so late in the process certainly indicates a change to the process far too late in the process for my own tastes.

But at the same time, a location close to Quantico seems like it makes perfect sense seeing that the FBI Training Academy is in Quantico, and proximity to Quantico would make it easier for leadership and recruits to interact and train.

My bigger contention here is the fact that Alsobrooks, instead of using a logical argument such as the change in standards to be her argument for the P.G. sites, instead defaults to the idea of equity. She believes that it is the Federal Government’s responsibility to do the job that she has so far failed to do; grow Prince George’s County's economy.

But what Alsobrooks fails to comprehend is that the selection of an FBI location or any other federal entity should never be based on how it helps one particular economy grow. It should be based on the benefits to the federal government and the value provided to the taxpayer. It should not be based on creating jobs or boosting a local economy. While I acknowledge those are ancillary benefits, they should not be the primary concern of decision-makers or taxpayers.

There is a certain irony to Alsobrooks as a leading Democrat complaining about equity and the location of certain government headquarters. But if you really want to take about “equity” in the distribution of those headquarters, might I remind you that most of the federal agency headquarters buildings and locations are in Washington D.C.

And it was Democrats who object to the Trump Administration’s idea to move certain federal agencies outside of Washington to be closer to where the agency's area of expertise was located.

And it was Democrats in the Biden Administration who, less than a year after the Bureau of Land Management moved to Colorado, moved the agency back t Washington. BLM went back to Washington despite the fact that 92% of federally owned and managed lands are in the Western United States, far away from Washington, D.C.

I did not hear Angela Alsobrooks complain about equity then.

There are plenty of reasons why Angela Alsobrooks should be concerned about losing the FBI Headquarters to Virginia. But making a case for “equity” is as effective as making no case at all.