Maryland
Maryland won a tentative victory in the race for a new FBI headquarters, a potential economic boon for a majority Black county near DC
- In November, the GSA announced that Maryland had been picked to land the new FBI headquarters.
- Maryland lawmakers, including Gov. Wes Moore and Rep. Steny Hoyer, emphasized equity in their pitch.
- Some Virginia officials who have decried the selection process now want it reversed.
For over a decade, a bipartisan contingent of political leaders in Maryland and Virginia sought to land the new FBI headquarters.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building, a Brutalist complex near the White House that has housed the agency’s headquarters since 1975, became functionally obsolete years ago, with employees dispersed among different locations in the region. The current location, while centrally located, also has security vulnerabilities that a newer and more secure facility would rectify.
For years, the race to land the facility was intense. But federal officials last November selected a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, located in suburban Prince George’s County and adjacent to an existing Metro station — making it easily accessible to public transit.
The decision is a major win for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Maryland Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, but especially for Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, the dean of the Maryland congressional delegation and a longtime champion of the project. Hoyer in a recent interview told me that he first discussed the move in 2009 with then-FBI director Robert Mueller.
“I went down to the building, I looked at it, took a tour through it, and he showed me how decrepit it was,” Hoyer said, noting that Mueller said the state of the building was undermining the agency’s effectiveness.
Hoyer, a former House majority leader who endorsed Moore’s campaign months before the 2022 Democratic gubernatorial primary, told Business Insider that the now-governor “immediately seized” on the FBI issue even before his eventual win in the primary.
“He digested and understood the importance of our competitive advantage and focused on achieving that objective,” Hoyer said. “And he recognized the importance of the FBI for Maryland and in particular for Prince George’s County.”
Prince George’s County, the majority-Black county directly to the east of Washington, DC, has for years had one of the most affluent Black populations of any jurisdiction in the country. But compared to Northern Virginia localities like Fairfax County, which has been an economic powerhouse for decades, Prince George’s County hasn’t enjoyed a similar level of economic development.
In that sense, the new building — which will consolidate and hold roughly 11,000 employees under one roof — is a game changer for Maryland.
“We have 4% of leased federal office space in Prince George’s County,” Hoyer told me, while also pointing out that the county is home to roughly 20% of the Washington region’s federal workers. “Fairfax County has 11% of the office space, almost three times as much as we have.”
Hoyer, like Moore, argued during the selection process that a Maryland site would be tied to equity, not only in terms of race but also regarding the level of federal investment.
“This project will be worth over $4 billion in economic activity and it’s going to solidify Maryland as the cyber capital of this country,” the governor told me in a recent interview. “The reason that we made it such a high priority is because this is going to be one of the most important federal buildings that has ever been built.”
Virginia leaders, who for years argued that a suburban site near the Marine Corps Base Quantico was a better fit for the headquarters, have criticized the selection — and now the General Service Administration will conduct an evaluation of the process.
In a November letter, a majority of Virginia’s congressional delegation asked that the decision to move the headquarters to the 61-acre Greenbelt site be reversed. And current FBI director Christopher Wray has expressed concerns about the selection process.
But a White House spokesperson in November defended the selection process as “fair and transparent.” And Maryland’s leaders remain confident.
“We’re absolutely convinced that everything was done properly,” Hoyer told me. “And I’ve been convinced from the very beginning that Greenbelt was by far the best site for all the reasons that the GSA ultimately found.”
Maryland
Maryland elections officials deal with threats of violence, turnover concerns ahead of presidential election
BALTIMORE Since the last presidential election, Maryland has seen a concerning rise in turnover among our state’s election officials—with almost half new to their positions—according to research from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
As of January 2024, Maryland saw turnover in 11 voting jurisdictions.
Turnover is also on the rise nationally according to a CBS News investigation.
What is driving the exodus? Some blame an increasingly hostile environment, fueled by citizens who do not trust the election system.
Documenting Threats in Harford County
Stephanie Taylor oversees elections in Harford County.
She gets a lot of correspondence from the public—and keeps all of it in a binder with the title “Love and Not So Much Love Notes” on the cover.
“These are our nice letters, and these are our nasty letters,” she showed WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren
“There’s a lot of cursing. We’ve been called Nazis,” Taylor said. “We’ve been accused of cheating, changing voter turnouts, changing the results, which is very hurtful to us because we take great pride in our job that we do here.”
Hellgren asked her what that says about where Maryland stands right now. “There are a lot of angry people who do not trust the election process. I don’t know how to get through to them,” she said.
Since the 2020 presidential election, Maryland has seen a 46 percent turnover rate among election officials. That is larger than the 36 percent national average.
“Have you had people leave because they could not take it?” Hellgren asked.
