"Courthouse empty, but dockets full" is the title to this opinion piece today in the Munster Times.
[More] Another federal courthouse story yesterday, this one here in the Indianapolis Star. "Judges don't want to move into new courthouse" is the headline of the AP story that begins:
TERRE HAUTE, IND. -- Judges cannot afford to move into a new federal courthouse planned for downtown Terre Haute, one of the judges said.Posted by Marcia Oddi at June 13, 2004 06:19 PMBudget constraints have forced the U.S. District Court to lay off two employees, said Chief Judge Larry J. McKinney.
"The current budget crunch limits our ability to pay rent. We have to think of different ways of accommodating our needs," McKinney told The Indianapolis Star for a story Sunday.
The proposed courthouse is expected to cost as much as $18 million. That could make rent as high as $1 million a year _ twice what the court pays for space in the old federal building that opened in 1935, said David Wilkinson, a spokesman for the General Services Administration.
The judges' reluctance to move caught officials by surprise. Terre Haute has been working since 2000 with Indiana's U.S. senators to renovate the old building and turn it over to Indiana State University.