In choosing Greenbelt over Springfield as the future site of a new FBI headquarters — a controversial move that elated Maryland lawmakers but angered those in Virginia — the General Services Administration made some errors in Greenbelt’s favor, the GSA’s inspector general found in a report issued Feb. 3.
It’s the latest chapter in a long-running saga about where the FBI’s headquarters should go. And, more to the point, where the 7,500 employees it would house, and the millions of square feet of new development it would anchor, would go, and thus whose state and local tax bases it would boost.
It’s not immediately clear what effect the long-awaited report might have on the FBI headquarters saga. President Donald Trump has said in the past he wants to keep the FBI in the District, as part of his desire to revitalize the city. Though in his flurry of executive orders to date, he hasn’t canceled the Greenbelt site selection.
The GSA inspector general’s finding might simply give credence to Trump’s D.C. preference. That would be bad news for Maryland and Prince George’s County, which hailed the Greenbelt decision as an economic development coup. But that doesn’t mean it would automatically be good for Virginia and Fairfax County, which wanted it for the same reason, arguing that Springfield makes more sense because its closer to the FBI’s training facilities in Quantico.
The top finding in Monday’s report is that the GSA was not justified in increasing the weighting of the cost criterion among the several criteria that informed the site selection process. In 2023, the GSA tweaked the scoring criteria, increasing the focus on cost and equity while reducing that of “proximity to mission-related locations.” That decision benefited Greenbelt, while Springfield scored higher on mission-related criteria.
