Fight Over 20 New U.S. Courtrooms Flares Up

A continuing fight involving all three branches of the U.S. government over where to put 20 new federal courtrooms in Los Angeles heated up again last week with calls for congressional investigations after a proposal to add the courtrooms to the U.S Courthouse in the Civic Center was rejected as too costly.

Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real, who wants to add the courtrooms by building a 14-story tower adjoining the existing courthouse, was told by the General Services Administration that his plan has been rejected by Congress in favor of a proposal to put the new courtrooms in a different building.

The rival plan, favored by the GSA before it agreed last year to commission an architectural study that concluded that Real’s proposal was feasible, would place the new courtrooms instead in a planned 23-story federal office building more than two blocks away from the courthouse.

Extra $40 Million

GSA officials said the primary factor for the decision was that Real’s plan would cost $40 million more than the alternative of including the courts in the federal office building, now estimated to cost about $124 million itself.

Real, however, charged that the government had never intended to take a serious look at the feasibility study made by Welton Becket Associates of Santa Monica.

“Somebody ought to seriously think about a congressional investigation into all aspects of GSA operations,” Real said. “They are supposed to be a service organization and we have to fight them for everything that we need.

“It’s my view that GSA spent the money for this study for nothing, and they never proposed to do anything. They have misrepresented to us as they misrepresented to Congress, and I think they played a complete charade with us on this study.”

The Welton Becket study explored two primary ways of adding extra courtrooms to the existing U.S. Courthouse, already seriously overcrowded with only 18 full-size courtrooms for 21 active judges and nine senior judges working reduced caseloads.

The scheme favored by Real would have added 14 new courtrooms in a 14-story tower adjoining the U.S. Courthouse, and later would have provided six more in a five-story addition to the courthouse along Aliso Street between Spring and Main streets. The total estimated cost for the two-phase project was $58 million.

In contrast, according to the GSA, the same number of courtrooms would cost the government about $40 million less if they were built into the proposed Federal Office Building at the site of a planned new Federal Center at Temple and Alameda streets, a triangular area also seen as the future site of an adjoining federal detention center and Veterans Administration clinic.

Potentially Disastrous

A public information officer for the GSA in San Francisco, Mary Filippini, denied that the feasibility study was commissioned merely to appease Real and other members of the legal community, including the leaders of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., who claim that a split federal courthouse in Los Angeles would be an administrative disaster.

“I feel that GSA did take a reasonable look,” Filippini said. “I don’t feel it was a charade. We did exactly what we were asked to do by Congress. The cost was the issue. We’re in the middle of budget restraints throughout the government.”

Filippini said GSA was notified March 6 by a letter co-authored by Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles), chairman of a House appropriations subcommittee involved with GSA financing, that the courtrooms should be placed in the proposed new office building, already financed by Congress.

Objection Raised

Roybal, who told Real to stop “raising hell” about the courthouse a year ago, responded to the judge’s call for a congressional investigation of the GSA by suggesting that the spending demands of the judges themselves might be a more proper subject of congressional scrutiny.

“Oh, baloney!” Roybal said. “They ought to have a congressional investigation of the judges. They want everything under the sun--showers in their chambers, everything but electric blankets. Here are judges all of a sudden becoming architects and builders. Let the judges and the lawyers walk a few blocks.”

Despite the insistence by Roybal and the GSA that the decision is final, Real said the judges and the legal community will continue to fight the plan, hoping to persuade both Congress and the Administration that a split courthouse would eventually prove more costly than an addition to the U.S. Courthouse.

Won’t Be Walking

“Of everybody who is affected by this, it’s the judges who will be affected the least,” Real said. “The real impact will be on the litigants, the jurors, the attorneys, the clerk’s office, the probation officers, federal prosecutors, federal public attorneys, the U.S. marshal’s service--virtually every agency of the federal judiciary and everyone involved.

“These people seem to have no understanding of how the judicial system actually works. Every agency involved is on record as being dead set against this, and so is the Bar (Los Angeles County Bar Assn.) and the 9th Circuit Judicial Council.”

As one example of the possible problems posed by a split courthouse in the Civic Center, Real described a typical court day in which prisoners are first arraigned by a magistrate and then are sent a few hours later to a judge to enter their pleas and receive their trial dates. Those in custody are escorted in handcuffs and chains by U.S. marshals.

Matter of Security

“There will be great security problems when they have to go from one courthouse to another,” Real said. “You’re going to be marching prisoners around in the public streets. You’re going to moving evidence around in the public streets. There are all kinds of extra dangers caused by this.”

Responding to Real’s complaints, Roybal said the judiciary has never substantiated its claims that the split courthouse concept would be an unbearable burden on the federal courts.

“I told them to give us some hard facts. Tell us what you’re talking about. We’ve never gotten anything except rhetoric from them,” Roybal said.

More Fighting Expected

Reluctantly, Roybal conceded that the battle over the courthouse probably has not ended.

“The controversy just seems to go on and on,” he said. “I’ve heard from some that the judges won’t move into the new building if it’s built. Who knows what they will do?”

Agreeing that the issue has not been resolved, U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters, chairman of the space committee for the U.S. Courthouse, questioned the GSA estimates of courtroom costs in the proposed new building, noting that they “neatly coincided” with GSA’s goal of building the project.

“Common sense dictates that it’s going to cost a whole lot more to run two separate courthouses,” Waters said. “To the best of my knowledge, none of these costs have been cranked into the evaluation. Nobody really knows what the true costs are.

“It’s still up to Congress. If Congress won’t listen to us, there’s nothing we can do.”