A Congressional panel canceled plans Thursday to meet with Boston Marathon bombing victims and local emergency responders in Massachusetts. Instead, the field hearing that was scheduled for Boston in the Spring will be held in Washington D.C., a spokeswoman from House of Homeland Security Committee confirmed.

Mayor Marty Walsh raised concerns that the hearing will politicize the attack that killed three and seriously hurt over 260 almost a year ago according to the AP.

The mayors office did not respond to a request for comment.

Charlotte Sellmeyer, the spokeswoman for the panel, who was coordinating the hearing with the mayor’s office said that for many reasons they have decided to move the hearing to D.C.. Sellmeyer told the AP that the chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) “wants to honor the victims and move forward in a constructive way.”

The committee includes Massachusetts Rep. William Keating, a Democrat who took part in a year-long Homeland Securit investigation concerning Russia to find out more about the events that led up to the attack. He found that alleged bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed with a street shootout with the police, were of Chechen descent and emigrated to the U.S. as children. In Cambridge, they are thought to have planned and carried out the attack to retaliate against the U.S. for it’s involvement in Muslim countries.

Keating’s office pushed for the hearing to be in Boston in order to give the victims and first responders a chance to be heard.

“The people in Boston deserve this opportunity and I think it will help the rest of the country in the process,” Keating said last month.

First responders are invited to join the Washington D.C. hearing stated Sellmeyer, but there is no word if any will attend.

The committee’s next meeting will highlight recommendations from the a final report that is set to be released before the anniversary of the bombings.