The calling by an Ohio congressman to move the FBI’s headquarters to Alabama is apparently more a suggestion than a mandate.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday morning that U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wanted the FBI’s headquarters relocated to Huntsville so the bureau would be “less likely to be infected by what he sees as liberal politics” in Washington. The newspaper also said Jordan would place a “rider,” or condition, on the funding bills currently under consideration for the 2024 fiscal year.

That rider, as outlined in a letter Jordan sent to Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger, R-Texas, seemed less rigid than a Huntsville-or-else scenario originally reported by the Wall Street Journal. The 11-page letter was obtained by the Washington Examiner and posted on its website Tuesday.

Regarding Huntsville as the new home for FBI headquarters, the rider said only that the House Judiciary Committee – which Jordan chairs – recommends the FBI submit an “operational plan” within 90 days to move the bureau out of Washington. “The operational plan should also consider the existing resources and infrastructure available at the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal campus in Huntsville, AL,” the rider said in the only reference to Redstone Arsenal.

The rider prohibits any money in the 2024 appropriations bill to be directed toward construction of a new FBI headquarters. The FBI has long been searching for a new site for its HQ because of the deteriorating condition of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington.

The FBI opposed the idea of moving out of the Washington area in a response to the Wall Street Journal. The proposal would seemingly stand little chance of succeeding legislatively with Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House or logistically with about 8,000 headquarters employees being uprooted.

Alabama Congressman Dale Strong, whose district includes Huntsville, has not responded to a request for comment Tuesday. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle issued a one-sentence statement to AL.com in response to the Wall Street Journal story: “We’re proud of the FBI presence in Huntsville and will support whatever Congress decides is best for the betterment of our country.”

The FBI’s sprawling college-like campus at Redstone Arsenal – an investment of more than $3 billion — would also not be suited to house an influx of 8,000 employees from the Washington headquarters. The FBI has said on numerous occasions that it will have the capacity for about 5,000 employees in Huntsville by 2028. That does not include another 3,800 rotating through Huntsville for training.

To accommodate HQ personnel would require more than doubling the capacity of the Huntsville campus.

Johnnie Sharp, the top FBI official at the Huntsville campus, also noted in an interview with AL.com last year that headquarters personnel have largely opted not to move to Alabama because their homes are in the Washington area. The vast majority of personnel in Huntsville are “professional support staff,” Sharp said, and are not agents.

The Huntsville campus has earned the moniker of HQ2, Sharp said, with 19 of the bureau’s 26 divisions having a presence at Redstone Arsenal.

“It’s certainly not official,” Sharp told AL.com last year. “But definitely you could call it an unofficial second headquarters because all the footprint here on the north and south campus (at Redstone) are headquarters entities. Not field office operations. Field office operations are conducted by the Birmingham field office and the Huntsville resident agency. Everything here on the north campus and on the south campus is a headquarters-related entity.

“It’s undeniably an unofficial second headquarters because of those 19 headquarters divisions that are represented right here on this campus.”