Veto by Sims closes window pilot project

A proposal to restore the courthouse windows has prompted King County Executive Ron Sims to issue his first veto in two years.

Sims killed a $109,000 study to find out how much it would cost to reopen walled-over windows in the King County Courthouse. The windows have been covered by aesthetically dubious aluminum panels for the past 40 years. The money — a fraction of the county's $4.9 billion budget — would have paid for a pilot project to, among other things, remove panels over three windows, refurbish the frames and analyze what a larger effort would entail.

He said the project could drive up energy costs just as the county is bracing for more revenue shortfalls.

Metropolitan King County Councilmember Bob Ferguson, who co-sponsored the pilot project to restore the courthouse's original 1916 oak-framed windows, hopes to override the veto. It isn't clear he will get the necessary six votes by Monday, the last scheduled meeting at which the council can act.

"They need to go," Ferguson, D-Seattle, said of the aluminum panels that were bolted to the outside of the courthouse in 1967, the same year the building's grand entrance was closed to make way for a loading dock.

"That building was assaulted in horrific ways," said Lauren McCroskey, chairwoman of the King County Landmarks Commission. "The panels, being unsightly and entirely inappropriate, just sort of give a shoddy impression of the overall building as a package."

The courthouse is a historic landmark.

County officials have said courtroom windows were covered over in part because judges didn't want juries to be distracted. Kurt Triplett, Sims' chief of staff, said judges also wanted the aluminum panels as a deterrent to potential snipers.

And, said county facilities consultant Jim Napolitano: "I think it was some goofball's idea of modernizing the building."

Sims, in his veto letter to the County Council, agreed with critics that the aluminum panels "do not lend themselves to providing this historic building with a dignified appearance."

But he challenged the assumption of some council members that putting double-paned windows into the old wooden frames would reduce energy costs.

The building is better insulated by the current layers of aluminum, glass and wallboard than it would be by glass alone, Sims said.

Triplett said there's no use doing the pilot project, proposed by Ferguson and Councilmember Dow Constantine, if the county can't afford to restore all the original windows.

A preliminary estimate for the full job is $10 million. The county is facing a projected $25 million general-fund budget shortfall in 2009, so it can't afford to take on a new venture, he said.

"This is just not the time; this is not the priority," Triplett said.

Constantine, D-Seattle, said it makes sense to restore a few covered windows while crews are already scheduled to work on exposed courthouse windows. He said it was "a little surprising that the executive bothered" to take $109,000 out of a budget of nearly $5 billion.

The council's new chairwoman, Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, sided with Sims.

"I personally don't plan on supporting an override," she said. "I think that the executive's objections are relevant enough to give me pause."

Sims' veto doesn't affect a separate project that would restore the original south entrance to the courthouse. That project, which is being studied but not fully funded, is expected to cost $8 million.

Rebuilding that entrance, Sims and council members say, would help restore the building's architectural integrity, improve safety and reduce security costs by consolidating several existing checkpoints.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com