Other Calls to Disperse the Federal Government

David French writes,

the basic idea — relocating agencies to struggling heartland cities — is sound. Memphis, for example, could use 20,000 new white-collar jobs. And civil servants would benefit from the lower cost of living and — more importantly — the experience of life outside the DC bubble.

…Perhaps it’s time for a broader discussion.

I also think that the Federal government could promote dispersal of private sector jobs through a program of subsidizing companies that build multi-worker facilities in depressed areas.

12 thoughts on “Other Calls to Disperse the Federal Government

  1. It’s like a reverse BRAC commission.

    Many American capital cities (also county seats) were established – often from scratch – in their particular locations, usually away from established urban centers, both to make them equally geographically accessible for most of the state’s population, and to balance urban with rural, and/or other political interests. DC itself is arguably one of these creations.

    That keeps a lot of professionals in places they wouldn’t otherwise live; a lot of cities afloat that wouldn’t otherwise survive. And some end up thriving with some potential of independence, even if the effective subsidy were removed.

    • Also, federal penitentiaries are often located in the middle of nowhere, much to the criticism of advocates who say it interferes with family visitation and plays games with the electoral system since the non-voting prisoners are usually counted for representation-allocation purposes at the place at which they are incarcerated.

      But there’s little doubt it serves to subsidize the economy of those tiny local communities with an ‘anchor industry’.

  2. Great. The easier to cut them, though they have already been cut a lot. This is quite cyclic. Once consigned to the boondocks and facing cuts and reduced ability to recruit they will work hard to recentralize back in Washington, for in hierarchies the power always flows from the center.

    • I don’t think it would make them easier to cut. Agencies would seek to spread facilities into many states to try to turn members of congress in those places into their advocates regardless of ideology. Remember that the reason we needed a ‘base realignment and closing’ commission is that beforehand unnecessary military bases were nearly impossible to close due to their dispersed nature and location in rural communities whose economic livelihood depended on the bases.

  3. Of course, removing blocs of reliable Democrat voters from NoVa would help the Republicans offset the newly enfranchised felons.

  4. This is nonsense. We’ve got a nice well dispersed US space program, for example. There are NASA bases well away from Washington DC in California (Armstrong/Edwards, JPL, Ames) and Mississippi (Stennis) and Georgia (Marshall) and Texas (JSC) and Florida (KSC) and Ohio (Glenn) and Maryland (Goddard) and Virginia (Langley), and contractors working in Colorado and Utah and West Virginia and a whole lot of other places. Has this made the US space program healthier or happier or more ambitious or better beloved by the citizenry than it would have been if concentrated in one or two spots? I doubt it.

    Are people more tolerant of foreign wars because US Navy and Army and Air Force bases are spread across the country? Is Medicare somehow more acceptable because of processing centers in Fargo? Would Social Security be more acceptable to libertarians if it were headquartered in Denver? Would the National Park Service avoid controversy if it operated out of Boise? I skep.

    Maybe it’d be good for the Rust Belt if US government offices were more dispersed. I can see that, I can even argue in support of the idea. But I don’t think the overall impact on government size or efficiency or citizen approval of government would be very large.

    • “But I don’t think the overall impact on government size or efficiency or citizen approval of government would be very large.”

      I don’t either, and I fear the effect could be in the wrong direction (from a libertarian perspective). Voters may become more supportive federal spending if more facilities are located nearby rather than mostly concentrated in DC.

  5. My first thought was “a lot of these federal agencies have to be somewhere.” Now I take it back.

  6. “And civil servants would benefit from the lower cost of living”

    Given that civil servants are paid on a locality adjusted basis, they wouldn’t gain anything from this.

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