Courthouse Money Pit

In Los Angeles’ city and county construction plans, something is always lost in translation. Usually it’s the buildings.

The pattern of agency, city and county ineptitude is quite remarkable: Planned new police stations are unbuilt, downtown’s barely begun Belmont High School will be the costliest in the nation and the City Hall earthquake retrofitting is far, far over budget and behind schedule. Now, The Times’ Josh Meyer reports that roughly $80 million has been spent from a fund for new county courthouses without one new courtroom to show for it.

It’s not for lack of need. Existing courtroom space is so inadequate and in such poor shape that court-shopping litigants face round trips of up to 140 miles. Worse, prosecutors strike plea bargains with criminals just to reduce crowded court dockets. And state Chief Justice Ronald M. George couldn’t even find a chair when he reported for jury duty at a county courthouse last year. “I took my seat on the floor with others as we waited,” the judge recalled.

The $80 million spent on the county courthouse project over the last decade would have been enough, at the outset of the program, to build two courthouses and perhaps begin a third. The fact that it has vaporized leads to what county and city officials usually do best: head-scratching, excuses and finger-pointing.

True, there have been a few funding and organizational distractions, like recession, riots and earthquake. But the bottom line is that $80 million went for a few parcels of vacant land and on constantly changing architectural, engineering and design plans. The changes apparently spiraled out of control, fueled by everything from problems with the county project staff to the wish lists of local judges.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County supervisors who ignored the money pit into which courthouse construction funds were being sucked for a decade continue to squabble over whose district has the greatest need for a new courthouse. The county’s chief administrative officer, David Janssen, now claims that past problems have been fixed. The taxpayers deserve some proof of that.

What’s needed is an audit of how the program has been run. Fortunately, Assemblyman George Runner Jr. (R-Lancaster) has already gotten the Legislature to approve one. Since neither the county supervisors nor Janssen saw fit to call for their own audit, they ought to pay close attention to the Legislature’s. And they should not wonder why county taxpayers are so archly skeptical about claims that their money is being handled wisely.