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80–438 PDF 2013

GAO REVIEW: ARE ADDITIONAL FEDERAL 

COURTHOUSES JUSTIFIED? 

(113–11) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 17, 2013 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, 

Vice Chair 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

STEVE SOUTHERLAND, II, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

TOM RICE, South Carolina 

MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma 

ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois 

VACANCY 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JANICE HAHN, California 

RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota 

ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... iv 

TESTIMONY 

Mark L. Goldstein, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, U.S. Government 

Accountability Office ............................................................................................ 9 

Hon. Michael A. Ponsor, Judge, United States District Court for the District 

of Massachusetts, and Chairman, Committee on Space and Facilities, Judicial Conference of the United States .................................................................. 9 

Dorothy Robyn, Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration .............................................................................................. 9 

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBER OF CONGRESS 

Hon. Jim Cooper, of Tennessee .............................................................................. 39 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Mark L. Goldstein .................................................................................................... 41 

Hon. Michael A. Ponsor ........................................................................................... 54 

Dorothy Robyn ......................................................................................................... 84 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Hon. John L. Mica, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

request to submit the following: 

Exhibit A: List of excess Federal courthouse space created in Florida 

between 2000 and 2010 ................................................................................ 6 

Exhibit B: Miami courthouse complex—Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. United 

States Courthouse ......................................................................................... 8 

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(1) 

GAO REVIEW: ARE ADDITIONAL 

FEDERAL COURTHOUSES JUSTIFIED? 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:36 a.m. in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster (Chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The committee will come to order. I first want to 

take the opportunity to welcome everybody here today, especially 

our distinguished witnesses: Mr. Mark Goldstein, who is the director of Physical Infrastructure, Government Accountability Office— 

good to see you, Mr. Goldstein, again; the Honorable Michael 

Ponsor, judge of the United States District Court for the District 

of Massachusetts and Chairman of the Committee on Space and 

Facilities of the Judicial Conference of the United States—welcome; 

and Dr. Dorothy Robyn, the Commissioner of Public Buildings, 

General Services Administration. Welcome. 

And also, a special welcome to my Federal judge, Brooks Smith 

from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. And I understand he is slated 

to become the Chairman of the Committee on Space and Facilities 

for the Judicial Conference of the United States. Welcome, Judge 

Smith. Good to see you. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to prevent the future overbuilding of Federal courthouses and to save billions of taxpayer dollars, and I think that is something that we are all very, very focused on in Congress today and across the United States, is saving 

taxpayers’ dollars. Today, we are releasing GAO’s most recent report on the Federal judiciary’s 5-year plan for new courthouses. 

And, essentially, the committee asked GAO a basic question: 

‘‘Keeping in mind that we could administer justice in a warehouse 

with two milk crates and a piece of plywood, the judiciary and the 

GSA have learned the lessons of past overbuilding, and can Congress rely on the 5-year plan to authorize the highest priority and 

necessary courthouse projects?’’ That is the question. 

Unfortunately, GAO’s response is ‘‘No.’’ In fact, GAO’s written 

testimony today recommends a moratorium on new courthouses 

until the projects on the plan can be re-evaluated. 

The 5-year plan lays out the judiciary’s priorities for courthouse 

construction in the coming fiscal years, and the current plan includes projects representing more than $3 billion in costs to the 

taxpayer. 

2 

So what were the mistakes of the past and what did they cost 

the taxpayers? 

In 2010, at the request of the committee, GAO reviewed all 33 

courthouses built between 2000 and 2010. And the GAO found that 

over 3.5 million extra square feet were built, costing the taxpayers 

$883 million in construction costs and $51 million in annual operating, the extra space. And that figure doesn’t even count the space 

abandoned by the courthouse, such as the old Dyer Courthouse in 

Miami or the Dillon Courthouse sitting vacant right now in downtown Buffalo, New York. 

The GAO gave 3 reasons for this waste of taxpayer money: the 

judiciary overestimated the number of future judges by as much as 

50 percent; the judiciary’s policy to not share courtrooms, requiring 

new courtrooms and chambers for every projected judge; and GSA 

simply built larger and more expensive courthouses than Congress 

authorized. 

Let me give you one example here in Washington, DC. Two days 

ago Chairman Barletta, Ranking Member Norton, and I toured the 

Federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue. It consists of two 

buildings: the original 1950s courthouse and the large annex that 

opened in 2005. When GSA proposed the annex in the 1990s, the 

judiciary projected they would be 36 district judges when it opened. 

Today there are only 24. As a result, there are about 600 people 

working in almost 1 million square feet. To put that in context, 

that’s about the size of 500 2,000-square-foot homes. 

To avoid making the same mistakes in the future, it appears we 

can’t rely on the projections of future judges, we need courtroom 

sharing, and GSA has to follow the law and build courthouses within the authorized limits. 

Eight years ago, when I chaired the subcommittee I requested a 

judiciary study—courtrooms—how often courtrooms are used and 

adopt courtroom sharing. The courts’ own report showed that courtrooms across the Nation sat unused for most of the day, and they 

adopted a courtroom sharing policy for new courthouses. 

In addition, the judiciary revised its planning process for when 

to recommend new courthouses for construction. Today, we will 

hear testimony on GAO’s review of this process and the judiciary’s 

5-year courthouse plan. This plan is critical in helping GSA and 

Congress determine what projects are justified and cost-effective. 

The accuracy of this plan and how it is developed should ensure 

taxpayer money is not wasted. 

However, as we will hear today, there are serious questions as 

to whether the projects on the most recent 5-year plan, submitted 

to the committee last month, are even needed. Despite developing 

a new assessment process to evaluate the need for a new courthouse, the judiciary has not applied the process to 10 of the 12 

projects on the plan. As I said earlier, GAO recommends a moratorium on new courthouses until the projects can be re-evaluated 

using the new assessment process. 

Right now we are running trillion-dollar deficits, we have a $16 

trillion debt, and agencies are furloughing staff and shutting down 

air traffic control towers. In homes across the Nation, families are 

worried about the economy, their jobs, and balancing their own 

budgets. They expect the same from us here in Washington. And 

3 

we must save taxpayer dollars and we must ensure new projects 

are truly needed and fully justified. 

And it has been brought to my attention that our colleagues 

across the capital, in some cases, don’t apply the same standards 

that we or the GAO or the judiciary do in picking courthouses. So 

that is something we have to make sure, in this body, are standing 

up to those folks on the other side of the Capital. 

I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses, and I hope we 

can—you can help Congress to decide what, if any, courthouses 

should be approved in the future. 

So, again, thank you. Welcome. And with that, Ranking Member 

Norton is recognized. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. You will recall that the overbuilding and resistance to sharing courtrooms has 

been one of the pet peeves of this committee for many years now. 

I was pleased to accompany the chair of our full committee, Mr. 

Shuster, and Mr. Barletta, to our own Federal courthouse here just 

the other day, this week, where we saw a courthouse that was built 

before there was any sharing, where all the judges can have her 

or his own courtroom, and where you have a very lovely courthouse, but where you don’t meet the standards that have since 

been set by this committee. 

Now, that courthouse was authorized in 1999. So we are more 

than 10 years out from that. And it is our obligation to see to it 

that all courthouses follow the directions of this committee that 

have now been made plain. 

So, we are pleased to convene this hearing about the GAO report 

on the Judicial Conference of the United States 5-year construction 

plan. Today’s hearing has, as its necessary context, a 2010 GAO report that the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee commissioned in 2008 to examine courthouse planning and construction, including management 

and costs. The GAO report found astonishing—made astonishing 

findings of mismanagement by GSA and the judiciary of the courthouse program, and documented wasted funds and space. 

The GAO determined that the 33 courthouses constructed by 

GSA since 2000 included 3.56 million square feet of space above 

the congressionally authorized specifications and frequent overestimation of the number of judges that courthouses would need to 

accommodate, and failed to implement courtroom sharing, despite 

the committee’s mandate. The GAO also found that the total value 

of the extra space was $835 million in construction costs and $51 

million annually in rent and operation expenses. 

Following the GAO study in August of 2010, the leadership of the 

Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and 

Emergency Management submitted a bipartisan letter to President 

Obama highlighting the concerns about waste, stating the committee would withhold authorizing new Federal courthouse construction until the committee was satisfied that appropriate reforms to the program were in place. 

We then requested a GAO study of the Judicial Conference’s 5- 

year courthouse project plan to determine whether the courthouse 

current construction schedule had been evaluated in the context of 

new courtroom-sharing guidelines and best practices in capital 

4 

planning. The findings of the latest GAO report on the 5-year 

courthouse project plan are stunning, yet unsurprising. 

The judiciary has rightly made some adjustments to the capital 

planning process in light of the continued urging and oversight of 

this committee, by developing the asset management planning, or 

AMP process, in 2006 that more accurately represents the administrative office of the U.S. courts’ current policies on judicial sharing, 

projecting judges, security deficiencies, and facility conditions. 

Unfortunately, the judiciary has rejected GAO’s recommendations to re-evaluate the 12 projects that are currently on the 5-year 

courthouse project plan, and would like to proceed with nearly $3.2 

billion worth of projects on the list without the benefit of the AMP 

process. 

As of October 2012, the judiciary has conducted AMP evaluations 

for about 67 percent of all Federal courthouses. As a result of the 

AMP process, two projects that were on the prior 5-year courthouse 

project plan were removed, and the judiciary determined that the 

needs of those courthouses could be addressed through repair and 

alteration projects that reconfigure space. 

The judiciary, however, has not agreed to re-evaluate the other 

10 projects on the 5-year courthouse project plan, and to make adjustments based on the AMP process being applied now to the entire inventory. 

I will withhold my support of the authorization of any courthouse 

construction on the judiciary’s 5-year project plan until I am assured that there will be real savings and steps to control spending 

in the judiciary construction program, and that planning of new 

courthouses is consistent with the actual needs of the judiciary, 

based on the AMP process. We intend to work with GSA and the 

judiciary to ensure that good asset management decisions are made 

in the courthouse construction program. 

We appreciate the testimony of our witnesses, and we welcome 

your thoughts, suggestions, and insights. And I thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. And with that I recognize the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Barletta, for his opening statement. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Thank you. I want to thank Chairman Shuster 

for his leadership and work to reduce costs in the Federal courthouse program. 

In 2005 Chairman Shuster chaired the subcommittee I now 

chair, and began to look into whether we need all of the space the 

judiciary and GSA were proposing. The committee did not make a 

knee-jerk reaction. Ensuring the proper administration of justice 

for our citizens is critical to the Nation. Chairman Shuster insisted 

on thorough reviews and studies. Years later, we now have the 

benefit of that work and we can act on it. 

We now know, from numerous GAO studies and judiciary’s own 

space usage report that, in fact, significant money can be saved in 

the courthouse construction program. And, as part of this work, 

today GAO has recommended that we take a step back and wait 

for the judiciary to properly evaluate the $3 billion worth of 

projects on its 5-year courthouse plan before we act and spend 

more taxpayer dollars. That seems to be a logical conclusion. 

5 

With today’s budget deficits, the growing national debt, and people expecting Government to be a better steward of the tax dollar, 

we must ensure waste is minimized. I appreciate the work of the 

judiciary to take—that has taken to improve the process it uses to 

evaluate the need for new courthouses. While, as GAO points out, 

the new process is not perfect, and there could be further improvements to the new process, it is a step in the right direction. 

