Is it an economic beauty or a beast? Is it a monster employer that will bring 3,300 jobs and anchor a whole real estate market, or is it just a $100 million slab of pork that pays no taxes?

Let's put this a more respectful way: Why is the competition between Baltimore City and Baltimore County to be the new home of the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration such a big deal? And why is it making Reps. Helen D. Bentley and Benjamin L. Cardin trade such testy words, when none of the three locations being considered is in either of their districts?

Housing HCFA is a big deal, especially, lately, to the county. County leaders and HCFA workers have begun a determined public-relations offensive to keep the parent of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs in Woodlawn, where it has been since the late 1970s. A decision is expected this summer.

County officials and union leaders say they're trying to keep the city from hijacking HCFA. They say the city started politicizing HCFA's fate in 1989 when Mr. Cardin, D-Md.-3d, amended the congressional authorization for the new headquarters to allow Baltimore City sites to compete. To hear them tell it, they're just fighting fire with fire.

"Why kick each other?" said Mrs. Bentley, R-Md.-2d, who sits on the House subcommittee that oversees the General Services Administration, the agency that decides where HCFA will go. "Let's not steal from each other. Let's try to get things from somewhere else."

City leaders respond that they haven't been politicking. Mr. Cardin maintains that he is neutral on the sites, saying it would be "inappropriate" for him to lobby either way. An aide to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said the mayor hasn't matched County Executive Roger B. Hayden's voyage, accompanied by Mrs. Bentley, to meet with honchos of the General Services Administration, which makes the government's real estate decisions. The aide said the city also hasn't asked congressmen to lobby for the downtown site near Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

The HCFA fight is showing political and cultural fissures as old as the progressive reform movement of the early 20th century, and as modern as the ongoing redefinition of political and economic power between shrinking cities and suburbs that have grown so much since World War II that they have won another, more urban name -- edge cities.

Is a decision like housing HCFA supposed to be political, or is it one that civil servants should make based on theoretically objective criteria? 19th-century Stalwarts and Mugwumps could have had a nice fight over that, but it's an issue the republic has never totally solved. And if the decision does come down to politics, at this late stage of the nation's exodus from cities to suburbs, do traditional cities really have the clout to win a political fight with the suburbs if they pick one?

Most of all, what are they fighting over? The possible locations -- two in Woodlawn and one in Baltimore -- are only about a 15-minute drive apart. And both sides' hopes and fears about what HCFA's move can do in the short term seem exaggerated -- to put it mildly -- in light of GSA's estimates.

"For the last 30 years, the city has had all its resources aimed at bringing back the center of the city," said Jeff Middlebrooks, executive vice president for downtown development at Baltimore Development Corp. And HCFA can play a big role by reinforcing the city's image as a center for health care and life science business, Mr. Middlebrooks said.

"The idea that life sciences is where the city needs to position itself is very serious business," Mr. Middlebrooks said. "HCFA as national headquarters for care . . . is symbolically very important to that effort. The city is never going to be Silicon Valley. Manufacturing isn't likely to come back in any major way. We've got to play on our strengths."

The county's view is more immediate and more practical. Mrs. Bentley and Mr. Hayden say HCFA workers now spend $12 million a year in Woodlawn, creating hundreds of jobs on top of the 2,800 HCFA employees, expected to grow to 3,300 by 1995.

But an environmental impact statement prepared by GSA indicates that the economic impact of the HCFA building may be negligible -- at least in the short run.

GSA says the average HCFA employee who doesn't live in Woodlawn -- and, despite the county's rhetoric, only about 9 percent do -- spends $69.61 a week in the Woodlawn area. The big winners: restaurants, fast food joints, grocery stores and gas stations.

That works out to an average of $348 a week for the 560 businesses GSA thought most affected by HCFA's spillover spending, according to the impact statement.

"No business is going to go under for $350 a week," said Robert Minutoli, vice president at the Rouse Co., one of the developers of the city site. "A lot is being said about the impact on businesses. There is none."

Apparently, there wouldn't be much impact on the city either. The GSA study projects a HCFA move to the city creating only 65 to 68 net new retail jobs nearby.

So what's all the fuss about?

"The health of Baltimore County is important to my whole district," Mrs. Bentley said. Then she put her finger on the hottest button of all in the dispute: most of the 2,800 employees, spelled v-o-t-e-r-s, want to stay in Woodlawn.

"Employees in my district were on my back," Mrs. Bentley said. Mr. Cardin has said he also has heard from constituents who work for HCFA and want to stay in Woodlawn. In a letter to GSA Administrator Richard G. Austin last month, he said GSA should make a decision without further congressional influence. In a letter to a HCFA employee group, he denied reports that he favors the city location.

