Cox, Feinstein Square Off Over Funding for Courthouse : Politics: The Senate Appropriations Committee adopts legislation providing only half of the $168 million requested for the Santa Ana project.

A dispute over the proposed federal courthouse in Santa Ana on Thursday turned into what appears to be the first skirmish of the 1994 California Senate campaign, as Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican Rep. Christopher Cox of Newport Beach tangled over the project’s funding.

To Cox’s dismay, the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday adopted legislation that would provide only half of the $168 million that the Clinton Administration had requested for construction of a new federal courthouse and office complex in downtown Santa Ana.

A longtime champion of the courthouse project, Cox has told financial backers that he intends to seek the Republican nomination to run against Feinstein when she comes up for reelection next year.

The $84-million appropriation for the courthouse was part of a $22.3-billion appropriations bill for Treasury, Postal Service and general government operations in the 1994 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Feinstein, who sits on the appropriations committee, said that full funding is not needed in 1994 because the General Services Administration will not be ready to proceed with courthouse construction until the following year.

“My view of this is very simple,” Feinstein said. “There will be money available when the courthouse is ready to go. The . . . language is in the bill.”

But Cox said that with proper attention from the GSA, construction could begin well before September, 1994, if the money was available. The GSA last March awarded a design contract for the courthouse to the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, a Newport Beach architecture and design firm.

“The only practical effect of this (Senate committee action) can be to delay until at least Oct. 1, 1994, the commencement of construction,” Cox said. “There is no good that can come of it. It does not even save the government money. Arguably, it could waste some.”

GSA officials were not available for comment Thursday.

During the appropriations committee meeting Thursday, Feinstein took the unusual step of calling attention to language inserted into the bill at her request that, in effect, promises to pay for the rest of the courthouse in the 1995 fiscal year.

She told Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the committee chairman, that the language was needed “to avoid any political issue to be made out of this.” She added “that some . . . on the other side (of the Capitol) are already beginning to (suggest) that I am not pushing for this.”

Asked later if the courthouse funding is turning into a political issue, Feinstein said: “Well, I gather that Congressman Cox is trying to make it into one.”

For his part, Cox said: “If it’s political, then one (of us) is fighting for the courthouse and the other one is temporizing. I submit that one of us has misjudged the situation.”

During the committee meeting, Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee that finances courthouses, assured Feinstein that the Santa Ana project will receive the balance of its funding in 1995.

The new courthouse would be built on 3.9 acres owned by the city in the Santa Ana Civic Center, bounded by 4th, 5th and Ross streets. City officials expect that the new 348,000-square-foot facility would create a wellspring of economic activity in the struggling downtown area.

The same legislation includes appropriations of $162 million for a second federal courthouse in Sacramento and $200 million for a new courthouse in Phoenix. According to a report accompanying the bill, work on the Phoenix courthouse will not begin until fiscal 1998.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), whose district includes the proposed courthouse site, said that he was as unhappy as Cox about the Senate action.

“I’m going to walk over personally to the Senate side to see what I can do. Maybe Dianne Feinstein has rolled her staff so many times that they weren’t on track on this,” Dornan said, referring to the senator’s recent overhaul of her Senate office.

The legislation now moves to the full Senate, where the committee’s version of the bill is expected to win approval. The House earlier passed legislation that would provide $148 million to build the Santa Ana courthouse, after making an across-the-board cut in courthouse projects. The Senate and House bills eventually will be reconciled by a conference committee.

Cox referred to the Senate committee’s funding arrangement as “a limp effort at pretending to make lemonade from lemons.”

“It’s bad form to appropriate the wrong amount. It put everyone unnecessarily in the dark about what a future Congress might do,” Cox said. “Despite the best intentions of everyone involved, this is a serious . . . risk. We hope that the money will be there, but if it had been in this year’s bill, we’d know it was there.”

But Feinstein spokesman Bill Chandler noted that the House had cut some $20 million from President Clinton’s request.