hburgnews.com

It’s easy to think of DC taking over Virginia when you’re stuck in traffic with the mass of commuters in NoVa, but now that the feds are trying to get out of the nuclear fallout radius around capital hill, “big government” takes on a new meaning for people living elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

As a follow-up to the Post article about fed offices in Harrisonburg, the DNR ran this story today. The city’s economic development office is gung-ho about having federal offices move into the neighborhood, and is actively trying to recruit them here… But are the people of the city as enthusiastic about it?

I have a hard time thinking about the Department of Homeland Security without associating it directly with the Bush administration and the expansion of the federal government under W. I suppose my main objection is the idea of H’burg being associated with the DoHS (funny acronym if you think of Homer Simpson saying it). But even if it ends up being some other department of the federal government, look at the score we got on transportation infrastructure. Not so good. The FBI archive center in Winchester is slated to have 1,500 employees. This would have a much bigger impact on Harrisonburg than SI International’s 150 new employees, or SRI’s 100 over the next ten years.

Besides, if there’s one place in Virginia that’s doing just fine without the DoHS, it’s Harrisonburg. Remember? “Harrisonburg is the ninth ‘most secure’ out of 138 U.S. cities with fewer than 150,000 people.” I’m no military strategist, but I would think that having a federal target here would make us less secure.

Anyway, this post wasn’t supposed to digress into so much opinion… What are your thoughts?

-finnegan