SPRINGFIELD, Va. — The pitches are done and now we wait and see which state the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will choose as the new site of FBI headquarters. Billions of dollars is at stake for the state that gets picked.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. is 48 years old and it is falling apart. The FBI says it needs a new headquarters to better support its mission. The conversation about a new bureau home has been going on since 2009, and now the sites are narrowed down to two Maryland sites, and one site in Springfield, Virginia.
Leaders in both states, for all of the allegations flying back and forth, both sides agree on one thing: The entire selection process is taking too long.
On Thursday, the Virginia delegation worked to counter arguments from the Maryland delegation on Wednesday.
The GSA is considering a number of factors including cost, transportation access and equity.
Virginia insists there would be no higher cost to build out the Springfield site. During their meeting with the GSA Wednesday, leaders said building in Springfield would cost an extra billion dollars. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said that is not the case.
"There were some cost estimates a long time ago that included the cost of moving the tenant from the Springfield site somewhere else. That work has already been done so that's no longer a cost. If you look at the current cost, we think our site compares very favorably because it's owned by the government," Kaine said.
That saves on land acquisition costs. Kaine also said he doesn't think developing the site will take longer because the site is currently in use.
"We don't think timing ultimately is a differentiator," Kaine said.
We asked Kaine about the criteria and the weighting of the decision process. Maryland leaders have asked the GSA to go back to the drawing board when it comes to the criteria, which currently gives 35% of the decision weight to proximity to the FBI training facility in Quantico.
"The GSA and the FBI came up with the criteria. Marylanders didn't write it. Virginians didn't write it," he said.
Kaine and other Virginia leaders say that the racial diversity of Springfield meets the equity requirements that the Biden administration is looking for.
"On the equity side, 55% of the households in this Springfield area, the language spoken at home is not English. It is heavily an immigrant community... This is a very, very diverse community, and it's the most economically stressed part of Fairfax County along the Route 1 corridor," Kaine said. "We embrace the fact that the GSA and the FBI have included equity as a component of this."
Now, the GSA appears poised to make a decision. The timing of that decision is still up in the air.
"We asked at the end, 'OK, timing please?' and they fairly said, 'We heard a lot from Maryland yesterday, we heard a lot from Virginia today. We have to absorb it. We'll absorb it and then we'll come back and tell you what the timing will be."