By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Some people say you shouldn’t talk about politics at family gatherings on holidays like Thanksgiving, as incendiary as that can be these days.

But as power is shifting in the nation’s capital city and the Capitol building, and with juicy political plums to be plucked after Christmas, you can’t expect to get far into a turkey or the after dinner cocktails here before governing comes up by the fire.

Especially if you happen to be talking about Congressman Steny Hoyer of Greenbelt, Maryland, the outgoing majority leader and second in command to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

This year one of the biggest legacy projects being whispered about involves the Battle Royale between Maryland and Virginia over where to build a new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It looks like the days are finally numbered for the old J. Edgar Hoover building, named for the controversial former F.B.I. director and often called the ugliest building in Washington, decrepit by those who have to work there.

President Joe Biden included $2.5 billion for the project in the FY 2023 budget after it was used as a political football during the Trump years, with the former president himself killing the deal to keep another hotel from going up to compete with the Trump International on Pennsylvania Avenue. Since reluctantly leaving the White House, Trump sold the lease on the old post office building. It was closed, but has now reopened as a Hilton. Perhaps it should have been wrapped in yellow tape as a crime scene for all the influence peddling that went down there — if there were any justice in the world.

Trump Corruption Revealed in Foreign Government Spending at Trump Hotel

Meanwhile committees for Maryland and Virginia are still vying to influence the decision, as retiring Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama exploited the Trump rift to move 1,100 jobs to Huntsville, and tries to grab as much pork as he can get on his way out for the new F.B.I. campus in the Rocket City.

Related

As Trump’s latest effort for new FBI headquarters falls flat, Shelby moves parts of the bureau to Alabama

FBI investment in Huntsville tops $2.4 billion, Sen. Richard Shelby says

Caught for an interview before Thanksgiving by a reporter for Politico, Hoyer revealed where he stands. As you probably know, he announced he will not seek the minority whip position in the next Congress at the same time Pelosi said she would not lead the Democratic Caucus in the House next year as the Republicans take over the gavel in the majority.

Related: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to Step Aside

What’s really interesting news is that Hoyer will seek to utilize his years of seniority to take back over the powerful House Appropriations Committee, a position he held 20 years ago, and will be the top Democrat on the subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, which will have something to say about the decision on funding for the location of the new F.B.I. headquarters.

This has not been widely reported in Washington, so far only coming out in a Politico email.

Hoyer let it be known that he sees the F.B.I. move as a “legacy-maker.” Could he get his name on the building?

He’s been a leading voice for bringing the F.B.I. to Maryland, more specifically to his district by the Greenbelt Metro Station.

“I think we have the best site, and I think we have the best argument,” he said.

Closing the deal could be a two-year affair, according to Politico, although Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has said we could know where the new home will be soon.

“We are pleased that President Biden’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2023 includes language for the new FBI headquarters,” he said according to ABC 7 News back in March. “This has been a top priority for Team Maryland: the new campus will ensure that 7,500 employees have a suitable and secure location to protect our national security.

“The President’s budget is evidence that his administration is serious about moving forward with a consolidated headquarters that can effectively serve the American people. We look forward to working with President Biden and his administration to continue advancing this project, and are confident the Maryland sites in Greenbelt and Landover are the best locations for a consolidated F.B.I. headquarters location.”

“We join in thanking President Biden for his dedication to this important priority, and we continue to advocate for the Greenbelt and Landover sites as they are the best locations for this project,” Van Hollen said in a joint statement with Hoyer and Congressmen Ben Cardin of Baltimore and Anthony Brown of Prince George’s County, the minority district where the Greenbelt site is located.

Apparently, however, there has been some movement toward picking the site in Virginia, near the F.B.I. training and research center at Quantico in Stafford County.

Angela D. Alsobrooks, Prince George’s County executive, penned a letter to the editor for The Washington Post published Nov. 4, revealing this and making the case for the Greenbelt site.

“Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, the selection of a location for the new F.B.I. 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,” she says.

The process for selecting a new FBI headquarters dates back to 2012, with 35 sites under initial consideration now down to three finalists. Prince George’s County has two of the three sites under consideration, in Greenbelt and Landover. The third site is in Springfield Virginia. The General Services Administration has said it would focus on access to transit, cost and environmental impact when selecting a new site.

