This small news bite from the Washington Post yesterday caught my eye:

Moving costs: Booz Allen Hamilton, the McLean, Va., consulting and government contracting giant, is receiving a $750,000 loan from a Maryland economic development fund and a grant of $250,000 from Montgomery County to relocate 750 Maryland workers from offices in Rockville to a new 65,000-square-foot workplace in Bethesda by the end of 2019.

This strikes me as absurd.

The economy is growing strongly, and yet one of the highest-income states is dishing out “economic development” subsidies to a big, profitable company in one of the nation’s wealthiest counties. The move is entirely in-county, so officials can’t even claim they are attracting new jobs to the area.

Booz Allen Hamilton lives high on the hog from government contracts, receiving about $4 billion a year. It is a true Beltway Bandit, ranking as one of the largest federal contractors, and gaining almost all of its growing revenues from governments. One of the great things about the government as a client is that you can make tens of millions of dollars even when projects fail.

Why would Maryland and Montgomery County want to fatten Booz Allen’s bottom line with subsidies to cover its routine expenses? Are they going to pay moving expenses for every local business, or is the idea to give this Beltway Behemoth an advantage over smaller firms with less lobbying power? 

Shame on Maryland officials for wasting taxpayer money, and shame on Booz Allen for taking it.