To emphasize your very valid point, there was no legit reason to spend the money to relocate the existing NASA space control from Cape Canaveral to Houston. It was blatant money and political patronage at work.

I am surprised few seem to understand the basis if the biggest failure of the Space shuttle, the dreaded O rings, and why they were the chosen design solution.
The reason, the solid rocket boosters were originally filled in a below ground level silo in the Everglades south of Homestead, Florida, and then shipped by barge up to the launch site, for the prototypes. I believe the abandoned assembly site still exists. The problem became, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was Senator Warren Hatch, and he was from Utah, the Home of Morton Thiokol a major rocket builder, and there are no barges able to get there from the Cape. So, they came up with a segmented shippable solid rocket booster, using O rings, and the rest is history another example of incremental government waste.