However, knowing that at least 10 of the 12 projects currently 

on the 5-year plan have yet to be evaluated under the new process, 

we must ask the question: Are these projects still urgently needed? 

Are they justified? I hope we can address these issues today as we 

hear from our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. With that I would recognize a brief 

statement from Mr. Mica, the former chair of the full committee. 

Mr. MICA. Well, thank you. And thank you, Chairman Shuster, 

and also Chairman Barletta, Ranking Member Norton, for conducting this hearing. I think this is an appropriate time to start 

again refocusing—Mr. Shuster has done it in the past, we have 

done it in the committee—and looking at the Federal Government’s 

bulging inventory of judiciary overbuilt Taj Mahals is long overdue. 

I think that what you are going to accomplish today, and when we 

are facing these huge deficits and looking for ways to save taxpayer 

money, we can have a ‘‘lessons learned.’’ 

I conducted a little inventory, Mr. Chairman, of Florida in the 

last 10 years. And we have Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, 

Miami. The Federal courthouses built there, the excess space that 

was constructed was over half-a-million square feet, 551,000. This 

is Exhibit A I would like to submit for the record today of Florida’s 

history, if we could do that, Mr. Chairman. I would like to submit 

Exhibit A. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Without objection, so ordered. 

[The information follows:] 

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Mr. MICA. Then I want to take—drill down to one example. In 

Miami they built a Federal courthouse to replace the Dyer Building, and that particular building was built with 97,000 square feet 

more than they needed, and it was authorized by Congress. Now, 

you have, basically, in building the temples of justice you have people violating the Federal law. How the hell are they building these 

things exceeding the guidelines established and what is set in law? 

So, this is Exhibit B of what has taken place in Miami. I would 

like that submitted. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Without objection, so ordered. 

[The information follows:] 

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Mr. MICA. Then, finally is the court—when we build these courthouses, we know there will either be vacant space or what are they 

going to do with the space? The Dyer Building, we did a hearing 

under this committee, I just did one chairing the Government 

Oversight Subcommittee in Miami. That building has been vacant 

for nearly 6 years, probably $20 million worth of remediation now 

required because it sat idle with mold, costing the taxpayers in excess of $1.2 million to sit idle. And when we finished the hearing 

I got a letter from Miami-Dade College, which is across the street, 

telling me for 5 years they have been trying to get the building and 

couldn’t get the building and would utilize the building and take 

it off the taxpayers’ roll. 

So, today I am introducing a bill to transfer that, and working 

with the south Florida and the Florida delegation to transfer the 

damn building and get it out of, again, the deficit column of the 

taxpayers. 

I thank you for coming. I do have a competing hearing, and 

wanted to get that in. Yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the chairman for his statement and for his 

hard work over the years. 

I again wanted to welcome our witnesses; thanks for being here 

today. I ask unanimous consent that our witnesses’ full statements 

be included in the record. I would ask—without objection, so ordered. 

And since your written testimony is in the record, I ask you to 

keep it to 5 minutes and then we will go to asking questions after 

you have—all three of you have completed. So, with that first, Mr. 

Goldstein, you may proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF MARK L. GOLDSTEIN, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL 

INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; HON. MICHAEL A. PONSOR, JUDGE, UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, AND CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON SPACE AND FACILITIES, JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES; 

AND DOROTHY ROBYN, COMMISSIONER, PUBLIC BUILDINGS 

SERVICE, U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

committee. A pleasure to be here this morning. I am pleased to be 

here to discuss the Federal judiciary’s capital planning efforts for 

new courthouses. 

Since the early 1990s, the judiciary and the GSA have undertaken a multibillion-dollar Federal courthouse construction program. To date, this program has resulted in 78 new courthouses or 

annexes, and 16 projects that are currently in various stages of development. However, rising costs and other budget priorities that 

you have mentioned this morning have slowed the construction program. In addition, we have previously found that almost all courthouses built in the last 10 years have been constructed larger than 

necessary because of poor planning, inadequate oversight, and inefficient courtroom use. 

In 2008, the judiciary began using a new capital planning process called the Asset Management Planning process, AMP, to assess, 

identify, and rank its space needs. judiciary officials said the AMP 

10 

process addresses concerns about growing cost and incorporates 

best practices related to capital planning. 

Today we are releasing a new report that addresses the extent 

to which the judiciary’s capital planning process aligns with leading practices, and provides information needed for informed decisionmaking related to new courthouses, and the extent to which 

courthouse projects recommended for funding in fiscal years 2014 

to 2018 were assessed under the judiciary’s AMP process. My statement highlights the key findings and recommendations. Our findings are as follows. 

First, the asset management planning process represents 

progress by the judiciary in better aligning its capital planning 

process with leading capital planning practices. But its 5-year plan 

for fiscal year 2014 to 2018, the document the judiciary uses to request courtroom construction projects, lacks transparency and key 

information on how projects quality for new construction, alternatives the judiciary considered, and their cost. 

For example, the Plan lists costs for the next phase of the 12 recommended courthouse projects, which have several phases. But it 

does not list previous funding or ongoing annual costs for these 

projects. As a result, the plan lists about $1 billion in costs for the 

12 projects, but the projects would actually cost the Federal Government an estimated $3.2 billion over the next 20 years. 

Congress has appropriated a small share of the money needed for 

the projects, and most will need design changes before construction 

can begin. As a result, there is a risk that congressional funding 

decisions could be made without complete and accurate information. However, with this information, decisionmakers could weigh 

current-year budget decisions within the context of projects’ expected future costs, and spur discussion and debate about actions 

to address them and put the judiciary’s requests in context with 

other Federal spending. 

Second, 10 of the 12 recommended projects were not evaluated 

under the AMP process. judiciary officials said they did not want 

to delay the current projects, or force them to undergo a second 

capital planning process after they had already been approved. Two 

courthouse projects from a previous 5-year plan that were assessed 

under AMP were removed from the list, and are now ranked behind more than 100 other courthouse construction projects. 

Furthermore, 10 of the 12 recommended construction projects do 

not qualify for a new courthouse under the AMP criterion, which 

requires that new courthouses need two or more additional courtrooms. These conditions call into question the extent to which the 

projects remaining on the 5-year plan represent the judiciary’s 

most urgent projects, and whether proceeding with these projects 

represents the most fiscally responsible proposal. 

While 10 additional AMP evaluations would involve some additional costs, not conducting those evaluations could involve spending $3.2 billion over the next 20 years on courthouses that may not 

be the most urgent projects. As a result, we have made several recommendations, including: the judiciary should provide more information to decisionmakers related to how projects qualify for new 

construction; any alternatives the judiciary considered, and their 

11 

cost; and impose a moratorium on the projects currently on the 5- 

year plan until they are evaluated under AMP. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my oral statement. I would be 

happy to respond to questions that you or other Members have. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Goldstein. 

And with that, Judge Ponsor, please proceed. 

Judge PONSOR. Thank you. My name is Michael Ponsor. That is 

spelled P-o-n-s-o-r, in contrast to this morning’s Washington Post 

article, which spells my name P-o-s-n-e-r. Judge Richard Posner is 

much richer, taller, and smarter than I am, and I am proud to be 

confused for him. But my name is Ponsor, P-o-n-s-o-r. 

[Laughter.] 

Judge PONSOR. It is an honor to appear before this committee 

again in my role as chair of the Judicial Conference’s Committee 

on Space and Facilities to discuss the GAO’s draft report. I want 

to make two points, preliminarily. 

First, I want you to know that we do appreciate this committee’s 

assistance with the courthouses that have been authorized and 

built over the past decades, including the courthouse in Springfield, 

Massachusetts, where I work. These buildings do allow the judiciary to perform its mission for the people of this country, the administration of justice, in a safe and well-functioning physical environment. 

Second, I want to confess an error in my submitted written testimony. Page 12 addresses certain inaccuracies in the GAO’s report 

concerning numbers of courtrooms in some of the courthouses in 

the judiciary’s 5-year plan. There are inaccuracies in the GAO report, but my summary of these inaccuracies also contains inaccuracies, and I only realized that last night. We will be submitting a 

replacement page with the correct numbers. 

There is no higher priority for my committee, especially these 

days, than reducing the cost for space for the judiciary. Among the 

many steps we have taken at the urging of the committee is the 

implementation of courtroom-sharing policies for senior judges, 

magistrate judges, and bankruptcy judges. We also adopted a recommendation from GAO’s 2010 report that we not plan for courtrooms that are projected as necessary, but not yet approved by the 

Congress. Let me address the draft report’s two recommendations. 

With regard to the first recommendation, the need to provide additional information, the report does overlook or disregard not only 

the extensive documentation generated by the judiciary’s longrange planning process, but also the primary role that GSA plays 

in the planning and cost estimating for new courthouses. The judiciary’s 5-year plan has never been intended to be a long-term capital investment plan as the report mistakenly assumes. The 5-year 

plan is simply intended to encapsulate the judiciary’s priorities for 

new courthouse projects. In fact, the information which GAO suggests be part of our 5-year plan is already provided to decisionmakers through GSA on behalf of and in coordination with the judiciary. 

For each project proposed for funding, GSA produces a lengthy 

feasibility study evaluating all alternatives to new construction. If 

the product is approved, GSA provides a detailed prospectus for 

12 

site and design and another for construction. These prospectuses 

summarize the need for the project and its scope, alternatives considered, and costs, prior funding, and the project schedule. It would 

be a waste of limited resources, and would be unnecessary, for the 

judiciary to replicate the fine work that GSA is already doing. 

Of greatest concern in the draft report is GAO’s second recommendation, stating that the judiciary impose a moratorium on 

projects on the current 5-year plan until AMP evaluations are completed for each of them. The proposed re-evaluation would also likely require a subsequent repetition by GSA of its feasibility study. 

The effect of this recommendation on projects which Congress has 

already supported with $188 million in funding would risk further 

extensive delays. 

While the AMP process does feature significant refinements and 

improvements, the prior process accurately identified courts where 

the need for new facilities was most urgent. Significantly, both 

processes require GSA feasibility studies and require prospectuses. 

Both protocols are detailed and comprehensive and require years to 

complete. Because of this, no reconsideration of the 5-year plan is 

necessary. 

Further evidence of this comes from the fact that 4 of the 12 

projects on the current plan—I emphasize, 4 of the 12 projects on 

the current plan—have gone through the AMP process: Chattanooga, Des Moines, San Antonio, and Anniston have already been 

reviewed through the AMP process, and their degree of urgency is 

confirmed. The other eight projects have been updated to reflect 

the judiciary’s courtroom sharing policies, and the determination 

not to plan for projected judgeships. 

For 8 of the 12 projects, sites have already been acquired. In two 

instances there is a swap with municipalities: San Antonio and 

Charlotte, North Carolina. In 10 of the 12 projects, the courthouses 

have been on the plan for more than 10 years. It would be brutally 

unfair to make these communities, after so long, endure further 

unnecessary delay for additional analysis and review. The projects 

on the current 5-year plan deserve to remain where they are. 

