Not a bad idea to spread some part of the Justice Dept. around the country. It helps provide another perspective, plus if Washington is ever under a terrorist attack it doesn’t hurt to have a part of Justice Dept. that can maintain operations without worrying about getting out of Dodge. Dep. Atty. Gen. David Ogden made the announcement in South Carolina.
By MEG KINNARD
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The U.S. Department of Justice is relocating some of its U.S. attorney operations from Washington to South Carolina under a 20-year lease agreement with the state’s flagship university, officials announced Monday.
The federal agency will be relocating its Executive Office for United States Attorneys to the building that now houses the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden said during a news conference in Columbia.
“I think it’s a good thing to get government out into the rest of the country,” Ogden said.
The move will bring more than 250 high-paying jobs to Columbia, a small fraction of the roughly 100,000 who work at the Department.
The effort, known as the Palmetto Project, will consolidate much of the DOJ’s attorney training program for the whole country in South Carolina. In 1996, the Department broke ground on the National Advocacy Center, a $26 million facility in Columbia where federal, state and local prosecutors participate in a variety of training programs. Since it opened two years later, more than 170,000 prosecutors and law enforcement officials have received training at the center, officials said.