“Both Prince George’s sites are superior based on the criteria the GSA set in 2012,” Alsobrooks said. “They include great transit and highway networks, access to quality amenities, proximity to an outstanding workforce and an unmatched STEM research ecosystem where the FBI could engage with public and private institutional partners to meet the new cyberthreats of the 21st century.

“And the sites are ready now,” she said, while a C.I.A. lab would have to be relocated from the proposed Virginia site, potentially slowing the move.

“Further, the Greenbelt site offers direct access to Metro, making it the only site that would not increase negative environmental impacts by putting more cars on the road,” she said.

Landover, with a lot of available space, has security buffer options. But the Greenbelt site is also very near an entrance and exit ramp to the I-495 Beltway around D.C., as well as a major commuter road, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

The GSA recently announced new selection criteria for the headquarters, saying proximity to Quantico was added as a priority for the F.B.I., she revealed.

“It is heavily weighted and seemingly the deciding criterion,” she said. “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 has historically missed out on federal investments in federal 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,” she said. “Decisions such as this have major, and sometimes generational, effects on communities.”

The federal government’s decision in 1941 to situate the Pentagon on the west bank of the Potomac River in Virginia created decades of additional and massive investment in that area, she pointed out, as did the federal government’s decision to locate the National Institutes of Health in Montgomery County.

“Federal centers have driven job and income growth in our region, and decisions about where to situate them have historically advantaged majority communities over minority communities such as Prince George’s,” she argues. “The results of this lack of investment are clear.”

Median household incomes are 48 percent lower in Prince George’s County compared with Fairfax County, home to the Springfield site. Out of the largest 150 counties in the country, Fairfax ranks second in growth of income and wealth over time, while Prince George’s ranks 142nd.

“Additionally, even though we have some of the same assets in availability of land and transit access, we have faced obstacles in attracting the same types of private investment that we see in jurisdictions such as Fairfax and Montgomery counties,” she said.

“The GSA’s site-selection criteria represent policy decisions, and, again, it appears that some in the federal government are seeking to favor investing in the same communities that have historically received the majority of these investments for decades. Meanwhile, it appears communities of color, such as Prince George’s, again might get left behind. It’s time for a change.”

The F.B.I. headquarters is an economic development prize unparalleled in the Washington region, a chance to locate 11,000 federal employees into a single neighborhood in one stroke of a pen. It will be the largest new federal campus since the C.I.A. moved to Langley in 1961.

It will inevitably generate an economic boost in the area chosen that would include related offices, housing, hotels and shopping centers. The decision will also spur another economic boom downtown, when the Hoover building is demolished and slated for redevelopment.

The Greenbelt site is also close to the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, where many federal crimes are prosecuted and agents are tasked with testifying in court.

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, the Democrat from Baltimore who now chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, is also weighing in on the sites in Maryland.

Being selected as a finalist, she said, “is like winning the primary. Now, we’re suiting up to win the general [election].”

The decision to include the Prince George’s site is an indication, Mikulski said, that the federal government finally wants to take advantage of wide swaths of the county that remain underdeveloped compared with the District and other parts of the region.

“For too long, we think, Prince George’s County has been redlined, sidelined, overlooked and undervalued,” she said.

Officials in Virginia are advocating for their proposed site with equal vigor.

But with the retirement of Shelby, and the shift in emphasis on Hoyer’s part, the nation’s top federal law enforcement and domestic spy agency could be making the move to Maryland.

It’s unclear how the new Republican majority in the House could come into play in this decision. No doubt they will try to cut the federal budget, making noises about going after Social Security, Medicare and other so-called “entitlement” programs and spending. They may even grandstand by holding up key funding measures with threats of a government shutdown.

But with all their noisy campaign claims about fighting crime, would they dare try to put the F.B.I headquarters move on the chopping block?

Over Thanksgiving classic meals featuring ham on Thursday, and turkey on Friday, along with a little football, Hoyer indicated he was proud of his years of mentoring scores of young lawmakers, raising tens of millions of dollars for his party and helping to muscle through many landmark bills, from the Americans with Disabilities Act to the Affordable Care Act to this year’s Inflation Reduction Act, “all while maintaining a bipartisan reputation for generosity and grace,” says Politico.

On this weekend set aside for giving thanks, he’s grateful he will not be at the podium facing off against the new Republican Speaker of the House, maybe Kevin McCarthy, and the so-called Freedom Caucus.

“That’s a very no-voting crowd,” Hoyer said.

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