It is especially disturbing that the GAO report ignores ominous 

security deficiencies that have been identified in the courts on the 

5-year plan. All these courthouses lack essential security features, 

such as secure sally ports for unloading prisoners, holding cells for 

defendants in custody, secure corridors, and separate elevators for 

court staff. These courthouses have become, in the words of the 

U.S. Marshals Service, ‘‘disasters waiting to happen.’’ The security 

concerns are real. They are not hypothetical. It is dangerous, as 

well as unfair, to expect these communities to endure further 

delays caused by needless additional analysis and data collection, 

as the draft report recommends. 

Apart from the absence of any discussion of potential security 

risks, the report omits any reference to the deteriorating physical 

condition of the facilities on the plan. The report notes that the 

GAO team visited two courthouses on the 5-year plan and observed 

that keen insights were obtained, as a result. Unfortunately, the 

report nowhere reveals what these insights were. 

The letter and photographs of Chief Judge Lisa Wood, which are 

attached to my written testimony, whose Savannah Courthouse 

13 

was built in 1899, was visited by GAO. This letter and these photographs vividly detail the serious structural defects that plague her 

courthouse. These deficiencies in building systems and structures 

are typical of shortcomings existing in various ways in all the 

courthouses on the 5-year plan. 

In sum, the recommendation that this judiciary treat its 5-year 

plan as a long-term capital investment plan misconstrues the purpose of the 5-year plan and ignores the wealth and data of analysis 

provided by the GSA that already accompanies each building 

project. The recommended moratorium would be devastating to the 

12 communities that have waited so long and would prove dangerous, expensive, and unnecessary. 

I would be glad to answer questions you may have. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Judge, for your testimony. And it 

doesn’t surprise any of us that the Washington Post got the facts 

wrong. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. And with that, I recognize Dr. Robyn. You may 

proceed. 

Ms. ROBYN. Good morning, Chairman Shuster, Chairman 

Barletta, Ranking Member Norton, other members of this committee. I am Dorothy Robyn, Commissioner of GSA’s Public Building Service. I appreciate being invited here today to discuss GSA’s 

investment in U.S. courthouses, and GAO’s latest report on courthouse construction. I want to make four points this morning. 

First, GSA is committed to meeting the needs of the courts in the 

most cost-effective way possible. Over the last two decades, GSA 

and the courts have continually and significantly refined the process for selecting, managing, and overseeing courthouse construction 

projects. One key example is the judiciary’s recent policy of requiring judges to share courtrooms, which has allowed the courts to 

significantly reduce their requirements. 

For its part, GSA has shifted its focus to the renovation and improvement of existing courthouses wherever possible, both to limit 

the need for all new construction, and to preserve buildings that 

are historic landmarks in many communities. We have also developed controls such as the use of Building Information Modeling, or 

BIM, to ensure that our projects come within budget. 

Second, although GSA has not sought or received appropriation 

for any new courthouse construction project since 2010, we have 

worked with the judiciary during that time to implement the new 

approaches to the projects on the 5-year plan. For example, in San 

Jose, California, GSA worked with the judiciary to reassess proposed new construction in light of courtroom sharing. As a result, 

the courts were able to remove San Jose from the 5-year plan. We 

are, in turn, developing a revised prospectus to pursue selected upgrades to the existing building, rather than all new construction. 

Likewise, GSA worked with the courts to rethink the proposed 

annex at the U.S. courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. Congress approved and appropriated $10 million for what was envisioned as a 

$100 million, 263,000-square-foot expansion. Based on the judiciary’s courtroom sharing policy, GSA developed a new prospectus 

for a comparatively modest $15 million renovation, and we have 

submitted that prospectus to you. 

14 

And let me note that both San Jose and Greenbelt came off of 

the 5-year list not because of the new AMP process, but because 

of the ongoing application of courtroom sharing to projects on the 

list. 

A third example is Mobile, Alabama, which tops the U.S. courts’ 

most recent 5-year plan, and where cooperative efforts between 

GSA and the courts to reduce space requirements and increase 

courtroom sharing have resulted in significant projected savings. 

The 5-year plan originally had proposed a stand-alone new courthouse estimated at $190 million. We are now proposing instead to 

modernize the 1932 courthouse and expand it with an annex that 

enhances the useful and symbolic meaning of the original historic 

building. 

GSA is currently working with the courts to revise and reduce 

the requirements for every courthouse on the 5-year plan, and we 

look forward to keeping this committee apprised of our progress on 

these efforts. 

The third point I want to make is that GAO’s latest report on 

courtroom construction largely ignores the central role that GSA 

plays in analyzing the court’s requirements and evaluating alternative options, including our detailed feasability studies and prospectus submissions to Congress that provide comprehensive 

project cost estimates. The GAO report uses some questionable cost 

figures, figures that in some cases fail to reflect the very rightsizing of proposed projects that I just described. 

The analysis is flawed in other ways, as well. For example, GAO 

faults the court’s 5-year plan for omitting the long-range projected 

rent costs for proposed new courthouse buildings. Capital plans do 

not normally include such costs. Rent costs should inform the capital plan, but they are not normally part of a capital plan. But leaving that issue aside, GAO looks at only one side of the ledger, ignoring the savings in rental costs to agencies now housed elsewhere that would backfill a new courthouse or Federal office building. 

The fourth and final point I want to make this morning is that 

while GSA is very supportive of GAO’s efforts to encourage more 

efficient management of the courthouse program, and we have incorporated GAO’s recommendations from—in past reports, GSA 

does not support the moratorium that GAO calls for. The projects 

on the court’s 5-year plan have been subjected to extensive planning and analysis by GSA and the courts, including our ongoing efforts to downsize these proposed projects to improve their efficiency, to meet courtroom sharing requirements, and to utilize existing buildings. It would be imprudent to postpone these investments. A moratorium would undermine GSA’s ongoing maintenance of the Federal inventory, and our mission to provide the 

courts with safe and secure courthouse space. 

In closing, GSA will continue to collaborate with the courts to reduce the cost of courthouses, while maximizing their functionality 

and civic benefit. On behalf of GSA and the Public Building Service, I welcome the committee’s oversight of this essential program. 

I appreciate being here this morning, and I am pleased to take 

your questions. Thank you. 

15 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Dr. Robyn. With that, I will start the 

questioning off. 

Mr. Goldstein, I think it is important that we understand the 

context of why we are here. We have the ability of hindsight, which 

they say is 20/20. And so I would like to know what the GAO found 

out when you looked back over the last 33 courthouses that the 

GSA built, what did the GAO learn from looking at those that had 

been built in those—and again, I think the number is 33 that you 

looked at. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you indicated a 

little bit in your opening statement, sir, we issued a report in 2010 

that looked at the 33 courthouses built since 2000, and we found 

that, of those 33 courthouses, they were overbuilt by 3.56 million 

square feet for 3 different reasons. 

The first reason was that the GSA had built many of them beyond their authorized square footage. That authorization is provided by the United States Congress in the authorization. 

The second reason is that because a lot of the judgeships had 

been projected improperly over time—and, in fact, they built space 

for over 119 judges that never materialized. And so you have courtrooms—119 courtrooms, for the most part—and chamber space for 

those judges, as well. 

And the third reason is because, despite admonitions from this 

committee and others, the judiciary had not agreed to share courtrooms at the district level for judges. They do, to some extent, at 

the bankruptcy, magistrate, and senior judge level today, but we 

found that you could have built 40 percent fewer courtrooms—40 

percent fewer—had you allowed a sharing scheme. And so those 

were the main reasons. 

If I may add one point, sir, which goes to the Commissioner of 

Public Building Service’s comments, I am quite surprised. The Public Building Service and GSA had 30 days, as did the judiciary, to 

return to us any comments they had on our report. We received 

only a couple of very technical comments. This is the first time 

GAO has heard any of the comments criticizing our report. And, 

frankly, in the years that I have been doing this job, I have issued 

about 500 reports. This has never happened before, in my experience. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Dr. Robyn, can you respond to that? Why didn’t 

the GSA respond to the GAO? 

Ms. ROBYN. Well, I believe we did give them cost—correct cost 

figures—what we thought were better cost figures. And they did 

not—and GAO did not use them, they used numbers that they got 

from the courts. There is a little bit of an apples and oranges issue 

there, in what they are using, what is on the 5-year plan, and is 

the total cost of a construction project. 

But, for example, in Mobile, the GAO report uses the figure, the 

construction cost, of $219 million. That is a very old number. That 

reflects the size of the project that was authorized by this committee 10 years ago. We have right-sized that project so that it will 

be an annex, rather than a new courthouse, substantially smaller, 

and about half of that cost. That isn’t reflected in the GAO report. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Does the GAO have those, that plan? 

16 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Whenever we—we have, obviously, disputes 

about numbers all the time with the judiciary and with GSA. For 

many years, the GSA—the GAO has been doing this work. We always received—these are not GAO’s numbers. We always get courthouse numbers from GSA and judgeship numbers from the judiciary. The only thing we did to the numbers we had, which were provided by them, was to amend them for inflation purposes. But we 

do not derive our own numbers. Whatever numbers they give us 

are the numbers we use. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And, Dr. Robyn, the third problem that GAO identified was that cause the overbuilding was that the GSA often exceeded congressional authority. I know you haven’t been there for 

the last 10 years—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Right, yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER [continuing]. But we really need to understand. 

Why did the GSA, over the past several years, past decade or so, 

exceed congressional authority, when under the Public Buildings 

Act the administrator is not able to exceed authorized cost by more 

than 10 percent? 

Ms. ROBYN. Let me make two points in response to that. First 

of all, I want to distinguish what we have been doing in the last 

couple of years, where there has been a strong effort to right-size 

the projects on the court’s list, to work with the courts to reduce 

requirements in light of the court’s new courtroom sharing policy, 

and our desire to take advantage of existing courthouses. 

I feel passionately about the need to preserve our historic courthouses. And I think GSA and the courts were too quick to embrace 

the idea of building a shiny, new courthouse and not preserving the 

existing courthouse. So there is—we have been doing things in a 

different way the last several years. 

But I also want to say there is a long—there is a history here 

of disagreement, strong disagreement, with GSA’s—I’m sorry, with 

GAO’s methodology on the 2010 report. And that was a—there is 

an appendix that is longer than the GAO report which contains the 

GSA response and the court’s response. And I want to just summarize, in three bullets, the testimony of my predecessor in 2010 on 

that report. 

GAO has used a space measure that assumes upper space in 

building atriums is included in the gross square footage of an asset. 

That is a key point, because courthouses have large atriums. And 

how one treats what is called void space, or that atrium space, is 

critical to the calculation of square footage. GAO compounded 

this—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. So I understand—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER [continuing]. You are including square footage up 

in the atrium? 

Ms. ROBYN. GAO included—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. GAO included that? 

Ms. ROBYN [continuing]. The square footage—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, Mr. Chairman, that was GSA’s policy since 

2000. All we did was quote back GSA’s own policy to them. And 

we have repeated this to GSA numerous times, to Mr. Peck, and 

everyone else at GSA now since 2010. This is GSA’s own policy. I 

17 

sat here before this committee, Ms. Norton remembers this, and 

held up that policy on numerous occasions. It is GSA’s own policy. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Dr. Robyn? 

Ms. ROBYN. My understanding is that GAO applied—that our 

policy, which—this gets complicated, but we instituted that policy 

of counting that space in 2005. We have since changed that policy. 

