You could call it Extreme Makeover: Courthouse Edition: The federal government’s landlord is building courthouses that are bigger than
necessary, according to a preliminary report by government auditors.
The Government Accountability Office revealed Tuesday
that 27 of the 33 federal courthouses built by the General Services Administration since 2000
contain about 3.6 million square feet of extra space — or 28 percent
of the total federal court space built in the last decade. The excess
space has cost $835 million in construction costs and $51 million in
annual rent and operations costs, GAO said.
The report came at the request of a House subcommittee that oversees federal court construction. It cited three reasons for the extra space:
courthouses are being built larger than the space authorized by
Congress, federal courts are overestimating how much space they need and
judges aren’t sharing courtrooms.
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