ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The battle to become the new home of the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is heating up between Maryland and Virginia. Billions of dollars are at stake. Leaders from both states are making their final pitches to the General Services Administration (GSA) this week. That's who will decide where the new headquarters building will ultimately go.
There are three sites up for consideration. Two of them are in Prince George's County, Maryland -- in Greenbelt and Landover. The third is in Springfield, Virginia in Fairfax County.
Maryland's top elected leaders, including Gov. Wes Moore and Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks held a press conference following a three-hour meeting with the three-person GSA panel on Wednesday.
Leaders said equity is a key issue in the decision-making process.
"The Biden administration has put a key focus on advancing racial equity, making it front-and-center from day one. Now the president has a chance to honor that commitment with action," Moore said at the press conference.
"The equity we are talking about is equity that has seen the federal government spend upwards of $460 billion in Virginia and only $120 billion in Prince George's County," Alsobrooks said.
This week was supposed to be the final pitches for both Maryland and Virginia, but Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer said that's not necessarily the case. He wants GSA leaders to recalculate the whole criteria system being used to dictate the decision for which side wins.
Cost of building the new HQ is a major point of contention between the two sides. Maryland leaders say it will be cheaper to build in Maryland to the tune of a billion dollars less than the Commonwealth.
Virginia leaders strenuously object to that point. They don't know where Maryland got that number from.
But leaders in Maryland say under the current decision criteria, cost is only being given 10% of the consideration while proximity to the FBI's training academy in Quantico is being given 35% of the weight. And you can't get much closer to Virginia than Virginia.
Hoyer wants all factors to be weighed equally, and wants the GSA to go back to the drawing board and potentially change the weighting.
"They didn't say they were going to change it, they didn't say we convinced them, but what they did say was we had raised many, many issues that they thought were very important," Hoyer told WUSA9. Hoyer said that while Wednesday's meeting was expected to be the final one, he believes there will be more.
"Consultations are not just one meeting," Hoyer said. "Consultations are discussions back and forth."
Hoyer said he believes Maryland wins on four of the five criteria, but can't possibly win on the proximity criteria.
We asked him why he thinks proximity to Quantico is being weighted so heavily.
"This is just personal opinion, but the FBI decided it would rather move to Virginia rather than some other site," Hoyer said.
Hoyer said given the back-and-forth between Maryland GSA, he couldn't say when a final decision would be made.
Meanwhile, leaders from Virginia, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin will make their pitch to the GSA panel on Thursday morning.