FBI Headquarters Not Moving

Here's one for all those people who think we should help troubled cities by moving government agencies to places like Cleveland or Birmingham:

Federal government cancels decade-long plan to replace crumbling FBI headquarters

The federal government is canceling the search for a new FBI headquarters, according to officials familiar with the decision, putting a more than decade-long effort by the bureau to move out of the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building back at square one.

The decision follows years of failed attempts by federal officials to persuade Congress to fully back a plan for a campus in the Washington suburbs paid for by trading away the Hoover Building to a real estate developer and putting up nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to cover the remaining cost. . . .

For years, bureau officials have raised alarms that decrepit conditions at the J. Edgar Hoover building constitute serious security concerns. But the plan to move to a new site in the Washington suburbs grew mired in a pit of government dysfunction and escalating costs with no end in sight.

And that was just to move it to the suburbs.

But I don't think that line about "a pit of government dysfunction" is fair; as the second paragraph says, the plan is being canceled because Congress refused to appropriate the money, which is actually the main reason government construction projects get canceled or delayed.