Mrs. Bentley has cast herself in the role of public political advocate for Woodlawn. It's a role she's not uncomfortable with, even if Mr. Cardin feels it would be improper for other members of Congress to match her moves.

"I wanted GSA to know we want it," Mrs. Bentley said. She acknowledged that GSA would know she's in a position to give the agency grief if she wants -- "everybody knows who's on what committee," she said -- but insists that's not her goal.

"It's not wrong. It depends on how you do it," she said. "You can't pummel someone and threaten them, and I didn't."

And her point that she is only fighting back against the city's influence isn't entirely wrong. Thurman M. Davis, GSA's assistant regional administrator in Philadelphia, confirms that Mr. Cardin's amendment is the only reason GSA is looking at sites in the city. He said HCFA management wanted to stay in or near Woodlawn, just in a new building rather than the nine aging structures it uses now.

But Mr. Davis also indirectly backs up Mr. Cardin's point that making GSA looking at sites in the city was necessary to promote competition among developers and get HCFA the best building possible. Mr. Davis said GSA would want at least three proposals to choose from in a competition like this -- as it turned out, it got four from developers in the county.

But, though Mr. Davis won't confirm it, two were eliminated right away because their proposals didn't meet the standards GSA advertised, leaving only two county proposals the GSA is considering. The Rouse-backed proposal for the city site is the third.

Mr. Davis said that in theory, pressure from politicians shouldn't affect GSA's decision.

But does pushing power out of the political realm promote integrity or just decrease accountability? Much as the Progressives and their rivals debated the question, we still do.

"It's really a symptom of how we've tried to de-emphasize political life," said John Kromkowski, a political scientist who lives in Roland Park and is assistant dean of arts and sciences at The Catholic University of America in Washington. "We've undermined our whole sense of participation in government by making this artificial distinction between administration and policy."

Mr. Kromkowski says political officials should have more power, not less. "We have to make the process more accountable so people have more of a reason to vote," he said.

A leading expert on Congress said direct lobbying of the bureaucracy on issues like this isn't common, but isn't unacceptable among representatives either.

"Heavy pressure on GSA for these sites is still more the exception than the rule," said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Does it happen? Absolutely. Does it get members of Congress into serious trouble? Very rarely."

Mr. Ornstein uses the example of Sen Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., famed for his diligence in pushing federal dollars to his state, to illustrate that why plumbing for pork "may be tacky" it's not likely to hit a member where it hurts most.

"He gets scorched in editorials, but I'd like to see one vote it has cost him in West Virginia," Mr. Ornstein said. "It would be harder than finding Elvis."

So politics still counts. But in the infighting over government operations like choosing HCFA's home, are suburbs really at risk of having cities use political deal-making clout -- Mrs. Bentley cites the state Stadium Authority's decision to let the city site use Oriole Park parking lots if GSA moves HCFA downtown as an example -- to steal the suburbs' economic base? Or, for that matter, much of anything the suburbs really want?

Others point to the shift in population, economic power -- and, more recently, political power -- to suburbs and "edge cities" throughout the nation. It's still possible that a poor, shrinking city like Baltimore could steal a plum like HCFA from a more prosperous suburb like the county, they say. But it's not very likely.

"Cities are pretty powerless in the federal system," said Mr. Kromkowski, who contends that decades of federal highway and housing policy helped make them that way.

Joel Garreau, author of the 1991 book "Edge City," says this year's election will be the first one in which a majority of all voters nationwide live in the suburbs, a phenomenon he said helps explain the popularity of presidential candidates like former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, Gov. Bill Clinton and President George Bush.

Strong individual politicians are what can help cities or rural areas lacking the numerical strength of the suburbs prevail in a city-suburb conflict or a rural-suburb showdown, he said.

"Anything is possible if you've got a big enough political fist," Mr. Garreau said. "Bobby Byrd wants to move half the CIA to West Virginia." In this case, one wild card could be if Gov. William Donald Schaefer went to bat for the city, he said, though others could point to the governor's subatomic popularity ratings lately and, well, wonder.

"Just as I'm never going to bet against Bobby Byrd, I'm never going to bet against Willie Don Schaefer," Mr. Garreau said.

GSA says the decision criteria for what will be the biggest office construction project of the early 1990s in or around Baltimore will boil down the design of the building, the impact on employees, the track record of the developers and the "national headquarters identity" offered by the winning building. But Mr. Garreau warns that decisions are rarely so perfectly rational.

"Economics can't tell you what you should do," he said. "It can only tell you the price." So what should tip the decision? "Your immortal soul," he said with a laugh. "And Willie Don Schaefer."