We don’t count it now. We typically base our practice on BOMA, 

the Building Operators and Managers Association, policy. We—yes, 

sorry. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I understand that is their policy to include those 

open spaces as—— 

Ms. ROBYN. No. I think the latest—and this is quite new—is to 

not include it. But I think the key principle here is to apply the 

policy that was in place when a courthouse was built, as opposed 

to applying a policy that was instituted later. That, I think, is the 

key, is the crux of the disagreement, that and the issue—and I will 

let Judge Ponsor speak to this—of whether also applying courtroom 

sharing policies that came into place later to buildings that were 

built before the courtroom sharing policies existed. 

As you said, Mr. Chairman, hindsight is 20/20. If we knew now 

what we—if we had known then what we know now about courtroom sharing, we could have made a lot of these smaller. But that 

wasn’t the policy. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Judge, do you care to response? 

Judge PONSOR. I just wanted to make a sort of personal comment 

with regard to the first element of GAO’s criticism back in 2010. 

As Congresswoman Holmes Norton knows, we had a 31⁄2-hour 

hearing on that report in May of 2010, and that taught me that 

if you are going to be in a hearing before the congresswoman, no 

liquids after 8:00. 

[Laughter.] 

Judge PONSOR. We were here for 31⁄2 hours. We went over that 

report, point by point. And the predecessor of Dr. Robyn strongly— 

strongly—contested the measurements made by GAO. It is quite a 

serious accusation by GAO to say that GSA ignored the prospectus 

limitations. 

My own personal experience was I built a new courthouse in 

Springfield, Massachusetts, that is I sat in on the planning. Once 

a week I sat down with the GSA people and with the contractor, 

visited the courthouse, and we were accused in their report of having overbuilt by 10 to 15 percent. I compared the prospectus numbers to the size of the courthouse by GSA. We went over by between 1 and 2 percent. I was astonished to see that we were accused of going over. We didn’t. We built the courthouse with GSA. 

I assisted in that. And we did not overbuild. 

So the first area of criticism was very strongly contested at the 

hearing back in May of 2010. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. And one final question of Dr. Robyn. 

What are you prepared to commit to the committee today that the 

GSA will not overbuild, run with cost or size in the future? 

Ms. ROBYN. Mr. Chairman, my predecessor did commit—and this 

is an example of where we have incorporated a recommendation. 

We have incorporated many of GAO’s recommendations, but one 

was that we commit to not going over, or to notification of the comVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:49 Jun 11, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\113\FULL\4-17-1~1\80438.TXT JEAN
18 

mittee if we are at risk of going over the size—the square footage 

specified in a prospectus. We already do that. We let you know if 

there is a risk of going more than 10 percent over cost, over budget. 

That is a statutory requirement. We committed 4 years ago—my 

predecessor did—to notification of the committee if there is a comparable risk of going over the square footage set out in the prospectus. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. With that, I recognize Ms. Norton for 

questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Not to belabor the points of—about space, Dr. Robyn, you would conceded— 

in fact, Judge Ponsor, you too would concede that the atrium space 

was at least partly responsible for what GAO found to be overbuilding. 

Judge PONSOR. That appears to be true. They were counting 

that. 

Ms. NORTON. So that is not occupiable space. 

Ms. ROBYN. It is also not—— 

Judge PONSOR. And—— 

Ms. NORTON. And, of course, when Congress authorizes—look, I 

am all for atriums. But when Congress authorizes space, is it not 

the case that it is thinking of occupiable space? 

Ms. ROBYN. I think this gets into the technicalities of how space 

is counted—— 

Ms. NORTON. It is not very technical. Just—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes—no, no, no—— 

Ms. NORTON. Try sitting in an atrium, you know? 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. No, no, no. Look, I agree with that. I don’t 

think—I think the policy we adopted most recently is the right policy, that one should not count—— 

Ms. NORTON. All right. So the policy now is that an atrium is not 

regarded as occupiable space. 

Ms. ROBYN. Right. 

Ms. NORTON. I hope we can still have atriums. 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. It seems to me you can have atriums without a lot 

of space, you just open up a ceiling. 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. So I am not—I want to go on record as being for 

atriums. But Congress has in mind, when it is talking about square 

feet, that there will be some feet such as storage feet that will not 

be occupiable, for example. And I must say the part of me that 

loves beauty and architecture and sees what an atrium has done 

in the courthouse here understands why atriums are desirable. But 

of course, we have got to be—we always have in mind what the 

Congress intends, and I think that is what the GAO report was 

based on. 

Now, well, let’s look at what we have now, because we have been 

looking at this for a very long time. The GAO recommended that 

the district court judges—and they gave them two options. Either 

three district judges to two courtrooms, or pairing one district 

judge with a senior judge. Now, do you, Judge Ponsor, and you, Dr. 

Robyn, agree that those are reasonable requirements? 

19 

Judge PONSOR. I will say, speaking personally, I do not agree 

that they are reasonable requirements. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, of course, Judge Ponsor, you are not here in 

your personal capacity. 

Judge PONSOR. Exactly. And I made that caveat because it is 

Judge Robinson of the Committee on Court Administration and 

Case Management who articulates the formal Judicial policy with 

regard to courtroom sharing. That is not part of the jurisdiction of 

the Committee on Space and Facilities. So I really don’t want to 

play games with you, but I do have to make that point. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, if—just for the record, what is your personal 

objection? 

Judge PONSOR. I am trying to find a way to express myself in a 

balanced way. I don’t think there is a single Federal trial judge in 

the country who would agree that a court with three active judges 

could provide the people of the United States the sort of justice 

that they are entitled to, permanently using just two courtrooms. 

It would—— 

Ms. NORTON. Regardless of the call, the amount of cases that a 

particular judge may have, you are making such a blanket statement as that? GAO didn’t come to this conclusion without some 

study, Judge Ponsor. 

Judge PONSOR. Can I address that study? The study that came 

to this conclusion was developed by a man named Higgins, Steven 

Higgins. Steven Higgins had a BS in chemical engineering. He belonged to something called System Flow. We obtained a copy of the 

backup for their recommendation after your hearing, but before a 

hearing that following September before Congressman Johnson. He 

belongs to an organization called Systems Flow. He has a BS in 

chemical engineering. His studies have involved production of industrial soap, John Deere tractors, and extracting nickel from granite. Based on that experience, he told the judiciary—— 

Ms. NORTON. Based on that experience, you believe that the consultant did not observe—did not have data regarding judges’ use of 

courtrooms? 

Judge PONSOR. I am sure—— 

Ms. NORTON. I mean I would trust a chemical engineer on lots 

of work, frankly, with that kind of background. But the first thing 

I would ask him is how he reached those conclusions, not what his 

training was in. 

Mr. Goldstein, how did he reach those conclusions? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is sort of amazing that we are kicking a dead 

horse here several years after we began this process. I thought we 

were talking about new courthouses today. 

But anyhow, the process that we used was vetted inside of GAO/ 

outside of GAO by independent analysis and by the company that 

made the modeling software that we used. Whether or not the individual had a bachelor’s in chemical engineering or a doctorate in 

methodology, what that individual was doing was putting numbers 

that came out of the Federal judiciary center, which showed that, 

on average, courtrooms are used by a district judge less than 2 

hours a day—less than 2 hours a day—and that includes time 

which was unscheduled, and which we included as scheduled anyhow, to be sure that we were using conservative statistics. 

20 

They came up with a statistically valid model that showed that 

you could figure out how to distribute judges to ensure that all 

courtroom activities were still held. This is not rocket science. It is 

done for hospital emergency rooms, it is done for modeling nuclear 

bombs. You can do this for any variety—number of things. The 

point I would—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, I asked the question because we had resistance before, and we are not going to tolerate resistance, and certainly not based on an attack of the credentials of the consultant. 

Judge Ponsor, you should know that the Congress relies very 

heavily on GAO as an objective analyst. And, you know, I clerked 

for a district court judge. I know that judges like to start their— 

you know, they all like to start their courtrooms at 9:00, at 10:00. 

You know, somebody may have to start their day at 11:00 or 1:00, 

and they may have to live in the real world. So we have no alternative but to rely on what the objective analyst tells us is possible, 

and to hold the courts to that data. 

Now, you know, I am really mystified as to why the courts would 

want to proceed with courthouses without going through the AMP 

process, because they have gone through it and made changes. And 

we cite some of those changes, some of those modifications close to 

here, in Greenbelt. Here they decided, well, yes, we are going to 

use sharing that is not required, and that the courthouse was entitled to only one courtroom. They also chose to use the funds for the 

design of a new annex to modify the existing buildings. There were 

also changes in San Jose, California. 

So, here, process has been used to good effect, saving money. 

Why would anybody not want to apply that same process to the 

other courthouses with the prospect of making similar savings? 

Judge PONSOR. If that question is directed to me, I would be 

happy to answer. 

Ms. NORTON. It is to you, Judge Ponsor. 

Judge PONSOR. All right. I think I have two responses to that, 

and I am going to try to be as clear as I can. 

The changes that occurred in Greenbelt and San Jose, as Dr. 

Robyn has already stated, were not in response to a re-analysis of 

the project under AMP. Repeat, they were not in response to a reanalysis of the project under AMP. The Greenbelt project was reanalyzed because the tenant, the United States Attorney, moved 

out, creating more space. We are constantly looking at projects, not 

through the AMP process, but just through common sense, and 

talking to the judges. It created more space, we were able to reconfigure it. The court came to us and said, ‘‘We can manage without 

a new facility.’’ 

In San Jose we did what you asked us to do. We applied the 

courtroom sharing policies, which now apply, incidentally, to half 

of the judges in the Federal judiciary. Bankruptcy judges, senior 

judges, and magistrate judges make up half of the personnel of our 

Federal judiciary. All of them are now subject to a courtroom sharing process. And this has just come into being in the last 4 years. 

We have really listened to you. We may not have moved as far as 

you would like us to move, but we have responded. 

In any event, we looked at San Jose, we looked at the courthouse, we applied courtroom sharing, and we realized that we do 

21 

not need as big a project as we thought. We worked with the court, 

and that project was amended, and it saved the taxpayers money. 

I think we deserve some credit for doing that. We are looking alertly at the projects. But I want to make it clear the application of 

the AMP process had no relation—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, what does that mean, that you—look: If we 

have to wait for the U.S. Attorney to move out to get reconsideration of these other eight projects, and you want to ignore the AMP 

process, are you telling this committee that you are ignoring the 

AMP process and you are going to use your own process, which is 

to wait to see if somebody moves out, because that is just as good? 

Judge PONSOR. No, no, that is not—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are you saying you will use the AMP process on 

the other projects or not, Mr.—Judge Ponsor? 

Judge PONSOR. I will be very clear. Two things. One, we have applied the AMP process to four—— 

Ms. NORTON. You have applied another process that is not the 

same as the AMP process. This committee has asked for the AMP 

process to be applied. Are you willing to use the process this committee has required to be applied? 

Judge PONSOR. No, we would prefer not to. That is my direct answer. 

Ms. NORTON. You are in contempt of this committee. 

Judge PONSOR. Certainly not. You have asked me to give you an 

answer to your question, ma’am, and I am giving—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are you willing to use the AMP process that this 

committee authorizes to be used in order to authorize any new 

courthouses? 

Judge PONSOR. Yes—— 

Ms. NORTON. Yes or no? 