“Yes,” Taylor admitted. “One person who was with the office for quite a long time. She had a key role in this office. Just the stress of it—she’s just like, ‘I’m done.’ And she quit.”
To make sure her staff members feel safe, Taylor has used grants to dramatically increase security at their office and warehouse in Forest Hill.
“This is one thing everyone in the office said we needed to enclose this after all the craziness started happening after January 6th,” Taylor said as she showed WJZ the public entrance area.
She had bullet- and bomb-deflecting glass installed that will not shatter.
“We have changed the whole look of this office. We used to have an open reception area. We put walls up. We put glass in. It is not bulletproof glass, but it will change the direction of a bullet. We have coating on our windows that if someone were to put a bomb outside, this coating would catch it and it would just drop it so there wouldn’t be shards,” Taylor said.
There are also new cameras and stronger locks.
“Now, if it’s unlocked, it has a high-powered magnet and you have to be buzzed in,” she said at a secondary door to the board room.
“We have our own FBI contact. I never in my life thought I would say that I have my own FBI contact. It just never even crossed my mind,” Taylor told Hellgren.
“They were being disruptive, calling us names. We got a threat in one of the meetings that we got on tape. I did turn that in to the FBI and the sheriff’s department. It’s just the way the world looks at us now. It’s so different,” she said.
New Law Means Stiffer Penalties
Earlier this year in Annapolis, the General Assembly took action to protect poll workers, election judges and their families from threats which have been on the rise across the country.
Citing the turnover, Governor Wes Moore’s administration advocated for and and won changes to the law. There are now tougher penalties against those convicted of threatening election workers, with fines increasing from $1,000 to $2,500.
“It is becoming harder to recruit election judges. It is becoming harder to recruit elections administrators, and we need to respond to that,” said Eric Luedtke, the governor’s chief legislative officer at a hearing on February 21st.
Violators could also get up to three years behind bars.
During that hearing about the legislation, Baltimore County’s elections director revealed she, too, had been threatened.
“After receiving a threat firsthand, I was overwhelmingly thankful for the protection from my county, the FBI and homeland security,” Ruie Lavoie, the director of Baltimore County elections, told lawmakers.
WJZ asked Maryland’s state elections administrator Jared DeMarinis whether the new law does enough to deter people from threatening election workers. “I hope so. I think time will tell on that, but I think you have to have the first step and I think this was a great first step,” DeMarinis said.
State Safeguards the Vote
DeMarinis took over as elections administrator from Linda Lamone last year.
She had served in that position for more than 35 years, but DeMarinis also worked in that office for almost two decades.
“Yes, I’m a new person, but it’s not like I don’t know the electoral process,” DeMarinis told Hellgren.
On the threats, DeMarinis acknowledged “those types of incidents really shake you to the core.”
He said, “This is really trying to take it to a new level where you’re trying to inflict bodily harm or even death upon you know a person just doing their job and making sure that our democracy works.”
He made it a priority to stamp out misinformation and added a “rumor control” section to the state elections website.
“Before, there was a trust. There was an understanding in the process here, and there’s a segment of the population now that just doesn’t believe in any of that,” DeMarinis said.
DeMarinis is also pushing young people to get involved as election judges and poll workers.
He is aware that when elections officials leave, so does their experience and knowledge of the process. That is why he is partnering more experienced elections officials with newer ones to lessen the impact of any turnover.
And DeMarinis believes that turnover is not always a negative.
“Turnover brings new blood, new ideas, new points of view to the process. It helps streamline things. But yes, there is a concern about losing a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said.
A Veteran in Charge in Baltimore City
“I just don’t want to believe that people are not interested in an important process as this,” said Armstead Jones, Baltimore City’s election director
Baltimore has one of the longest-serving elections directors in the state.
Armstead Jones said in the city, the problem is not threats, but getting enough people motivated to staff the polls.
“At one time, we’d have as many as 3,200 election judges working Election Day and those numbers have dropped over the years,” Jones said. “I believe in this last election, we may have had about 1,500 judges to work. Maybe 2,100 trained, 600 did not show so those numbers are getting lower each time.”
The state remains committed to smooth and transparent elections, despite the challenges.
“Having that full confidence in the system is the underpinning of everything that we do with good, solid elections,” DeMarinis said.
Staying Despite Challenges
“I love the job. I love the people I work with,” said Taylor of her Harford County position. “If you’re in a polling location, it’s so much fun to be there and you see people coming in and taking part in democracy.”
She told Hellgren she has no plans to leave and be part of the turnover despite uncertainty about the future.
“Do you see it getting any better?” Hellgren asked. “I’ll let you know after this election. It depends on what happens after this election,” she said.
Maryland
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