If the central office has any say over the location someone works, you get the phenomenon where the population of less-desirable living locations get to suffer local employees that aren't good enough at their job to be given higher prioritization in choosing their station. And the organization looses good workers they can't accommodate.
France has been doing the opposite, leading to a concentration in and around Paris and few major cities outside of Ile de France.
The Maryland and Virginia sides have representation (which is very pro-government jobs, as they should be considering their constituency).
The corruption isn't an unintended consequence of the moves. The ability to engage in the corruption is the entire point of the moves.
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/04/trump-a...
https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/04/trump-administration...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-hhs-close-regional-lega...
https://democrats-naturalresources.house.gov/media/press-rel...
If this NSF move is an indication that the White House now wants to distribute jobs more widely across the country, well, that's a real reversal of course from only a couple months ago.
But I am familiar with the US. We have so much corruption that it's a virtual certainty any moves of the kind you postulate would be precipitated by a desire for more and easier access to corruption. We actually have a long history of doing this sort of thing in the US. Sometimes we get more corruption, but the service in question is objectively better off. (Some moves made by the military when the Berlin wall came down.) More often we get more corruption and the service in question is objectively worse off. (NASA being forced, via corruption, to build solid rocket boosters a long way away from where the boosters would be used. Thus necessitating the modularization of the boosters into transportable segments. "No problem! We'll just use O-Rings!")
Here's the thing. Whether the results were objectively better, or objectively worse, corruption increased. So the US, as a whole, deteriorates.
If they cannot make the "right" decisions or lack competence in leadership, it wouldn't be unreasonable to doubt the efficacy of their research leadership. How could they possibly identify the problems which are worthy of solving under these conditions?
If their leadership is competent, if they are correctly identifying the necessary research projects, then why to proponents of government directed "science" have so many gripes in regards to the direction which government science is directed?
https://www.thoughtco.com/taxpayers-paid-for-shrimp-treadmil...
>The shrimp treadmill study cost taxpayers more than $3 million over a decade.
>The National Science Foundation, not Congress, approved the shrimp treadmill study funding.
From foxnews: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hud-becomes-first-major-cab...
"The Robert C. Weaver Building is a vacant and run-down monument to waste with half a billion dollars in overdue maintenance," Ernst said, calling it a "cross between a ghost town and a horror show."
Investments to-date in the Weaver building totaled $90 million over the past 15 years, including plaza, roof and façade repairs.
Mold and asbestos containment have plagued the building, which also has only about half of its elevators in working operation.
I live in NOVA. The economies around here are addicted to government spending. As a federal taxpayer I think they should move many federal agencies to other states. USDA to KC was a start. Agriculture to Iowa, DOEnergy to Texas, NASA to Florida, Interior to Colorado for starters
The DC area doesn't have a right to these overpaid jobs.
That said, I've no deep concern with HUD moving. The larger story here is the NSF's displacement; coupled with the grant revocations and the proposed slashing of their budget, this seems more a story of "they want to get rid of NSF" than "they want to move HUD".
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administrat...