Judge PONSOR. The answer is I would hope that I could persuade 

you not to require us to do that. If you require us to do that, then 

I guess we will have to do that. But it would be a terrible mistake, 

in my opinion. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentlelady for her questions, and with 

that, recognize Mr. Webster for questions. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure—I have 

an engineering degree too, and it may not qualify me to ask a question, but I have one, if I could do that. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. WEBSTER. My question would be, I think, Mr. Goldstein, is 

the AMP process—does it in any way include the cost of the process in its—in the way it rates or scores a particular project? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The cost of the process? 

Mr. WEBSTER. No, the cost of the project itself. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It does have some project costs, yes, it does. It 

does not include all of them, which is among the reasons we hope 

that more information might be provided. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Did you in any way look at the actual cost per 

square foot, or something like that? Did you do any analysis of 

that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That was not within the scope of this particular 

project, sir. We certainly have looked at numerous courtrooms over 

the years, and the cost of those per square foot. 

22 

Mr. WEBSTER. Would you, just in your opinion, if functional/frugal was a 10 and elaborate was a 1, where would you rate them? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Where would a rate these projects? 

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I think they are probably all over the map, sir. 

Mr. WEBSTER. All over the map? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Right. I think some are—— 

Mr. WEBSTER. There is no real criteria that you found to determine whether or not we would just be trying to build a functional, 

frugal courthouse that would still be able to produce justice for people, or it could be some elaborate—with lots of roof lines and cuts 

and angles and atriums and high—there is no real standard for 

that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. One of the things we looked at was the criteria 

that the AMP process has. We are pleased, you know, quite honestly. We don’t always compliment the judiciary on its process, we 

recognize that. But this is an instance where we believe the judiciary has been moving very much in the right direction. And the criteria that it has developed in consultation with GSA is much clearer and cleaner than the older process that was in place previously. 

It is not a district approach, it is a comprehensive, nationwide approach. There are very specific criterion, and there are AMP business rules which the judiciary uses to specifically say when they 

will go out for new construction and when they will not. So we are 

very pleased with the direction that this process is going in. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Well, once that process is done, it says—I mean 

there is a needs, I assume, based on certain criteria other than just 

the cost. There is a needs determined through that process that 

says, ‘‘We need more space, we need to expand, and we have too 

much for the particular area,’’ city, or whatever it is. That is what 

determines whether or not there would be a project. 

But once that is determined, is there any sort of model that they 

go by on what the cost would be for that new facility? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure. There is something called the Design 

Guide—and that has been in place for a number of years—by 

which the judiciary and GSA work together. It has standards in it: 

the size of a courtroom, the size of a chambers, things like that, 

and other kinds of modifications. And if they wish to go beyond Design Guide standards, they need to go to the Judicial Conference 

in order to get a waiver. 

Mr. WEBSTER. OK. So maybe I have the question for the GSA, 

then. What—how do you determine—I mean I have heard you say, 

‘‘We have done a lot of cost reduction, we have decided to remodel 

instead of rebuild.’’ What kind of process do you go through? Once 

there has been a determination that there is a need, what do you 

do? 

Ms. ROBYN. We typically work with a—we do a competition for 

an architecture and engineering firm, and select one to do a very 

detailed feasibility study on different ways to meet that requirement. This is the feasibility study for Des Moines. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Is that subjected to any sort of criteria in that you 

pick one that has done certain projects? Or is it done on a cost 

basis? 

Ms. ROBYN. You mean the selection of the A&E firm? 

23 

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes. 

Ms. ROBYN. That is—it is a competitive process based on—it— 

their cost and their qualifications. 

I think I may be getting beyond my level of knowledge here, but 

I think, like many competitions that we do to select experts, it is 

a combination of their cost and their qualifications. 

Mr. WEBSTER. And this will be the last question. 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Is there any guideline that determines that—Mr. 

Goldstein just said it is all over the board—between whether or not 

you would be focused on something that is functional and frugal or 

something that is elaborate? 

Ms. ROBYN. Well, I believe that the—I think we don’t do very 

many things that are extremely high—well, the cost of a project, 

the square-footage cost, and that is, I think, a very good thing to 

focus on, that is subject to a lot of analysis. And we submit—we 

have a very rigorous process of going to OMB and then the committee, and lots of back and forth over the proposed cost of a 

project and, you know, taking into account cost per square foot and 

other attributes of the project. So that is subject to a lot of vigorous 

discussion with this committee, with OMB. 

So, I think that is—you don’t see many elaborate projects because of all the very appropriate discipline that that process is subject to. I think you do see some—you know, we have tried in recent 

years to have—to build Federal buildings that are not ugly, you 

know, that are not like the J. Edgar Hoover Building. We went 

through a very bad period in the 1970s and the 1980s. We built a 

lot of Federal buildings that have—that don’t stand the test of 

time. 

And we subject everything to something called ‘‘design excellence,’’ so that we get basic designs for courthouses and other Federal buildings that are buildings that we can be proud of, buildings 

that stand the test of time, the way the buildings that were built 

in the 1930s do. That does not necessarily mean that they are 

elaborate and expensive buildings. And an atrium—and I share 

Congresswoman Norton’s love of atriums—that is unusable space, 

but it may very well, by bringing in daylight, reduce the energy 

consumption of a building. 

So, it is—you know, you have to be careful not to assume that 

something that looks beautiful necessarily is a sign of an elaborate, 

as opposed to a functional and frugal, building. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Robyn. Appreciate that. 

Ms. ROBYN. Sorry. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired. Before I recognize next Ms. Hahn, I was mistaken. Mr. DeFazio has appeared. 

So—but before I recognize Mr. DeFazio, I just want to say I am 

going to turn the chair over to Mr. Barletta who is the chairman 

of the subcommittee and done a lot of work on this. 

And again, this is a very difficult situation. This is—for me, it 

is all about the taxpayers and making sure that they are getting 

their best bang for their buck. As I said before, you could administer justice with a piece of plywood and milk crates. I mean I understand there are security reasons and all that, but—we are not 

telling you how to administer justice, but we have got to take our 

24 

responsibility serious here, in making sure that every dollar, every 

precious taxpayer dollar, is spent in the best way. And if judges 

have to share courtrooms and reduce the size of courts—we do it 

here in Congress. 

This building was built 50 years ago, and it is the last congressional building that—office building that we built. And if you go to 

our offices, which I said in the meeting to the Judge earlier—we 

got people crammed into corners and what used to be closets. So, 

again, we are at a serious juncture here, with trillions of dollars 

of debt and deficit. 

So, again, with that, I am going to turn the chair over to Mr. 

Barletta, and recognize Mr. DeFazio for 5 minutes for questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was at another hearing and I have got to go back to that, but I appreciate—was here 

earlier. 

So, I have a couple of questions. On the 10 proposed courthouses, 

as I read the GAO report, only 2 have clearly been subjected to the 

AMP process, is that correct? Can anybody answer that? 

Judge PONSOR. I am Michael Ponsor, and I am here for the Space 

and Facilities Committee. We disagree with that. Our position is 

that four of the projects—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. So 4 of 10, 6 haven’t been. How did you come 

up—— 

Judge PONSOR. Four—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. How did you come up with the scores, if they 

weren’t subjected to the AMP process? Are those scores under the 

old process? 

Judge PONSOR. Yes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. So we had some big problems with the old 

process, and that is why we adopted a new process. So I don’t see 

how you can propose to go forward under those terms. I think you 

are—now, here is a another question which probably goes to GSA. 

I moved into our new palace, beautiful building, but—and my entire staff and I occupy a space that is about the size of a judge’s 

library, a little bigger than a robing chamber for the chief judge. 

I have observed, and I walk around this building on a lot of days. 

There is no one in the building. Huge building, beautiful building, 

but there is no one there except the workers. So, I question the criteria that led us to build in this form, in this size, in this area. 

But beyond that, when I went to move in, because we very much 

wanted security, which we didn’t have—we had been above bankruptcy in our previous building and they would provide security as 

needed, but they moved over—so we moved. But I saw this absolutely astronomical extortionate rent that you wanted per square 

foot, and we managed to negotiate that down to the average for 

class A office space in the area, and so we moved in. Thank you. 

But, my question is, are the judges in the court system paying 

that extortionate per-square-foot rent for all of the tens of thousands of interior space that is not usable? The grand design? Right 

next door to my office is the clerk of the court. The clerk of the 

court’s office, there is about six people in there. They have sort of 

set it up so they have multiple little living room sitting areas, and 

all the unused space in the back. It is about 5 times bigger than 

25 

my office, which is occupied by 10 people. And there is six people 

in there. It might be more crowded. 

So, is the court paying that square foot for all that unused space? 

And, if so, how much of our annual budget is going to pay rents 

in these sorts of buildings? 

Ms. ROBYN. The court’s annual rent to GSA is on the order of $1 

billion. And I have forgotten now exactly how many million square 

feet that is. They are our first—our second-largest Federal tenant. 

We—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And now they have the highest per-square-foot—— 

Ms. ROBYN. We have a—well, we have—you know, as you can 

imagine, we have had some interesting debates about this over the 

years. We—our—I would take issue with your use of the word ‘‘extortionate.’’ Our rents are—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. No, it was extortionate. I could have moved into 

class A, brand new office space in Eugene and hired private security, and it would have been less than the rent you wanted to 

charge me. And we said, ‘‘Why is it so high?’’ They said, ‘‘Oh, you 

are paying for all the interior space,’’ which is not a space which 

is—as you described an atrium that provides heat-gain or whatever, it is just a grand space on the inside, where you walk around, 

it kind of echoes, and it is very empty. 

So, you wanted me to pay for that, and I said, ‘‘No. You want 

me as a tenant, I am not paying for that’’—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO [continuing]. ‘‘But I would be happy to pay class A 

office space.’’ So, yes, I would say it was extortionate. So we can 

disagree, but no sane person would pay that rent who wasn’t—but 

the judges are paying that much, apparently. So I would find 

that—and what is an amortization period for a courthouse, in 

terms of rent? 

Ms. ROBYN. I don’t know. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Twenty, thirty years? I mean—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes, something like that. I mean I think we have a 

methodology that we use on some of these buildings. And I don’t— 

you know, I don’t want to say that we would—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Goldstein has a quick response. I don’t have 

much time left. Mr. Goldstein? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I believe it is 30 years. Most of the courthouses, you are absolutely correct, sir, they—the rent is about $1 billion a 

year for the judiciary to—for GSA space. And the—many of these 

courthouses are—they are rented on return of investment. It is an 

ROI process over the life of—the expected life of that building. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. So—but fully amortized in 30 years? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, thank you. I think that would be another subject to look into, Mr. Chairman, which is how much unused space 

are they paying how much rent for within the existing system, and 

what that costs the taxpayers on an annual basis. 

Mr. BARLETTA [presiding]. The Chair recognizes Mr. Perry for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to you folks 

for being here and answering some questions for us. I have the 

privilege of representing the folks of—the good folks of Harrisburg, 

26 

Pennsylvania. And we have got a courthouse project that goes kind 

of almost as long as I can remember. But I just want to make sure 

I set the table right so I got my mind wrapped around this correctly. 

Is it the—you folks, Mr. Ponsor, that suggest that we need a new 

courthouse, and then GSA constructs it per the guidelines, whatever they be at that time? Right? 

