WASHINGTON — A congressional deal is expected to give lawmakers more oversight over a new FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., as part of a funding agreement that stands to bring millions of dollars to Maryland and avoid another government shutdown.

The agreement, which Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen helped broker, would prevent certain funds from being used to outfit the Ronald Reagan Building as the FBI’s new home until the bureau submits a complete architectural and engineering plan for the building, including how it will meet specific security requirements. Congressional Appropriations Committees will then review the submission.

“This is an important step to reassert Congress’s oversight role in the relocation of the FBI headquarters and to ensure the new headquarters meets the mission and security needs of the FBI,” Van Hollen said in a statement on the agreement.

The Trump administration selected the Reagan building as the new bureau headquarters last July, eschewing a planned campus in Greenbelt for an existing building in downtown D.C. The decision abandoned a decade-long process that saw the Greenbelt site named as the future FBI headquarters.

Maryland members raised multiple issues with the move. Among them were concerns that the Reagan building could not meet the security standards needed for a new headquarters. The building sits off a prominent avenue just off the National Mall, next to an underground metro tunnel. It’s a similar location to the existing headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Bureau officials had testified that the Hoover building did not meet the FBI’s security requirements.

During multiple hearings, questions from Van Hollen and Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks about whether the FBI had conducted studies on potential security concerns with the Reagan building went unanswered. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican who chairs one of the committees involved in the process, told The Sun last October that the FBI had indicated to her that it could make the building safe.

With the agreement in place, Maryland lawmakers could see immediate concerns about a downtown headquarters addressed, amid the state’s lawsuit against the Department of Justice over abandoning the proposed Greenbelt FBI site.

The funding agreement would also approve monies for other Maryland-based facilities and projects.

Two programs in development at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will receive $550 million in total.

Another Goddard-led project, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, will receive $100 million. A mission to explore Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, will receive $500 million.

Other provisions would see continued funding to improve coastal management in Maryland and the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chesapeake Bay office would receive $7.1 million.

A total of $94 million would go to grant programs that benefit the bay — $80 million for the National Sea Grant College program and $14 million for the Sea Grant Aquaculture program.

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