Local citizens in southern Maryland have not gone along quietly with the federal government's plans to build a hard-skills training center for Diplomatic Security in their bucolic community. They have forced the government to hold a series of public meetings on the matter, but that did nothing to overcome their objections. Now, they are going to take the government to court.
The Queen Anne's Conservation Association (QACA) is suing to force the Department of State and the General Services Administration to release documents relating to the selection of a site in Queen Anne's County for construction of the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC). The Association had previously filed a Freedom of Information Act request for those documents, but received no reply.
Read the complaint here, and a press release from the Queen Anne's Conservation Association here.
The Association's spokesman says they have already informally obtained a “Report on the Consolidation of Diplomatic Security Training” and found that it contains some new information - new to the public, that is - which raises questions about the selection of Queen Anne's County for the FASTC. In fact, he says the Report indicates the government originally preferred Summit Point, West Virginia, which is one of the locations where the State Department currently conducts training. The Association would like to find out why Summit Point was dropped from the government's plans.
That sounds like a reasonable request to me.
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