Judge PONSOR. Essentially, yes, that is correct. We do a longrange facilities plan for the district, we do an evaluation of the urgency for that courthouse, either pursuant to our pre-2008 or our 

post-2008 AMP process, and then we refer it to GSA for a 

feasability study. And then, if GSA recommends a new courthouse, 

it goes to the Judicial Conference for approval. 

Mr. PERRY. OK. So GSA has to recommend. Is that correct, Dr. 

Robyn? 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Mr. PERRY. OK. So, with that, we have got 38 of 43 properties 

now have been purchased for the construction of a new courthouse, 

and we have spent about $25 million. And, as I understand it, we 

are moving forward with design right now. But yet there is kind 

of almost no plan to construct this courthouse, based on it not 

being in the criteria, or under the new AMP criteria, which, you 

know, as a tax-paying citizen and somebody that is not sitting here, 

anybody else would say, ‘‘What in the heck are you folks at the 

Federal Government doing,’’ I think. 

Is there a way to implement the AMP—or does the current AMP 

program implement some of the facets of the old program, so that 

you are not duplicating the effort to determine the size and the 

scope of the courthouse? Is that in there, or not? 

Judge PONSOR. It is in there. And this is the point that I was 

trying to make, perhaps clumsily, before. Harrisburg is a courthouse project that was not evaluated under the AMP process. And 

I was talking to Congresswoman Norton and we were having an interesting exchange, because I was taking the position that we 

would prefer not to have to go through, with Harrisburg and the 

other projects that haven’t been through the AMP process, an AMP 

process. 

The reason that we would prefer not to do that is that we are 

satisfied that the process that we went through in selecting Harrisburg for the 5-year plan appropriately identified Harrisburg as an 

urgently needed project. The repetition, or the overlay of the AMP 

process, would just be a further analysis that is likely to only confirm the need to have Harrisburg on our 5-year plan. And the repetition of the AMP process would result in an additional delay, we 

estimate, of a number of years. It could be as many as six—certainly as many as two—that would be added to the process for the 

citizens of Harrisburg who have already waited, I think, since the 

late 1990s—— 

Mr. PERRY. Right. 

Judge PONSOR [continuing]. For their courthouse, where there 

are already parcels of real estate that have been purchased for the 

construction of that process. It would just slow things down. 

We recognize that in this fiscal situation the President is not 

putting new courthouses into his budget. But the fiscal situation 

27 

will not last forever. And when the time comes that we are again 

able to build new courthouses, we believe that we have adequately 

assessed the need for the courthouse in Harrisburg. Certainly San 

Antonio, Anniston, Chattanooga, and—— 

Mr. PERRY. Excuse me, Doctor, let me just follow up here. So we 

have spent $25 million. And according to the AMP, Harrisburg 

doesn’t fall within the criteria. And you folks know this stuff, we 

don’t, so we are taking, I guess, your lead on that. But we have 

got this money. We don’t want to waste the taxpayers’ money, and 

we know this is important. We don’t know if it is right-sized or not. 

That is GAO and GSA’s responsibility, I think. 

But what do we do from here? Do we walk away from our $25 

million investment? Do we engineer so that it is right-sized, so— 

as courtroom sharing, as has been enumerated in AMP? What is 

the plan? What can we expect in Harrisburg from you good folks 

that are trying to do the right—and we want the taxpayers’ money 

to be spent wisely. 

Ms. ROBYN. Sure, yes. We will—I mean that is one of the ones 

that—there is a lot of history on Harrisburg that I don’t—that I am 

not aware of. Judge Smith just alluded to me on some issues over 

the choice of a site. So I apologize, there is a lot I don’t know about 

that project. But I would agree with Judge Ponsor that we think 

it is one that is appropriate to remain on the list. There are circulation issues with secure circulation in the existing building. There 

is a lack of space for U.S. Marshals. 

We are, by the way, going to backfill the existing building with 

other Federal tenants that are in leased space in Harrisburg, so we 

think there is a savings there. But this project, like the others on 

the list, is subject to our ongoing process of right-sizing, ensuring 

that we can do it as inexpensively as possible. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you. And as my time has expired, Mr. Goldstein, do you have any statement regarding Harrisburg, particularly, from the GAO’s perspective? 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No, at the end of the day it is really a policy decision whether to go forward or not. Our sole point is you need to 

make sure that the priorities that are on that plan are really the 

courthouses that you need to build. And the priorities on that plan 

continue to shift. 

And so, until you can understand what is really your most urgent priority, it makes some sense to wait and see, spend a little 

of money now, and not billions of dollars, and wait and figure out 

what is the best use of the Government’s money at this point in 

time. That is all we are saying here. 

Mr. BARLETTA. The Chair recognizes Ms. Hahn for 5 minutes. 

Ms. HAHN. Thank you. So, I have one. So my bad story is from 

Los Angeles. And in 2000, Congress appropriated $400 million for 

a 41-courtroom building in downtown L.A. But it had repeated 

delays, cost overruns, and then that project was ultimately canceled in 2006. Then, in 2011, GSA announced a revised plan for a 

smaller, 24-courtroom facility at the same site. And we are hoping 

construction will be completed by 2016. So, once this building is 

hopefully completed on time, on budget, it will have taken 16 years 

28 

from the moment GSA originally requested funding for this project 

to the time that it is to be completed. 

The judge commented briefly on one thing in Harrisburg that you 

thought would prevent some delays, but what else can you tell us 

that we have got in place now that will prevent these kinds of really egregious delays, when and if we do begin constructing courthouses in the future? 

Judge PONSOR. Well, one of the things that we are very proud 

about—and I don’t want to run away from it—is our AMP process. 

It is a good process. Mr. Goldstein and I have done battle many 

times—this is our third go-around here—and I have a great deal 

of respect for the GAO. We have, in fact, adopted a number of their 

recommendations, and I am pleased to hear the GAO say that they 

also feel that we are making progress with that. We have only had 

that since 2008. I mean we developed it in 2006; we started using 

it in 2008. We have a very good relationship with GSA right now. 

But the situation is—in my opinion, it is a fiscal problem, looking 

into the future, in terms of the new courthouses. I do think we can 

convince this committee. I hope we can convince this committee, as 

new projects become buildable, fiscally buildable, that we are doing 

it in a responsible way, that we are building frugal, sensible courthouses that are also a tribute to the community and to the values 

of the courthouses—— 

Ms. HAHN. So you think the AMP program will take care of—— 

Judge PONSOR. It certainly will help. 

Ms. HAHN [continuing]. The delays and cost overruns that we 

saw in Los Angeles? 

Judge PONSOR. Yes. And we will be folding into the cost—the 

courtroom sharing policies that we have adopted already. We have 

taken the recommendation of GAO to not build for projected courtrooms. Even though we believe they will be necessary, we don’t put 

them into our plans now. 

And I have honestly tried to figure out what the heck happened 

in L.A., and I think—I don’t think you could—— 

Ms. HAHN. What the heck did happen? 

Judge PONSOR. I don’t think anybody could replicate it. It is its 

own story. 

But the only thing I can say is I remember being here for the 

hearing in May of 2010, and Congressman Diaz-Balart, who was 

the ranking member at that time, talked to me about this $1 billion 

courthouse in Los Angeles, and I said to him—and I reread my 

transcript before I came in here—it was probably the simplest, 

most direct thing I said was, ‘‘That isn’t going to happen.’’ And it 

didn’t happen. And we heard you, and we are building the facility 

there within the funds that were appropriated by Congress. And I 

hope there will be no more L.A.’s in the future. We will do everything we can—— 

Ms. HAHN. Well, there could be a lot of L.A.’s in a lot of other 

issues in this country. Good L.A.’s. 

Judge PONSOR. Yes. 

Ms. HAHN. Well, thank you. But I do think that is frustrating for 

taxpayers, not just how we spend our money, but taxpayers want 

to know that, you know, when we have appropriated money, when 

we have requested it, that it actually does happen in a timely fashVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:49 Jun 11, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\113\FULL\4-17-1~1\80438.TXT JEAN
29 

ion. I think that is what frustrates people the most, is to see these 

kinds of really unbelievable, egregious delays in these projects. 

There is just really no excuse for those. 

Did you have anything to say on preventing—— 

Ms. ROBYN. The only thing I will say is you used the term ‘‘cost 

overruns.’’ There will be no cost overruns on the L.A. courthouse. 

It will come in on budget, $400 million. It will not cost a dime over 

that. 

Ms. HAHN. Thank you. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Mr. Goldstein, in your previous report, you identified two major causes of overbuilding in Federal courthouses: the 

absence of courtroom sharing and the flawed projections of future 

judges. Do you believe the judiciary’s new process adequately solves 

these problems? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I think it is a start. We are pleased, as Judge 

Ponsor mentioned, that the current 5-year—when they are now 

putting new projects on the plan, that they are not including projected judgeships. As we indicated from the last report we did, of 

those 33 courthouses from 2000 to 2010, there were roughly 119 

judges that had been projected that they would have that they did 

not have that they built space for. So we are pleased that that 

process is changing. 

With the issue of sharing, we still differ. We do believe that the 

data that was compiled by the judiciary itself that we modeled 

shows an ability to share at greater levels than they are doing 

today. We did not, however—and it is important to note this—recommend that they adopted our model or any model. We simply recommended that they look into doing a better job at sharing at 

whatever level they felt was necessary. We simply developed a 

model that we would help to engage in conversation and discussion, 

and we certainly did. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Judge Ponsor, as you pointed out in your testimony, the judiciary adopted sharing policies for senior, magistrate, 

and bankruptcy judges, and you highlight that they are being implemented. How many of the 446 Federal courthouses fully comply 

with the courtroom sharing policies now? 

Judge PONSOR. I can’t give you a number. I cannot give you a 

number. I know that we are looking at it, and I certainly know 

that, prospectively, and with regard to renovations, we are looking 

at it carefully. We are looking to try to get entities that are in 

leased space back in the courthouses, and we are applying courtroom sharing to them. But I cannot give you a number. 

Mr. BARLETTA. How many Federal judges are currently sharing? 

Do you have a number? 

Judge PONSOR. Well, there are about 2,000 Federal judges in the 

country. Trial judges, such as myself, U.S. district court judges, appeals court judges, and Supreme Court justices make up about 

1,000 of those. Those 1,000 judges, under current Conference policy, are not sharing courtrooms. Appellate court judges do, because 

they sit in panels of three. 

There are bankruptcy judges, senior judges, and magistrate 

judges who make up the other 1,000 of our cohort of judicial officers in the Federal judiciary. They are all subject to the policy. 

That doesn’t mean that they are all sharing, because many of them 

30 

are in courthouses that have enough courtrooms, so they don’t need 

to share. We are not turning out the lights and locking courtrooms 

up, and not letting people into the courtrooms when they are already there. So, there is a great deal of sharing. 

I guess I would say one thing. I don’t know how your branch of 

the Government works in terms of changing deeply rooted patterns 

that they have been following for hundreds of years. It is a little 

slow. I know that you are frustrated that we aren’t moving fast 

enough on courtroom sharing. But from where I sit, since 2008 we 

have put half the judiciary under courtroom sharing policies. That 

is at least progress. And we are pleased that we are doing that, we 

are implementing it. 

