The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is pushing ahead on a major court project that will likely be the most expensive in its history, despite slumping revenues and the economic slowdown that shows no signs of recovering soon.

The five supervisors have authorized as much as $360 million for the Criminal Court Tower project. That would add 32 courtrooms to downtown Phoenix, which supervisors and court officials said are needed to keep justice moving in the county. They said they are looking beyond the short-term economic downturn to meet the long-term needs of the county's criminal-justice system.

Felony caseloads are projected to grow by more than 40 percent over the next decade, according to Maricopa County Superior Court figures. Officials say the project is needed to keep calendars and judges on schedule to avoid bottlenecks in the system that could delay justice and end up costing more money in other areas, such as jails.

"The criminal-justice system isn't functioning properly because we don't have enough space right now to do our job," Supervisor Don Stapley said. "It's just going to get worse. We're at a crisis point already, and once we do this criminal-court tower, we'll just barely be catching up."

With the economy in a tailspin, county officials have had to shuffle money around to keep the project alive. They recently sacrificed a plan to build a regional court in southwest Phoenix. They spent $11 million in cash to buy the land but postponed the project and, instead, shifted $79 million in cash to the tower project.

A $100 million plan to expand the county's regional court in Mesa also could be postponed or scaled back to help pay for the tower project, although the Board of Supervisors has not made changes.

Meanwhile, the county will put up an additional $31 million in excess cash from last year's budget toward the project, along with $4.1 million made through excess property sales and interest earnings on capital funds.

"People will look at the price tag and say, 'My goodness, that's a huge number,' and it is," said David Smith, county manager. "But the value in that building for the next 30 to 50 years is in the billions of dollars."
Demand for courtrooms
The Superior Court saw about 38,600 felony filings last fiscal year. That number is expected to increase to about 55,000 by 2016, according to court projections. At the same time, demand for courtrooms is at an all-time high, with administrators juggling courtrooms with vacationing and sick judges to find enough space.

So far, most cases are being resolved in a timely fashion. Last fiscal year, 50 percent of the court's felony criminal cases were adjudicated within 44 days. Standards of the state Supreme Court require 150 days after arraignment for defendants in custody, 180 days for out-of-custody defendants, 270 days for really complex cases and 18 months for capital cases.

But court officials say it won't be long until calendars become clogged.

"If we don't have the additional capacity over the next three, four, five years, we could get into a bad backlog situation," said Marcus Reinkensmeyer, court administrator. "We're pretty much maxed out, we're right at capacity. If we were to add one or two new judgeships over the next couple of years, we'd essentially be out of places to put them."

The county has tripled in population since it last built a courthouse more than three decades ago. Back then, 1.2 million people lived in the Valley compared with today's 4 million. An additional million people could move to Maricopa County over the next decade, according to county population projections.
The early design
The Board of Supervisors last year gave the go-ahead to design and build the tower, which would be built on the block bounded by First and Second avenues and Jackson and Madison streets. The county could break ground on the tower project as early as this summer.

The board authorized funding of $342.4 million; so far, less than $4 million has been spent. Early building schedules peg the tower opening in 2012, said Kenny Harris, an assistant county manager who oversees the project.

Early designs call for a 14- to 16-floor building that would house a total of 32 criminal courtrooms: 22 courtrooms would be built immediately, and 10 more would be shelled and finished later.

The plans include a jury-assembly room for the entire criminal-court complex, state-of-the-art technology, and separate waiting rooms for victims and witnesses.

The tower would include judges chambers and restorative justice services, in which people try to repair the harm caused by crime by working in the community.

The First Avenue Jail, now home to the Sheriff's Office's 911 center and criminal lab, would be knocked down to expand the court complex. The supervisors agreed to spend an additional $14 million to move those operations to a new building within the county's Durango Complex in south Phoenix.

An additional $3.4 million would go to remodel office space for other sheriff's operations affected by the work.


Author: Yvonne Wingett
Source: The Arizona Republic