Sacramento State Capitol building on Capitol Way. (Photo: Jason Doiy / ALM)

Tucked into the $215 billion budget that California legislators approved Thursday is a $2.8 million gift to the judiciary, one that court leaders did not ask for.

The money will pay for roughly 5 acres of vacant land in Placerville, the site, someday, of a new six-courtroom courthouse in the government seat of El Dorado County. The purchase was not vetted in months of budget committee hearings this spring. It appeared for the first time Sunday night as a line item in the budget deal reached between Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers.

The judicial branch has no immediate plans to build the courthouse. The Judicial Council hasn't secured the funding for a project with an estimated price tag of $82 million.

Still, unless the governor vetoes the spending item, the judiciary will be given the money to buy the county-owned parcel just west of downtown Placerville and let it sit vacant, at least for now.

How that $2.8 million allocation was included in the state's spending blueprint is a classic tale of influence and political pork. It also demonstrates how the judiciary, a separate and co-equal branch of California government, can find itself at the whim of the Legislature and the governor's office at budget time.

The land for the future courthouse is owned by El Dorado County and sits adjacent to the county jail. It was acquired by the county in a 2014 land swap with John V. Briggs, a former Republican assemblyman and state senator who represented areas of Orange and San Bernardino counties in the Legislature between 1967 and 1981.

Briggs, 89, now lives in Elk Grove in Sacramento County, but he still owns land around the future courthouse site. That land, which Briggs said he purchased in 1980, has been marketed for at least five years as a potential site for law offices and related businesses.

Contacted by email this week, Briggs said he recently approached Sen. Jim Nielsen, a Republican who represents a district northwest of El Dorado County, about securing funding for the judiciary to buy courthouse land. Nielsen is vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee and was once Briggs's seatmate in the Legislature.

“I told him of the urgency of the project and that I appreciated his help and interest in this quest and knew he would do his best, while knowing the in-and-outs of the legislative process is always unpredictable.” Briggs said. “El Dorado County is a 'cow county' in legislative eyes … and cow counties forever have been overlooked as a result.”

A feeling of 'euphoria'

Many El Dorado County residents had no representative in the state Senate for the first six months of the year after officeholder Ted Gaines was elected to the Board of Equalization. A new senator for the region, Brian Dahle, was sworn into office this week.

Briggs said he could not describe “the euphoria” he felt when he learned the $2.8 million allocation had been included in a budget deal between the governor and lawmakers. He called his role in securing the money “small” and said that its inclusion in the budget was about benefiting El Dorado County, not him personally.

“While I won't be here to see the courthouse standing, I will know that it has begun and will serve the county from Lake Tahoe to El Dorado Hills,” Briggs told The Recorder. “And the citizens of California will be proud because the Legislature proved they in fact do believe in the justice of serving small, cow counties as well as large urban counties.”

An aide for Nielsen confirmed Briggs's account of how the land purchase was added to the budget.

No one doubts that El Dorado County, encompassing suburbs and rural gold country just east of Sacramento, needs an updated courthouse.

El Dorado County Courthouse, Placerville, Calif.

The current three-story, four-courtroom building in Placerville is postcard pretty, but at 106 years old it lacks modern-day features. It is crowded and has no holding cells for in-custody defendants, no dedicated jury assembly room and limited public parking.

The idea of building a new courthouse instead of renovating and expanding the existing one has been a contentious one for decades. A 1965 grand jury report recommended relocating the court. Local residents balked and the existing courthouse was remodeled instead.

A group known as the Placerville Historic Preservation League unsuccessfully sued the Judicial Council to block the latest relocation project, arguing that officials had failed to consider the potential urban blight and economic damage that the courthouse's move outside of downtown could cause.

League member Kirk Smith called the state budget allocation “terrible news because it's the kind of backroom deal that's marked this project for decades now.”

Judicial Council reviewing construction list

A new Placerville courthouse has been a top construction priority for the judicial branch for a decade. But appropriations for that project and others around the state dried up after the state shifted money, accrued in a fund for court-building from an increase in filing fees, to pay other bills.

The Judicial Council is now reviewing all proposed courthouse construction and renovation projects around the state. It's not clear where Placerville will fall on the new priority list when the council reassesses its construction plans in December.

Tania Ugrin-Capobianco, executive officer for the El Dorado County Superior Court, said she did not know how the money for the courthouse land got into the budget, but she's glad it's there.

“It's going to provide us with an opportunity, when this is all done, for this community to have a building that is safe and secure,” she said.

The state Senate approved the main budget bill Thursday on a 29-11 vote. Sen. Jim Nielsen, who worked to get the Placerville land money into the spending plan, voted no.

The senator said the budget contained many good things, but “there are hundreds of millions of dollars of base-building obligations in this budget that I fear are going to get us in trouble,” Nielsen said.

He did not mention the El Dorado County courthouse.

 

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