I will tell you, you know, nothing is more bearable than someone 

else’s pain, so we might not get any sympathy for it, but imposing 

courtroom sharing on senior judges and bankruptcy judges and 

magistrate judges was hard. It was hard. It took a lot of work. Perhaps we don’t deserve any credit for it. But it wasn’t nothing. It 

wasn’t nothing. We heard you, we knew you wanted us to courtroom share, and we took initiatives that brought half of the judiciary, just in the last 5 years, under courtroom sharing policies that 

will be applied consistently in the future. 

I think you were the inspiration for that—your committee. I have 

to say—you can call it nagging, you can call it encouraging, you can 

call it inspiring, or you can call it whatever you want—we heard 

you, and we adopted those policies, and we are continuing to think 

about the problem. 

We aren’t ready yet, the Judicial Conference has not yet taken 

the step of insisting on courtroom sharing for active district court 

judges. And I know that is frustrating to members of the committee. I recognize it and I respect it. But it is difficult for us. We 

have made a lot of progress, and I hope that we will get at least 

a glimmer of sympathy for the work we have put in doing that, just 

in the last 4 or 5 years. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Well, I can tell you, change doesn’t come easy on 

this side, either. I certainly understand what you are saying. 

Dr. Robyn, how many courthouses are currently vacant? 

Ms. ROBYN. I don’t—that is a good question. I don’t know the 

exact number. I think your Dyer is certainly one in Miami. I don’t 

believe there are a large number. I think it is a relatively small 

number, but I don’t have the exact number. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Can you provide the committee with a list, location, and any plans for their reused or disposal? 

Ms. ROBYN. Sure, yes. 

Mr. BARLETTA. OK, thank you. The Chair recognizes Mr. Williams for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. First of all, I would like to say, just 

a point of reference, I had the same issue in Texas that we heard 

with trying to rent space in a Federal building, and you might 

want to take a look at your rent factors. We would love to be there. 

Dr. Robyn, I just want to also reiterate simply I think that all 

of—as you certainly said, that it is going to be important on these 

cost overruns to come back and see Congress. In the private sector, 

if we have a cost overrun we go see our lender, our banker, before 

31 

we proceed. And I think it is—that is what you need to consider, 

also. 

And, Dr. Robyn, the judiciary included in their testimony earlier 

an example of a courthouse with maintenance and repair issues. 

Why wouldn’t the first recommendation in such cases be to repair 

and renovate, rather than building a brand-new courthouse? And 

then, if you choose to build a brand-new courthouse, what happens 

to the old one? We have already talked about an inventory, a vacancy. 

Again, in the private sector, where I come from, inventory is a 

good thing when you can sell it. It is not a good thing when it sits 

on the shelf. So—— 

Ms. ROBYN. I—first of all, let me just clarify on the first point. 

We do—we—by statute, we are required to come back to you and 

the appropriators if we are at risk of going 10 percent or more over 

budget. So that—so we absolutely do that. 

With respect to—I share your view. I am relatively new to GSA. 

I am a—I live in a 100-year-old home on Capitol Hill. I am a deep 

believer in historic preservation. And I think we have been too 

quick in recent years to build the shiny, new building, or the shiny, 

new courthouse, and not think hard about preserving the old building. And these old buildings are typically built in the 1930s and 

they are beautiful, and they have a lot of cultural significance to 

the community. So, we have made a change there, and do look first 

at how we can preserve the old building. 

In cases where—you take San Antonio, the old building, not so 

old, built as a World’s Fair pavilion, windowless. Arguably, the 

court needs a new building, and we are going down that path to 

build a new building in San Antonio. And the city is taking over 

the old one. But it can be hard to find a reuse for an old courthouse. Typically, you know, you can’t just turn it into a hotel. So 

that is one reason that we work so hard to try to preserve the existing buildings. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, I think that is important for historical, but 

also sometimes it can be less money. 

Ms. ROBYN. Well, yes, that is—— 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Which we are all interested in right now. 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes, it is—yes. No, the economics drive it. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. If I may, Congressman, we are now studying 

that particular issue for this committee, what happens to the old 

courthouses once a new courthouse goes up. So we will have some 

answers in the not-so-distant future. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I would like to see those. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. I yield back. 

Judge PONSOR. In fact, Mr. Goldstein’s staff is going to be visiting my courthouse in Springfield next week, and I am looking forward to showing him what happened to our old courthouse in 

Springfield, Massachusetts, which is now fully occupied by a hospital and the department of education for the city of Springfield. 

There are good stories where the inventory turns over, and Springfield is one of them. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. And a good business deal made by the Government. 

32 

Judge PONSOR. Absolutely. And for the people of Springfield, yes. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I yield back. 

Mr. BARLETTA. The Chair recognizes Mr. Rice for 5 minutes. 

Mr. RICE. Thank you. I also want to concur with these other gentlemen about the issue with renting the space. There is an old and 

dilapidated Federal office building in Florence, South Carolina, in 

which Lindsey Graham has his office—and I would have loved to 

have put my office there—and I tried to get a rent quote from GSA 

for 2 months. When I finally got it, it was about 21⁄2 to 3 times the 

prevailing rate. Ended up going into a much nicer office building 

for about a third of the space. Would have kept the Federal dollars 

in the Federal Government if I could have, but I couldn’t afford it 

under my MRA. So this is a very clear issue that we need to deal 

with. That is 3 congressmen out of 10 that you—facing this issue. 

Dr. Robyn, doctor of? 

Ms. ROBYN. Public policy. 

Mr. RICE. Public policy. From? 

Ms. ROBYN. Berkeley. 

Mr. RICE. Berkeley. Judge Ponsor? Your judicial degree was 

from? 

Judge PONSOR. Yale. 

Mr. RICE. Yale? And Mr. Goldstein? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I have a public policy masters from George 

Washington. 

Mr. RICE. We have three brilliant people sitting here on this 

panel, and honored to be here in front of you. 

Judge PONSOR. Never mistake credentials for intelligence. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I think we agree again. 

Mr. RICE. Certainly far more intelligent than I. But the fact that, 

you know, the three of you can sit here with these very detailed 

criteria and disagree about whether or not this given courthouse 

was built—overbuilt, and by how much, is a very clear indication 

about how far awry we have gone with all this, with the congressional micro—attempts to micromanage, with the bureaucratic attempts to manage all these things, and with good intent. I mean 

with intent to save taxpayer dollars. I think the—in fact, what happens is that the reverse occurs, and that we have vast losses of taxpayer dollars through gross attempts to micromanage all these 

things. 

My opinion is that this ought to be run as if—you run any other 

business, and you lay out basic criteria, you put good people in 

charge. If they don’t deliver, then you find another good person 

who can deliver, and you continue on down the road. I think these 

massive bureaucracies that we build are hamstringing the entire 

country. I think we are the best Nation on earth, we have more capacity than anyone on earth. Nobody can beat us, but we can sure 

beat ourselves. And we are doing a pretty doggone good job of it. 

This page 20, this list in the GAO report of courthouses, is this 

the one that we are talking about? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, it is, sir. 

Mr. RICE. The most recent one that has come up recommended 

to be built, which one would that be, do you know? 

Judge PONSOR. I think Mobile is at the top of the list, Mobile. 

33 

Mr. RICE. That was the one that was most recently recommended 

to be built? I want to know how long each of these projects have 

been in process. That is what I am curious about. 

Judge PONSOR. Oh, I see, sorry. It is at the other end of the list. 

Chattanooga and Des Moines both came on the list in mid-2000. 

Those are the last two items. We actually don’t have a 5-year plan 

any more, we have a 4-year plan, and they are the fourth year, 

Chattanooga and Des Moines, and—— 

Mr. RICE. Mid-2000? 

Judge PONSOR. Mid-2000, yes, because they were—I know that 

they were post-AMP, our AMP process which we began using, and 

I believe it was invented in 2006 and came on in 2008. So—— 

Mr. RICE. And what is the oldest one on this list? 

Judge PONSOR. Oh, my God. I think Savannah claims to have 

been on the list for 22 years, but the 5-year plan has only existed 

18 years. So they go way back. We have projects that have been 

on the plan for a very, very long time. 

Mr. RICE. Well, you know, another extremely glaring example of 

how these attempts at micromanagement and other management 

are hamstringing our entire country. And I am afraid that it bodes 

very, very poorly for our future if we can’t bring these things back 

into the realm of reason, to put some common sense back into this. 

I have dealt with commercial real estate a fair amount in the 

past. My history is a CPA, a tax lawyer. And I have personally 

seen and helped with bids on GSA projects where—the specifications being so very, very lengthy, detailed, and people being afraid 

of what they are going to have to deal with have resulted in very 

large—you know, much higher than any other normal project 

would be. 

So, I would say that sitting in these committee hearings, and 

particularly on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee— 

I have been a congressman for 3 months now—and seeing these 

massive delays, and these confusions over regulation, we have got 

to do some basic rethinking of this process, or I am afraid we 

have—we are going to hold back this country’s future. 

That is all I have. I yield back the rest of my time. 

Mr. BARLETTA. All right. The Chair recognizes Mr. Duncan, who 

has been tackling this issue for many years. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been at this 

a long time. This is my 25th year on this committee, and I have 

been interested in this issue from the start, because I did spend 

71⁄2 years as a circuit court judge just before coming to Congress. 

And, Judge Ponsor, I will tell you that I really like almost every 

judge I have ever met, but I will tell you that I spent the 2 months 

between when I took the bar exam and when I was sworn in almost full-time at the Knoxville Courthouse watching jury trials. 

And there were jury trials going on in every courtroom. And then 

I tried my first jury trial, I think—I know it was in my first week 

in practice. And we were just trying them right and left back in 

the early 1970s. 

Then I became a judge in 1981, and I tried 78 jury trials in my 

court alone that first year. I was trying—I came from a largely civil 

practice, but I had gotten into some big criminal cases also, and a 

lot of people thought I did more criminal work than I did, and I 

34 

became judge of the criminal court and tried the felony criminal 

cases. Tried the attempted murder of James Earl Ray, and my 

court was the only court he ever testified in. I had a lot of interesting cases. 

But the law practice has totally changed now. And one of the 

civil court judges in Knoxville told me at a Christmas party a couple of years ago that he had tried six jury trials that year. And 

they are still having a few jury trials in the State courts, but in 

the Federal courts they are having—it is becoming so rare that I 

remember a few years ago Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who 

was on this committee and sat right beside me, he said one time 

at one of our hearings, he said, ‘‘You could shoot a gun down the 

hallway of any Federal courthouse at 3:00 on any weekday afternoon and not hit anybody.’’ And I don’t know where he came up 

with that kind of example, but I remember him saying that to me. 

I appreciate your testimony, what you were saying, but it seems 

to me that we are going to have to get more than just testimony, 

we are going to have to get action on sharing these courtrooms because the jury trials, I think, unfortunately, are becoming a thing 

of the past. Would you have your people get me a—the statistics 

on how many jury trials were in all the Federal district courts in 

the past year? 

I have mentioned it here before. That is really the only significant statistic that we can look at. Because, for instance, I know 

that people who do forgeries, for instance, they typically would do 

many of them. And so they would come in and plead guilty to 20 

or 25 forgeries. And then the clerk’s offices would put out that 20, 

25 cases had been disposed of. But a judge who had spent a week 

in a jury trial had actually worked a lot harder and done a lot 

more, but he—maybe if he didn’t finish that case that week, I 

mean, you see what I am getting at, that—— 

Judge PONSOR. Yes. I did a 5-month death penalty trial, and I 

got credit for disposing of one case. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Right. 

