The battle to win the new home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is down to three sites and two states. And the fight has included body counts, with both Maryland and Virginia officials claiming their state should win the day because a preponderance of FBI employees are residents. Now, a population study could settle the matter.
In 2012, The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development tasked researchers with combing through Census data to determine where FBI workers lived to gauge the benefits of a headquarters in the Free State. Their conclusion was a plurality resided in Maryland, The Washington Post reported.
A plurality is not a majority, of course, and the spread of FBI employees residences around the region is wide.
“Based on commuting data of the Census block groups of the current FBI location, we estimate that 43.2 percent of current FBI headquarters employees reside in Maryland, 33.4 percent in Virginia and 17.4 percent in D.C. Outside of Washington, D.C., the largest number of commuters resides in Montgomery County (16.4 percent), Prince George’s County (16.3 percent) and Fairfax County (15.4 percent),” The Post quoted the study as saying.
