Mississippi Courthouse Earmark Receiving Funding Despite Pork Moratorium; Plans Underway to Name the Courthouse After Its Senate Sponsor
By Ana Radelat
The Clarion-Ledger
March 20, 2007
Congress expected to approve courthouse earmark
Building project had stalled over funding, but agency now has Jackson on priority list
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070320/NEWS/703200384/1001/NEWS
WASHINGTON — Congress is poised to approve $127 million to build a federal courthouse in Jackson, and supporters of the project hope they can break ground in a few weeks.
The General Services Administration has chosen the Jackson courthouse as one of five priority projects that would receive construction funding this year.
"We're following the court's priorities," said GSA spokeswoman Maryanne Beatty.
The other courthouses that would be funded under the GSA's 2007 construction budget are in Buffalo, N.Y.; Fort Pierce, Fla.; Springfield, Mass.; and Salt Lake City.
The Jackson courthouse, which will dominate a two-square-block area downtown, will replace the James O. Eastland Federal Courthouse on East Capitol Street, which has served as the main federal courthouse in central Mississippi since the 1930s. The new facility would have 12 courtrooms and measure more than 350,000 square feet.
The GSA's decision must be approved by senior members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees in the next couple of weeks. The lawmakers are expected to back the GSA's plan.
"We've been waiting for the money for a while," said U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr., one of the courthouse's supporters.
Sen. Thad Cochran, who is the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has led the effort on Capitol Hill to secure the funding. But - in a pre-Election Day move last year - lawmakers decided to strip "earmarks" or special projects out of most of the 2007 spending bills.
That meant the $127.5 million earmark Cochran had put in one of the spending bills to complete work on the courthouse was eliminated along with hundreds of other special projects, and the work on the Jackson courthouse stalled.
But the GSA was authorized to spend at least $281 million on courthouse construction and chose to spend $127.2 million on Jackson's facility.
Barbour said courthouse supporters hope construction will begin in earnest in a few weeks.
"We really feel confident that we have reached the point that we will have a new courthouse," Barbour said.
Construction is expected to take three years. Because of differences in the Mississippi congressional delegation, naming the courthouse may also take that long.
Second District Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, sponsored a resolution approved by the House on March 6 that would name the courthouse after civil rights lawyer R. Jess Brown.
On the same day, however, Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican, introduced a competing resolution that would name the courthouse after Cochran, who is also a Republican.
If the Senate approves Lott's resolution, there could be a legislative stalemate over whose name will go above the courthouse doors.
Barbour said he and the other Republican-appointed federal judges who work in the courthouse hope it is named after Cochran, who recommended them when the White House was seeking to fill judicial vacancies.
"People involved in the courthouse have wanted for quite some time for the courthouse to be named after Sen. Cochran," Barbour said.
"We couldn't have gotten it without him."
Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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