Judge PONSOR. Yes. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So, really, the only meaningful statistic to me is 

days spent in trial. Because that is when you are using a courtroom. So—— 

Judge PONSOR. You want jury and jury waived, or just—— 

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes—well, jury and nonjury. Yes, right. That would 

be—because a nonjury trial can take just as much time as—in fact, 

that year I said I had tried 78 jury trials, I tried 5 nonjury trials. 

Judge PONSOR. Right. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Now, even the criminal courts are not doing anything remotely close to that now. 

Judge PONSOR. No. 

Mr. DUNCAN. But it just—we are just going to have to do more 

on that. And I have been concerned about—I also was concerned 

because the Federal courts, we were paying about double the 

square-footage cost that the States were who were building beautiful State courts that were just as nice. 

But, at any rate, I appreciate your testimony. But we need to follow up on this, Mr. Chairman, and see if we are getting some action, also. Thank you very much. 

35 

Mr. BARLETTA. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Are there any further 

questions from any members of the committee? 

Ms. NORTON. I just—— 

Mr. BARLETTA. Yes, sure. 

Ms. NORTON. Just for the record, Mr. Chairman, Judge Ponsor 

suggested that there might be repetitiveness in redoing the courthouses under the AMP process. And I have this question for all of 

you. If you are using only the process that brought us here, you are 

using a discredited process. That is the process, the old process 

that the judges used, which was discredited by the GAO report. 

That is one of the problems that this committee has. 

But let’s say you did what the committee said to, and looked at— 

applied the AMP process. Isn’t the essence of that process courtroom sharing? When you look at what happened in Greenbelt and 

San Jose, wasn’t that the essence of the change that was made? 

Mr. Goldstein? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, you know, we have a little bit of a chickenor-egg problem. Both the judge and the Commissioner say that 

they reduced the size of the courthouses for sharing purposes and 

they didn’t really go under the AMP process, but the point is really 

the same, that they went from very high on the list to 117 and 139, 

respectively. So, yes. Quite clearly, the impact of making changes 

and reducing costs and sharing was a major factor here—— 

Ms. NORTON. That was the final result there. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes. They are now 117 and 139 on the list. 

Ms. NORTON. And—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. When they had been in the top 15. 

Ms. NORTON. And what brought them to that point was the decision to share? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. A reduction in the amount of space that they 

needed, in part, because of sharing, yes. 

Ms. NORTON. I know that you, Judge Ponsor, said that somehow 

the committee is frustrating—frustrated that there is no position 

from the Judicial Conference on active courtroom sharing. I want 

to assure you the committee is not frustrated. The committee has 

a remedy of its own, and that is simply not to authorize any more 

courthouses. 

Judge PONSOR. Right. 

Ms. NORTON. I want you to know that while every community 

wants a courthouse, that is not what our constituents are most 

clamoring for. If you go down the list and you were to put courthouses on it, I think you would find a courthouse at the bottom of 

the list. And I think that is not just a matter of the recovery we 

are in, and the great recession we have come out of. That is what 

it would always have been. 

There are always a few people who want courthouses led by, 

often, the Member from the district because the judges keep on the 

Member and the judges. But this just is of no priority. So do rest 

assured we are not frustrated. Because the ultimate remedy is in 

our hands. Unless we are satisfied that the AMP process, whatever 

you call it, including courtroom sharing, is applied, I don’t see any 

disposition on either side of the aisle to authorize the construction 

of courthouses. And you are not building any courthouses that are 

not authorized. 

36 

Now, let me finally say to Ms. Robyn, because, really, GSA is an 

unindicted coconspirator in everything that the courts have done. 

The courts have run the GSA. That has been what is frustrating 

us, that it has not husbanded the taxpayers’ dollars, but has simply 

built whatever mausoleum that the courts wanted to have happen. 

It is a disgraceful record of the courthouse—of the GSA. And it is 

what the GSA has often done with building, period. You know, 

what the agencies want, GSA has tried to build. And that is what 

we have tried for years to put a stop to. 

But I have got a note here that in your testimony you say that 

the GAO opposes a moratorium on building courthouses. The GSA 

opposes, I am sorry, a moratorium on building more courthouses. 

On what base—no. You do it on the basis, essentially, that it undermines ‘‘our ongoing maintenance of the Federal inventory.’’ In 

other words, you want some more money in order to keep up courthouses. And if you get a great, big courthouse, you know, then that 

pays more rent to be managed by the GSA. 

But considering what happened even if we buy Judge Ponsor’s 

notion—and I do, because I don’t care how he does it, as long as 

he shares—that even given what happened in Greenbelt and San 

Jose, why would you urge this committee to go ahead, willy nilly, 

and build courthouses that have not undergone something close to 

the AMP process? 

Ms. ROBYN. To say that I oppose the moratorium does not mean 

I think the committee should go ahead, willy nilly. This committee 

does not go ahead—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, what is in between opposing the—— 

Ms. ROBYN. But I think—— 

Ms. NORTON. What is in between opposing it and not opposing 

it? 

Ms. ROBYN. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding 

here about the AMP process versus courtroom sharing. They are 

very different. They are not—the AMP process did not institute 

courtroom sharing. There may be some—the timing may be coincident, but the AMP process shifted the weights on—the essential 

thing, my understanding, is that it shifted the weights on the importance of the need for additional courtroom space, relative to 

other issues: security issues, condition of the building, operational 

deficiencies. It puts—the AMP process increased the importance 

placed on the need for additional courtrooms. In fact, there is a 

business rule that says something doesn’t get on the list unless 

there is a need for two or more additional courtrooms. 

I am going to get in trouble for saying this, but I don’t think I 

agree with that rule. I think there are—if you look at why Mobile, 

Savannah, and some of the other projects are on the 5-year list, 

they got on that list—they may have needed additional courtrooms 

at the time, before we applied courtroom sharing and other approaches to right-sizing, but they typically have other problems, inability—lack of secure circulation—— 

Ms. NORTON. Those other problems, Dr. Robyn, might be handled 

by some kind of rehabilitation—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes, exactly. But that is kind of—— 

Ms. NORTON. So the moratorium is on new courthouses, Dr. 

Robyn. 

37 

Ms. ROBYN. Well, it is—but it could be an annex. So in the case 

of Mobile, we can’t solve it—believe me, I wish we could—but entirely within the confines of the existing building, the Campbell—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are you saying that the AMP process does not give 

appropriate consideration to the deteriorating condition of a courthouse, but only looks at some figures and not at others? 

Ms. ROBYN. I—look. I am not an expert on the AMP process, so 

I don’t want to—— 

Ms. NORTON. Let me ask the expert, Mr. Goldstein. 

Ms. ROBYN. But it is not—— 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Goldstein, would you just—— 

Ms. ROBYN. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. Just for the record, before we leave this hearing, 

would you explain the AMP process, and why the AMP process 

was—is being promoted? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There is two major—there are several major 

changes that are important to note, in terms of the criteria, from 

the old process to the new process. Some of it is good and some of 

it maybe not so good. And it is very interesting. 

Under the old capital planning process, under the old process, 

there were four weights: the year in which courthouses would run 

out of space, it got 30 percent; security deficiencies, 30 percent; 

operational concerns, 25 percent; current and future courtroom and 

chamber need, 15 percent. 

Now, the major difference here under the new process, and it is 

one where I am a little concerned about the kind of comments that 

the judiciary made in telling GAO that we didn’t look at operational or security concerns, but those weights, by their own process, become a minuscule part of what is examined today. 

So, what has happened is that security deficiencies and operational deficiencies, which were more than 50 percent, are now 

only a small part of one bucket which has 40 percent, and it is 

called facility benefit assessment. And the majority of what is 

looked at, the criteria, are courtrooms needed by judge type and 

chambers needed by judge type, which is 50 percent. In other 

words, what the judges actually get has gone from 15 percent to 

more than 50, because they also get a portion of what is considered 

under the facility benefit assessment, as well. So, that is the major 

change in how things are weighted. 

And so, I am concerned, because while we are talking about trying to improve the efficiency, part of what we are seeing here is 

that a greater emphasis on the needs for courtrooms and chambers, 

as opposed to operational and security elements, which—obviously, 

are extremely important, as well. 

Judge PONSOR. Could I insert a comment? 

Ms. NORTON. Certainly. 

Judge PONSOR. I was feeling quite sympathetic to Dr. Robyn as 

she was trying to express the AMP process. 

The AMP process was created by the judiciary. It wasn’t created 

by the GSA. GSA is not the expert on the AMP process. That is 

our process. 

There are four factors in the AMP process right now. Thirty percent is whether the courthouse is big enough to hold the judges 

38 

that are there. In some cases, it just isn’t. Thirty percent has to 

do with the systems in the building, whether it is falling apart. 

In Savannah, we don’t have a problem with room. The courthouse is falling down. It was built in 1899. The corbels are falling 

off the building and hitting people on the head. They have got a 

big fence around it so people don’t get hit on the head. They have 

got hall corridors that dead end with no fire egress. They have got 

no sally port. They have got no secure lockups, they have got no 

secure elevators. The Marshals Service says it is a catastrophe 

waiting to happen. 

Twenty-five percent is security. So we got 30 percent for size, we 

got 30 percent for building systems, we got 25 percent for security, 

and we got 15 percent for compliance with the Design Guide, which 

means we don’t have 1,000-square-foot courtrooms, which are too 

tiny to really do anything. So we look at that. But that is 15 percent. 

So that is the AMP process. The courts developed that as a way 

of refining our rankings of urgency. But I can only repeat that I 

do believe the process that we had prior to that was adequate to 

identify urgency for other courthouses. 

You all have already appropriated $188 million for the courthouses that are on the plan. Eight of them have sites. Do we want 

to waste that? Two of them have land swaps already, San Antonio 

and Charlotte, where the municipalities have swapped land, and 

they are waiting for the courthouses to be built. 

I am not going to be chair of this committee 5 months from now. 

My community has a nice courthouse. But I feel like I am speaking 

for the people of Chattanooga, the people of San Antonio, the people of Charlotte, the people of Harrisburg, who have been waiting, 

sometimes for 15 years, with courthouses that are falling to bits. 

And the courthouses, they are clearly needed. And I am just hoping 

that, when the times comes, that there are funds to build these 

courthouses, and we can come back to you and persuade you—— 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, so long as the judiciary supplies the 

committee with evidence that it has met all of the criteria that it 

itself created, I am sure this committee would be willing to proceed. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Judge PONSOR. Thank you. 

Mr. BARLETTA. I would like to thank each of our witnesses for 

your testimony today. Your contribution to today’s discussion has 

been very informative and helpful. 

I ask unanimous consent that the record of today’s hearing remain open until such time as our witnesses have provided answers 

to any questions that may be submitted to them in writing, and I 

ask unanimous consent that the record remain open for 15 days for 

additional comments and information submitted by Members or 

witnesses to be included in the record of today’s hearing. 

[No response.] 

Mr. BARLETTA. Without objection, so ordered. If no other Members have anything to add, the committee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:33 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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