$2.5 Million Sliced From Funds for Courthouse Design

WASHINGTON —  House and Senate negotiators have sliced $2.5 million from the nearly $9 million that Orange County lawmakers had sought for design work on the new federal courthouse to be built in Santa Ana, officials said Monday.

The immediate effect on the project was unclear.

One congressional aide, who asked not to be identified, said he was assured by House Appropriations Committee staffers that the $6.4 million remaining for the courthouse design would be adequate to keep the project on track. However, others involved said the shortfall could hamper efforts to quickly sign up a design firm.

An official of the General Services Administration, the housekeeping arm of the government that is responsible for construction of federal buildings, said Monday that the agency would have no immediate comment on the effect of the congressional action.

“We just heard about this today and we’re not in a position to know what it will mean,” said Mary M. Filippini, spokeswoman for the GSA’s regional office in San Francisco.

However, Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who has strongly backed the courthouse project, said the GSA might kick in some extra money from otherwise unobligated funds to ensure that the Orange County project stays on schedule.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed that we can make that work,” Dornan said.

The Orange County courthouse money was included in a compromise, 1993 funding bill for the Treasury, the Postal Service, the GSA and other federal agencies. The 1993 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

A House-Senate conference committee reached the accord late Friday, but details were not made public until Monday. The legislation is all but certain to quickly earn congressional approval and is likely to be signed by President Bush, congressional aides said.

Earlier, the Senate had voted to add $5 million in design funds to the $3.9 million that had been approved by the House. The Senate action came after GSA officials concluded that space requirements for the courthouse would be significantly larger than earlier anticipated, and that the agency would need to more than double the design budget.

The GSA is negotiating with an unnamed design firm to take on the courthouse project, Filippini said earlier this month.

Based on consultations with federal court officials, the GSA originally said the courthouse, to be built on a 3.9-acre parcel in the Santa Ana Civic Center, would require 219,000 square feet of space to accommodate federal judges, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and other officials.