$151 Million Earmarked for Courthouse : Appropriation: House subcommittee sets aside funds for federal building on 3.9 acres in Santa Ana Civic Center. Further approvals are needed.

Plans for early construction of a new federal courthouse in Santa Ana got a boost Wednesday when a House subcommittee set aside $151 million to build the facility.

The total was 10% less than the $168 million requested by the Clinton Administration. The reduction was the result of an across-the-board cut in courthouse spending ordered by the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, which authorizes funds for federal buildings.

Nevertheless, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who has lobbied hard for a permanent federal court building in Orange County, pronounced the decision a victory.

“I’m delighted to see that the program is on track,” Cox said. “Given that we presently have virtually nothing, any structure at all looks like an oasis in the desert.”

Despite its population of 2.4 million, Orange County has no permanent federal courthouse. In recent years, a handful of federal judges have held court in temporary, 3,000-square-foot quarters in the Santa Ana Civic Center.

Cox, Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and other lawmakers have long argued that the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, where many Orange County cases are heard, is choked with litigation and too far away. Orange County deserves its own courthouse, the lawmakers say.

Congress appropriated $5 million last year to begin design work on a 348,000-square-foot Orange County courthouse and federal office building, but did not appropriate money to build it.

The $151 million in construction funds was approved Wednesday by the House appropriations subcommittee that funds the Treasury Department, Postal Service and general government operations. The figure must still be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, the full House and the Senate before the funding is assured.

But Cox said the subcommittee approval is an important hurdle.

The new courthouse and federal building, to be completed by 1998, will house federal judges, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and other government officials. It is to be built on a 3.9-acre parcel in the Santa Ana Civic Center and is expected to give the downtown area a significant economic boost. The planned site is bounded by 4th, 5th and Ross streets.

Cox said he does not expect the 10% reduction in construction funds to pose major problems.

“It is sufficiently early in the design stage that I think a scaled-down request can be accommodated,” the congressman said. “What we’re doing here is commencing a process that should produce a 30-year asset for Orange County, and there is certainly room at the margins to adjust the plans.”

The General Services Administration, which will oversee construction, originally estimated the cost of the facility at $79.8 million. GSA officials said they based their estimate on a survey of federal judges and court administrators.

But last summer, irate court officials complained that the 219,000-square-foot building planned by the GSA was too small, and the agency then revised both the size and cost figures.

Orange County is included in the federal court system’s Central District of California, a seven-county region with most judges working out of Los Angeles.