Vol. 37, Number 2 —February 2005

Courts Need Rental Relief
Plea to GSA Urges Partial Exemption

On behalf of the Judicial Conference, Administrative Office Director Leonidas Ralph Mecham has written to Stephen A. Perry, head of the General Services Administration, asking for a partial rent exemption for the federal courts. Said Mecham, “We need rental relief now.”

Mecham’s January 4, 2005, letter called Perry’s attention to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s Year-End Report on the Judiciary, in which he addressed the funding crisis affecting the federal Judiciary. The crisis has resulted in the cutback of some services, and in a 6 percent reduction in staffing—1,350 positions—through freezes, furloughs, and reductions-in-force.

Rehnquist said that one way the Judiciary’s budget crisis could immediately be relieved, “would be to reassess the rent that the Judiciary is required to pay to the General Services Administration for courthouses around the country. These rental payments today account for no less than 20 percent of the Judiciary’s budget.”

Mecham noted that the Judiciary was alone among government agencies required to make such extensive cuts, and that a major factor in these personnel cuts was the increasingly high rental payment required of the judicial branch.

Mecham also told Perry the Judiciary’s budget crisis is expected to deepen through at least FY 2009. As the Chief Justice did, he cited rental payments as a major reason for the crisis. “. . [O]ur rental payments to GSA will continue to leap upward from over 20 percent to nearly 26 percent of the total Judiciary budget by FY 2009,” said Mecham, “based upon existing buildings and those already underway.”

Courts nationwide recently received copies of their rent bills and are being encouraged to indicate if this rental rate per square foot is significantly higher than market rates for comparable space in their localities. Although the Administrative Office pays the Judiciary’s GSA space rental bill each month, decisions about space acquisition and release are made locally and approved by circuit judicial councils.

When they visited Perry in December 2004, Judicial Conference Executive Committee chair, Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King, Judge Jane Roth, chair of the Conference Committee on Security and Facilities, and Mecham urged Perry to promptly approve a partial rent exemption of $483 million per year from the Judiciary’s more than $900 million yearly rent bill. Mecham’s letter to Perry repeated that request.

“For GSA it would mean only a reduction in funds available for buildings or repair, and GSA would not have to cut its staff. In contrast, the judicial branch, in effect, must cut staff in order to pay rent to GSA just as we had to slash 1,350 people from our court staff this year,” said Mecham.