Editorial: Courthouse settlement shows high price of denying reality

The long saga of the Westmoreland County Courthouse renovations has reached its conclusion.

Perhaps you thought it was already at an end. After all, the parking garage reopened in July 2023 and the plaza and front entrance were in use a month later.

The issue was that was far later than intended.

The affected areas were closed off in March 2022. Demolition and excavation took four months. Construction began in July 2022. The project was intended to take six months and cost $7 million.

That didn’t happen.

The underground garage was shown to have more damage than anticipated. Water undermined footers and beams. Retaining walls had to be built. Groundwater infiltration had to be identified and addressed. And where too much water was the problem in some places, in others it was an abundance of bedrock to work around.

As more roadblocks popped up, the end date for the project crept further and further from six months. In the end, it was almost a year over the mark.

But every time county officials noted the finish line had moved, they said the price would remain the same.

“It’s not costing us any more money, just time,” said Greg McCloskey, then the director of operations, in February 2023.

McCloskey has since retired.

In April 2024, Westmoreland County commissioners approved an additional $1 million — from the same American Rescue Plan funds that paid for everything else — to cover overruns. Then there was the extra $329,000 that went for additional architectural work and the money spent for other parking for 140 courthouse employees over the course of the project.

But still, Carl Walker Construction of Robinson filed a lawsuit in August 2024 seeking another $968,000 to cover work on columns, beams, foundation and more not covered in the original cost.

Commissioners settled that suit Thursday for $700,000.

Anyone who has done a construction project understands that what you expect and what you pay are rarely the same numbers. Ask Hempfield Area School District. Ask the Allegheny County Airport Authority. Ask anyone who has remodeled a kitchen.

The issue is not that the county spent more than anticipated — or that it settled a lawsuit for a boatload of money while cutting spending and jobs amid a Pennsylvania budget crisis and a federal government shutdown.

The entirety of the timeline has been an exercise in pretense. Despite what the county has said since mid-2022, this project was never going to come in on budget, especially when it was so far behind on time.

To continue to double down on that narrative was disconnected from reality. And that kind of refusal to concede just doesn’t inspire trust.